“A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.”
-Laura Gilpin
On June 8th, 2024, I completed a solo kayak through paddle of the Connecticut River. The journey took 11 days and was completed 1 day earlier than planned. Here's my story.
Origins:
Well, I guess this story starts a year and a half ago but in truth, I’ve always toyed with the notion of attempting a through paddle. More to the point, the idea of doing the Connecticut River wasn’t even mine! The Connecticut River first came to my attention while on an annual kayaking trip with a bunch of friends from High School and College. And like all plans hatched around a campfire we had a whole crew ready to tackle the Connecticut together. However, as the realities of carriers and kids began to set in it soon became apparent that I was going on a solo trip.
“You can, you should and if you’re brave enough to start, you will”
-Steven King
Preparation and Training:
Before I even started doing the actual planning for the trip I knew I needed to get myself into better physical shape which, in truth, was something I desperately needed to do regardless. Like most people, leaving my 20s meant leaving my metabolism behind as well. Having a fairly sedentary job only compounded the issue. With that in mind, I identified 2 major areas I need to overhaul before ever dipping a paddle into the Connecticut.
1. Endurance/Cardio:
From what little research I had done up until this point it was fairly obvious that to do 300-plus miles I needed to really up my endurance and cardio game. I was, by my own admission overweight, I could barely run a mile without stopping to catch my breath. To that end I started running every other day, at first it wasn’t even a full mile due to the hills in my area but I slowly progressed to 3 miles and then to a full 10k or 6.2 miles. This was, without a doubt, the hardest part of the whole journey. At the start it felt like I couldn’t breathe, I developed shin splints and when I would finish a run I felt terrible the rest of the day. I was seriously thinking about quitting at this point. Thankfully my partner Anna and my father were super supportive, plus knowing a physical therapist didn’t hurt either.
2. Core/Upper Body Strength:
One of the unintended consequences of the pandemic is that Facebook marketplace is flooded with hardly used and more importantly inexpensive workout equipment. As a person who was never a “gym guy,” this couldn’t have worked out any better. I was able to find a set of weights and a bench for a fraction of what it would’ve cost new. From there I consulted the almighty YouTube and built myself a small workout routine consisting of crunches, push-ups, arm curls, and shoulder shrugs amongst others.
Roughly halfway through my planning and training, I started to have serious concerns about the condition of my back. Could it hold up to the day-in and day-out stress paddling was going to put on it? In my early twenties, I was rear-ended and my back had never been quite right since. If my body was going to let me down it seemed apparent that it was going to be my back. To combat these concerns I started adding an evening yoga class a few times a week. It was great and I’m totally hooked at this point. I think that’s the thing I loved the most about preparing for this trip, it brought me other activities that I wouldn’t have engaged in.
In regards to the actual planning, that was the fun part. Every evening as my Mets played another woeful season on the TV, I read and watched everything I could. A lot of the books I got were unfortunately fairly out of date. For example, many of the breached dams that caused dangerous rapids have been cleaned up to the point that they are mostly bits of quick water or class I rapids. That being said, River Days by Michael J Tougias was incredibly helpful in understanding the history and cultural importance of the Connecticut River. For the real nuts and bolts of navigating the river, I found the Far Out app and the two waterproof Connecticut River Paddlers’ Trail maps to be superbly accurate and up to date. It was nice having both on the trip because if there was anything that I found unclear I could cross-reference with the other. Additionally, the Connecticut River Kayakers group on Facebook was an invaluable resource, their members were always super helpful and polite.
In the end, I determined that it made sense to launch sometime during the middle to back end of May, based on past years the water level would still be high enough from the spring thaw and I wouldn’t get completely cooked the further south I went. The big trade-off for launching at this time of year was that the water was still pretty cold at the top of the river making hypothermia a concern. It came down to threading the needle between air temperature, water temperature, and water level/flow rate. With all that in mind, I figured I could accomplish my goal in 12 to 14 days barring any major setbacks. Also, the fact that I couldn’t take any more time off from work played a major part. I still remember what my boss said when I told him my plan.
“Better not go the wrong way Jess or you’re going to need your passport”
-Sal Travis
Launch Day:
The day of an adventure is one that always finds me a bit out of sorts. Especially in the packing department, every trip into the outdoors has its own beats and rhythms and even though I’ve packed and repacked my kayak numerous times to find the right Tetris arrangement it’s still an unnatural motion. Not yet the mechanical second-nature ritual that this process would soon become.
As far as gear goes, my philosophy has been pretty simple, if it’s lightweight and durable enough for a backpacking trip, it’s good enough for a kayaking trip. But there are some paddling-specific items that I’ll go over now.
