Mighty Clinton River (MCR) !!: Kayaking 101

Clinton River Canoe & Kayak Rental's put on a "Kayaking 101" demo class at Bald Mt. Recreation Area this past Saturday. I helped out with the 10am class. I'll have to post some of the curriculum another time, but they went over: safety, boat selection, paddle techniques, etc. The class lasted 2 hours with paddle time on the water included. We had 8 or so people show up and everyone did quite well! Samantha of CRC&KR tried out a whitewater boat and was given some instruction in rolling. Later that day while at the lake, she actually was able to roll her boat!

After the rolling class I had to head over to Addison Oaks for a wedding reception. My friends Pam & Mike had gotten married down in Key West FL a few weeks back and then had a campout party type of weekend, it was great! Addison Oaks is a nice campground. Since I had been there all afternoon, I decided to crash in a friends trailer since all I would be doing is going home and then getting up to head out that way again to kayak on Sunday.

I met Doug, Jarrett and Brian on Sunday morning at 10am in Yates park. When we pulled in there were a couple of fire trucks and other EMT vehicles there, I was worried something bad had happened. What was actually going on was a good thing, the Rochester Hills Fire Department was doing some 'Swift Water Rescue" training. Found out they do this every year and this year they had a nice flow with the Auburn gage at 2.07

We did our shuttle and made the run from A&L to Yates in about 2.5 hours with a couple of stops, one for some rolling practice for Doug. He did pretty good and is close, but Samantha beat him! There are 2 portages. One just after the stinky pipe, portage on Right. You can stand in the water and put your boat onto the last log before continuing. The next portage is at Rock Island, another Maple tree came down in front of the last one we cut a path through a few weeks ago. You can portage early or if you come upon it late, just portage on river Left. If you go towards it on river Right all the water will want to sweep you under the log so don't go there! I did not get any pictures of that, battery ran out!