Saturday, April 3, 2010

Assabet River - Egg Rock to Rt.2 and Back


Today's beautiful weather conditions allowed this trash paddler to experience some incredibly high water levels on the Assabet River. As you can see in the opening photo, the bridge at Route 2 offered passage to only the intrepid and nimble.
After launching into the lower Sudbury River, I paddled down to Egg Rock picking up a quick 34 pieces of trash enroute. Reaching Egg Rock my bow veered to the left into and against the chugging current of the Assabet in flood. Trash was plentiful and a good amount was recovered by paddling through what is usually woods...

Of course Dodge Rock and Willow Island were submerged. At a point about 2-miles up from Egg Rock, I found a small piece of terra firma where I could land my boat for transloading purposes. It was at the base of the long abandoned Reformatory Branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad. Before landing however, I had to wait till this sunbather moved to another spot...

Once the snake moved off, I was left to enjoy this view down the old RR right of way towards the prison...

Other wildlife seem today were wood ducks, two swans, Canada geese, Mucovite ducks, and numerous turtles.
After reaching and passing under Route 2, I turned around and began riding the swift current back to my starting point. Once ashore, my vessel disgorged its contents....

Today's haul netted 197 pieces of trash and brought my YTD total to 1333. The recyclable portion was 122 plastic, aluminum, or glass containers. Out of the 122 only 26 were redeemable. The miscellaneous trash portion consisted of 75 pieces. There were balloons, styrofoam cups and floatation, plastic bags, packaging material etc.
Most egregious was a half-full container of motor oil and another partially filled container of Wesson cooking oil. Least egregious was the perfectly good hand pump that can be used for bailing purposes.
This last photo demonstrates my point about redeemable containers being disqualified for redemption due to original label having fallen off.
The number of containers without proper papers was 29...

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