Saturday, September 6, 2014

Freed from the Merrimack's Mud

Because today was the first Saturday of the month it meant Denise Hurt and the New Hampshire Appalachian Mountain Club Paddlers must be fixin' to do a trash patrol on a river somewhere.  They were, and today's river would be the Merrimack in Nashua, NH.
 
Therefore Mrs. Trashpaddler and I headed north to Nashua's Greeley Park boat launch where we joined up with 15 other paddlers for a September trash patrol that felt more like July with 90 degree temps and wicked humidity.

Because there were so many of us, we split into two groups with one going north while the other went south.  We were with the southbound group and almost immediately encountered numerous objects embedded in the mud at water's edge.  Soon loaded boats were shuttling tires back to the boat ramp.  Debra and Paul improvised a bit in loading techniques...


Mrs. Trashpaddler used a balanced approach...

George recovered an old fan which would have been great if there was someplace to plug it in...

Janice headed back with a loaded crate...

Ron and his canoe conveyed several loads...

Freeboard to my aft was at a premium...

Both contingents reconvened at the boat ramp and gathered 'round the day's haul...
If I recall correctly there were 107 recyclable containers, approx. 200 pieces of miscellaneous rubbish which included 2 chairs, 2 bicycles, 2 computers, and 13 tires...all collected in a little over 2 hours.

One odd find was this long toothed beaver's skull recovered by someone in the northbound group...


With everything sorted and stored, sandwiches were enjoyed courtesy of Subway.

Did I say it was a scorcha?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

As always an entertaining look back at the day!

BaffinPaddler said...

OMG! It is amazing what you were able to haul out with kayaks. The tires around the nose and the tail - incredible. It is really hard to paddle with big heavy tires like that. You guys and girls are the best :)