The boat - an older Eddyline Fathom I picked up years ago in pretty bad condition. Water had gotten into the bulkheads, freezing over the winter and blowing out chunks of the hull. I was just out of college at the time which meant I couldn’t afford such a boat in good condition but being just out of college also meant I had a lot of time on my hands to figure out how to repair it and it’s been a smooth reliable ride ever since.
Tent-wise, I chose to go with the Haven hammock tent system because it can easily convert from a lay-flat hammock to a traditional tent which would give me a lot of options depending on what the primitive campsites had in store.
I also brought two paddles, a standard straight shaft, and a bent shaft, I started out using my standard paddle first but after a day or two I switched to the bent shaft. I never really got the hype around bent shaft paddles, especially because they tended to be significantly more expensive than their straight shaft counterparts (I got mine used off Facebook marketplace) but I totally get it now, if you plan on doing 20-plus miles a day for multiple days it’s worth it.
The big challenge on my first day of paddling was going to be Lyman Falls. In the days and months leading up to my launch, I spent a lot of time researching Lyman Falls, Sumner Falls, and Wyoming Dam rapids extensively, this is where I felt my communications with the Connecticut River Kayakers group on Facebook really paid off, not only was I supplied with a plethora of first-hand accounts of what to expect but some members had even filmed their own decent through the tougher parts which helped me visualize what to expect. Based on where I was launching from, just below the Canaan Dam portage, I estimated that I should be hitting Lyman’s just after lunch. However, the current was moving a whole lot quicker than anticipated. I was flying down the river.
It was just after ten-thirty when I realized that I was barring down on Lyman, I knew I wanted to run it to the left but I wanted a little time to prepare, time that I didn’t have. Cutting hard to the left to avoid a particularly churned-up bit of water I overcompensated and grounded my kayak into a shallow section. I tried wiggling my hips while pushing off with my paddle but that only exacerbated the problem. Within a matter of seconds, my kayak pitched sharply to the side, if I didn’t have my skirt on the boat would’ve swamped right then and there. “Well this trip is off to a flying start Jess,” I thought to myself. Gingerly and with a fair amount of cursing I was able to dislodge the kayak by reaching my bare hands under the hull, slowly lifting and sliding myself back. It was quite a stretch and bend. Those hours spent contorting my body at the yoga studio were already paying off!
The rest of the day went off without a hitch. The current stayed strong with bits of quick water thrown in here and there. My original plan was to camp at the Maine Central Railroad Trestle but seeing as how quickly I was moving I figured I’d shoot for the Samuel Benton Campsite an additional seven miles down the river. It was a gem of a site, a perfect spot to spend my first night made only better by an appearance of a rainbow after a brief evening shower. I took it as a sign I was on the right path.
“The path of the paddle can be a means of getting things back to their original perspective”
-Bill Mason
A Gauntlet of Portages:
Let’s just say off the bat, no one likes portages. I’ll amend that, no one likes portages in the moment but everyone likes to talk about portages they’ve done. They’re basically the definition of type II fun.
When plotting out this trip I only really planned, in detail, the first five days. Over the possible two weeks I thought it would take to complete the Connecticut River there were too many variables that could render a more detailed plan useless. I came to this conclusion based off a single twenty-five-mile stretch. The problem was that this stretch included five dams with five accompanying portages: Gilman Dam, Moore Dam, Comerford Dam, McIndoe Falls, and Dodge Falls. These portages alone could cause things to go sidewise quickly destroying any semblance of a plan in the early days of the trip.
No matter how I sliced it there wasn’t a great way to split up the portages. Luckily the quick current had put me ahead of schedule resulting in me being able to knock off Gilman Dam at the end of the previous day. Four portages sounds better than five but either way, it was shaping up to be one of the hardest days of the trip.
I woke up early and banged out most of Moore Reservoir before the sun could creep above the tree line. When the current eased to an eventual standstill I figured I was getting to my first portage of the day. Leading off with the Moore Dam portage was great. Steep? Yes, but I was able to use my kayak kart from beginning to end.
Now the Comerford Dam on the other hand? The toughest portage of the whole trip. How I didn’t end up completely covered in poison ivy is a minor miracle. At one point I tied a rope to the back of my kayak to slowly lower it down a steep embankment. The whole time I kept envisioning my beloved kayak careening away and smashing on the rocks below. When I took a break to collect myself before navigating the final pitch I looked back up at the dam only to see a handful of workers watching intently, I guess I was good entertainment for them.
