Saturday, August 23, 2008
For today's paddling adventure we headed over to Churchville Park to put into Black Creek a ways above the Churchville dam. According the Rich and Sue Freeman's Take a Paddle - Western New York the creek upstream of the dam is deep and wide, and as of publication of the book the channel was clear at least as far as the Bergen Swamp. Given the fun time we had paddling Black Creek down in Chili, we expected to have a good time on this upstream stretch.
Quite a bit of traffic on the creek, a couple of motorized fishing boats, a couple of canoes, and a few kayaks. Not as much as over in Irondequoit, but still busy compared to some of the places we've paddled.
The creek was wide and sunny, which made for hot going... the channel twisted and turned, and in one or two places it was even tricky to pick out the main channel - at one point I paddled down a wide section only to find the route through blocked by a tree, but fortunately the other route was clear.
Lots of wildlife along the way... turtles galore, plus a few herons and egrets. Ann may have even glimpsed a beaver at one point. After the initial stretch past houses, the sides of the creek were mostly wooded, though we did pass a very nice campsite down near the spot where we turned around.
We stopped at the Route 19 bridge. I'd hoped we'd be able to paddle into the Bergen Swamp and see if the creek has been cleared recently (the Freeman's reported it as a paddling nightmare of constant portages through nettles and poison ivy due to all the blow-downs, but noted that other paddlers had mentioned the channel being clear at times) but between the heat and the distance we'd already covered we decided instead to head back. The creek through the swamp will have to wait for another trip...
JMH
