excerpts reprinted from:

Spotlight: Racquette River, N.Y.

A closer look at the rebirth of an Adirondack classic

By MATTHEW STURDEVANT

Former American Whitewater editor and longtime kayaker Chris Koll calls the Stone Valley section of New York’s Racquette River “one of the hardest commonly run rivers in the Adirondacks.”

To see it in spring—a roaring white tumult—makes it tough to imagine that this three-mile stretch of the Racquette was nearly dry during the best paddling months.

I spent part of my childhood summers in this area northwest of the Adirondack State Park, not far from the border with Ontario. I hadn’t heard of anyone paddling Stone Valley in the 1980s or early ‘90s. There wasn’t enough water. A hulking pipe diverts most of the river’s flow and rushes it alongside the river to a power plant downstream.

The Racquette has a long history as a hydroelectric workhorse dating back to 1912, farther upstream from Stone Valley. The first pipe was built in 1918. It diverts water to the Brown’s Bridge power plant from a dam in the center of Colton, N.Y., a small town about 100 miles southeast of Ottawa.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, dams all across the Adirondacks were due to be re-licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC. American Whitewater, which was a much smaller and less experienced advocacy group in the ‘80s, Koll said, used the re-licensing process to lobby for stronger flows in various rivers.

photo Steve Arns / Liquid Lore

“We realized there was a ton of opportunity to locate whitewater rivers in New York,” said Koll, 58, who splits his time between homes in Marcellus (near Syracuse) and Old Forge, in the heart of the Adirondacks. “The Racquette was one of these rivers that would have real potential if the water came about.”

In the case of the Racquette, AW and the power company at the time, Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., worked together on a flow study to figure out how much water to let over the Colton dam. The study started in the early ‘90s, Koll said. It was a long, tedious process between the time AW first lobbied for the flow rights and the parties had a working plan. Koll now coordinates with the power company that currently operates the dams, Brookfield Power, to schedule six dam-release days, cranking it up to 720 cfs from the usual 180 cfs flow.

The first scheduled release was Labor Day weekend September 2002, which drew more than 100 paddlers.

photo Steve Arns, Liquid Lore

Even at 720 cfs during that first run, a moderate flow, the Racquette proved fierce. It’s a quick succession of drops and pools. The river plummets about 230 feet in the first mile, and the last two miles are Class II with one Class III.

During that first run in September 2002, kayaker and medical doctor Richard Ginsburg, 50, died after getting trapped in a hole at the bottom of a 10-foot falls below The Narrows, the fourth major rapid which is about a half mile downstream of the dam, according to American Whitewater and the Kayak & Canoe Club of New York.

Stone Valley has roughed up paddlers since in the last nine years, but it hasn’t claimed another life. Even with the water running now, the river only attracts about 30 or 40 people during those half dozen days when the dam opens up. They come from as far away as Vermont and West Virginia.

Koll sums up the river by saying, “The Racquette is a legitimate Class V run. There are a lot of pretenders out there—in reality they’re Class IV … The Racquette is a very challenging, hard river.”