The Mclndoe portage had a steep set of stairs with some logs and rocks to drag over at the launch but it was a super short portage. Plus there was a country store just up the hill and ice cream makes everything better. I hit Dodge Falls by five pm and I was shot. The takeout was a bit precarious and it wasn’t entirely clear where to go, probably the trickiest takeout of the five portages. I stayed at the campsite along the portage trail that night and was asleep before the sun went down. The next morning I was flung awake by a fury of shrieks and caws coming from the river banks, a bald eagle and two ospreys were fighting and continued to do so for the next few minutes. The coolest animal experience on the trip.
“The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling.” – George R. R. Martin
Storm Dodging:
Rain never bothers me when I’m out on the water, I’m usually hot and stinky so a nice shower is a good respite. Even windy and choppy water can be fun in so much as it makes the whole experience feel more epic. As white caps wash over the front of my kayak I start to imagine I’m on an old masted ship crossing the ocean. I bark orders to my crew “Batten down the hatches!” “Keep her stead Mr Cromwell, the sail will hold.”
By the middle of the trip I had begun to find my rhythm, my paddling was dialed in, and setting up and breaking down camp was becoming second nature which was good because the weather couldn’t seem to make up its mind. This daily dance would happen where I’d sort out the next day's paddle based on portages, estimated mileage, and of course weather, and by the time I was hitting the water, I was just keeping an eye on the forecast and winging it. This meant that my daily mileage goals were being thrown all out of wack, some days I was barely hitting twenty miles while others I was pushing forty-five miles just to stay on track. Looking back I was a little too focused on the milage aspect of the trip and I wish I would’ve been a little more zen about the whole thing. For my birthday I was given a Garmin inReach and the detailed weather reports I could download were invaluable.
I felt like I was doing a fairly decent job dodging thunderstorms as I rolled through Springfield. I had been playing it cautious, making sure I was off the water well before a severe weather band was passed over. Which only made it more alarming when I started to hear the roll of thunder in the distance. I knew there was severe weather coming through in the late evening but I thought I could get a solid amount of paddling in before then. I quickly scanned the horizon, everything was overcast but nothing looked like what my ears were telling me. Flipping through my Garmin and weather apps on my phone was no help. A few days before by Bellows Falls there were a bunch of small weather cells in the area so I assumed that’s what it was and proceeded with caution but the thunder only continued to grow. That all changed when I rounded a bend revealing a massive roller coaster. Moral of the story, you can’t outrun the weather and you can only dodge storms for so long…unless those storms are amusement parks.
“The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.” – John Muir
An Early Goodbye
I knew I was close as I settled in for what I thought was my second to last night, if the wind blew just right I swore there was a hint of salt in the air. My body, not without its aches and pains, was holding up remarkably well. The only real physical issue I ran into was my hands, even with gloves they’d become so dried out and callused that I had problems opening bottles but in the middle of the trip I was fortunate to meet a trail/river angel who gave me a lift to CVS to pick up some hand salve. My food supplies were still good though the options were limited.
The plan was to paddle out to the last string of campsites on the Connecticut River and then have a relatively short paddle the next day as I made my way out into the sound. I pulled into the first Selden Neck campsite mid-afternoon, a nice soft beach that led to a picnic table and fire pit, it was perfect. This all changed when I saw a sign with a QR instructing me to reserve the site. I knew I had screwed up immediately. I saw in the FarOut app that you could reserve these sites but it was difficult to make a reservation through the app on top of that I wasn’t too sure what day I was going to be there. I figured there’d be some first come first serve sites along the way too but as I stopped at each campsite only to be greeted by a QR code my heart sank further and further. By the time I hit the last campsite, the writing was on the wall; I was going to have to grind out the rest of the trip today. A wave of deep sadness swept over me, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the Connecticut River yet. I was feeling wistful for a journey that hadn’t ended yet. Regardless of your beliefs, if you spend that much time paddling, drinking from, sleeping next to any body of water you form a special connection with it.
The last few hours of paddling were great which weirdly only made my heart grow heavier. Just thinking about what the river looked like from the start in New Hampshire to now was a great experience. But nothing beats the feeling of getting out onto open water. For the whole trip I was surrounded by trees, and now in front and to either side of me was nothing but the open ocean. Before paddling back to land I just floated out there for a few minutes. I wanted to say thank you and goodbye. And as my dad and I were loading my kayak onto the car a brief rain shower crossed over leaving behind a beautiful rainbow, it felt like the river was saying goodbye back. You read all the time about people conquering Everest or taming the Zambezi River but I don’t feel that way about the Connecticut River, in truth I feel like I made a great friend and I’m really going to miss them now.