An amazing amount of rain fell and the rivers everywhere were rising quickly. After checking the gauges we found that the Bush Kill river at the Shoemakers, PA gauge station was above 5,000 cfs and going strait up. That is a whole lot of water! Joe Stumpfel, Steve Graybill, and I all loaded up the car, planning to get some high water runs on Hornbecks Creek and Raymondskill Creek. After a 4+ hr. drive we made it to the Deleware Water Gap National Recreation Area entrance only to find the road closed. The park ranger explained that the Deleware River was 6ft over the road in spots. We checked the trusty Gazetteer and found some back roads in the mountains that would get us to the creek headwaters.
Hornbecks was running at the best, and highest, level that I've ever seen. We hiked in and checked out the drops. Almost every drop on the creek had some bad wood in it. The one drop without wood was halfway down the creek and one of the smallest drops on the run. We then tried to get to Raymonskill and couldn't, due to all the roads shut down by the Park Rangers due to road flooding.
(Dingmans Falls "The Big Dinger")
The day ended up being a big hiking mission. Joe was keen to check out The Big Dinger and see if the extra water would make it more appealing to run. I asure you that this was way too much water to even think about attempting The Big Dinger! A 50+ft. cascade onto a 60+degree 60+ft. slide is a commiting drop. There was no pool at the bottom of the cascade, which meant a must make boof off a 50 footer to a landing on a relatively flat rock!!! Not today.
(Joe scouts Funny Bone Falls)
(Bryon styles possible first descent of Funny Bone Falls)
We decided to check out some other creeks in the area and found a sweet runnable drop. We figured that we couldn't drive all that way and not get into our boats. I fired it up first in my Small Fluid Solo Prototype and aced the line, landing dead flat off the drop. Steve dropped it next and ended up comming off sideways and dropping the people's elbow onto the rock shelf at the bottom of the drop, which knocked his paddle out of his hands. Steve then handrolled up, chased down his paddle, and fired it up again, acing his second attempt. Joe was next to drop it and pulled off a sick 180 off the falls, running the rest of the rapid backwards, in his Large Fluid Solo Prototype. More info on this drop and creek to come.
See you on the river- Bryon Dorr