Champlain Canal
Dave and Helen Damouth
www.damouth.org
May 22-25, 1987
The Champlain Canal extends about 65 miles, from the south end of Lake Champlain, at the town of Whitehall, to the junction of the Hudson River and Mohawk river (which is also the Erie Canal) at Waterford, just north of Troy. There are eleven locks, with the spacing between locks ranging from 14 miles to 2 miles. The first several locks rise from Lake Champlain, and from there on it is downhill to Troy. There is one more lock in the Hudson River below Troy which drops essentially to sea level.
The northern part of the canal is man-made, but has low natural dirt banks and runs through deep forest, with occasional dairy farms or villages. The southern part is mostly on the Hudson river, with an occasional short canal and lock bypassing the dams. This section runs thorugh more open country, with more dairy farming and less forest. There is very little current, so it would be practical to run a canoe trip along the canal in either direction. Maps of the canal system, and informational brochures about the old and current canals, are available from the state at some locks. The free canal map, and a state highway map, are sufficient for the trip. Topographic maps make it a bit easier to keep track of exactly where you are, if you care.
Camping along the way can either be primitive in the forests and cow pastures, or at the locks. The lock keepers were uniformly pleasant and helpful. You can camp on the lawn at each lock, and use the lock keeper's bathroom and water. One lock even offered a hot shower. The locks are tended from 7 AM to 11 PM. Most of the locks are within walking distance of a village, so one could eat all meals in a restaurant and spend the evenings pub crawling.
Helen and I joined four people from the Genesee Valley Hiking Club, and paddled the canal starting at the north end. Four of us left Rochester at about 6:45 am Friday, May 22, and arrived at Waterford about 12:45 pm. One couple left Friday evening, and joined us part way through the trip on Saturday.
We left a car at Waterford, in a nice park surrounding lock 1 of the Erie canal, and drove up to lock 12 at Whitehall. We got on the water and underway at 2:45 pm, leaving our car on the canal bank behind the firehouse. The local cop and the volunteer firemen offered to keep an eye on the car.
We had our Sawyer Cruiser. The other canoe was a dented fat-ended 15' 90 pound aluminum Starcraft, so we moved very slowly. We expected to meet the third canoe Saturday morning at Fort Anne. So we pushed on to Fort Anne, arriving just at dark, at 8:45 pm. We camped in a cow pasture on the opposite side of the canal from the village, walked into town to leave messages, ate a quick meal, and went to bed.
Next morning we ate breakfast while nearly surrounded by a gradually contracting circle of curious but polite cattle. There was no sign of the other couple, so we left more messages in town and pushed off at 7:45 am. (It eventually turned out that the other couple had been in Fort Anne that evening after dark, had not received our messages, and had driven within a few hundred yards of our campsite without spotting us.)
As we passed through a succession of locks, we began to get messages concerning the whereabouts of the other couple, who had launched at lock seven and were traveling slowly, expecting us to catch up. Little did they know how slow we were traveling. Eventually, we got a message that they would stop at lock five and wait for us. We reached lock five at about 6 pm, met our elusive third canoe, and camped for the night. We got set up just in time for a thunderstorm. The lock keeper opened a storage shed and suggested we store our gear out of the rain. One of the group, with an old leaky tent, chose to sleep in the shed.
Sunday, we got underway at 7:45 am, and reached lock 1 at about 6 pm. Two of our group hiked two miles from lock one (of the Champlain Canal) down to lock 1 (of the Erie canal) after dinner, got the car, and brought it back to our campsite. Next morning, the drivers got up early to drive up and retrieve the other two cars, arriving back at lock one at 9:30 am. At that point, we decided it wasn't worth the trouble to canoe the last two miles of our intended route, and packed up to return to Rochester. We drove a meandering route through small Adirondack roads, arriving home about 6 pm.
The canal system is working hard to sell itself as a tourist attraction. The lock keepers go out of their way to be helpful. They are inspected by the State, not just on the functionality of their equipment but also on the attractiveness of the site, so they keep the grass mowed, plant flower beds, and spend an unbelievable amount of time painting and polishing brass on the old equipment. Lock five still has most of its original 1915 equipment. It is powered from the original 230 volt DC hydro-powered generator, with a mechanical fly-ball governor. The antique dc motors are still in place. The control panels for lock doors and valves, limit switches and manual controls are beautifully polished brass. On these old locks, the lock keeper does essentially all of the maintenence as well as operating the lock. Some of the locks have been converted to ac power, and some have replaced the original huge cast iron rack and pinon actuators with hydraulic pistons.
There is still a substantial amount of commercial traffic. The lock keeper said there were 700 barges through the canal last year. We passed one huge Mobil barge, probably full of jet fuel for an air force base upstream. There was also a substantial number of yachts moving north, including quite a few large million-dollar boats, often with Quebec or Vermont registry.
A couple of other comments: Since there should be no portages, you can travel heavy and take some luxuries. You could easily take an ice chest and lots of fresh food. The canal water is not drinkable, and a large water container is a worthwhile convenience. We took a 2 1/2 gallon collapsible plastic water jug. You can get drinkable water at an outside tap at the Whitehall firehouse, and at some (perhaps all - I didn't check) of the locks. At one lock, the lockkeeper had a new well which he said didn't taste right, and he advised us against drinking it (he also said the state inspectors had tested it and pronounced it safe).
There is a 10 mph speed limit on the canalized portions, but not on the Hudson. Some of the huge motor yachts were going fast enough on the Hudson to throw large wakes. The river is wide and you can stay far enough away if you anticipate sufficiently. Boat wakes are shorter and steeper than natural lake waves, so heading into them is not necessarily the right thing to do. We shipped a couple of gallons of water over the bow as one large motor yacht went by. After that, we rode the waves with the canoe nearly (but not exactly) parallel to the wave crests. This way, the canoe rocks more but is much less like likely to dig an end into the wave. Angling slightly into the wave is a compromise between the side-to-side rocking (controllable if you know how and don't panic) and the end-digging tendency, with the optimal angle depending on the design of your own canoe. Our canoe is long, with low ends and not much bouyancy in the ends. A shorter fatter canoe can point more into the waves.
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