Saturday, December 13, 2014

A Swollen Sudbury River

After a week of crummy weather, I finally got a chance to get out on the water today and see the after affects of all that rain.
 
I launched at Route 20 in Wayland and planned to paddle up to and into Heard Pond.  However, those plans went out the window upon reaching the Pelham Island Road bridge (at left) and finding insufficient headroom for passage.


On my way there I had the rare opportunity to see a motorized vehicle passing over the long abandoned Central Mass Railroad trestle...
The ATV and operator were part of a crew working on the high power transmission towers that run along the old railroad right of way.

With today's high water levels I was able to paddle a portion of Wash Brook up to the nearly submerged culvert on the south side of the railroad...

Undulating clouds on the storm's trailing edge were visible to the east...

Further down the Sudbury at the 4 arch stone bridge headroom, once again, was at a premium...

I headed back to the river's main stem and paddled west getting fairly close to where the old Hayne's Garrison House stood and came under attack during King Philip's War ...

Back in the marsh one of the few trees hosted this hawk...

I turned back upriver and let the stronger than expected breeze push me back to Route 20 where the day's trash haul gathered alongside my boat's hull...
Trash was plentiful, perhaps due to the rising water levels releasing trash from wherever it'd been hiding.  There were 31 recyclable containers (15 redeemable) and 39 pieces of miscellaneous rubbish such as plastic bags, Styrofoam, and a Mylar balloon.   YTD = 5766

On Thursday I checked out the Assabet River passing through the broken dam at Damondale...
The gauge at Maynard was at 4.5'.  Would've been a quick trip for anyone passing through.

2 comments:

Erik Eckilson said...

Wow - water was really running at Damondale - you and I ran it at 3 feet once. I did the section from through Maynard from the the Ben Smith Dam to the Elks Hall on Route 62at about 4 feet - it's been a while since it was that high.

Al said...

Hello Erik, The 2 plus inches of rain we got last week combined with post Thanksgiving rains and snowmelt have all the rivers around here chugging like it was April. Don't know if there would've been enough clearance at bridges to do the stretch through downtown Maynard.