Comite River — Recon (White Bayou)

Not much to report for this one.  I put in at Blackwater Conservation Area to paddle a bit of the Comite River.  Just felt like getting wet, and the river was just high enough to avoid hiking the Comite Trail, as it usually should be called.

I paddled just over a mile upstream to come to White Bayou.  I hadn’t taken that fork before, as when there’s no water in the Comite, you can be just about absolutely certain there’s no way to paddle on its tiny tributaries.  Today, however, there was enough water, and I felt like checking it out.

Needless to say, it was quite slow going.  Even with the Comite up, there was not much more water than Ward Ditch just downstream of Essen Lane (but I didn’t encounter any actual culverts on White Bayou).  There was some litter, but not too much.  Pulling a few large things or tires would be nice, but it’s a bit of a Catch-22.  Either the water is too low to carry them out in the canoe, or it’s too high to get to them to pull them in the first place.  I suppose I could pull them one day, stage them up on the bank, then retrieve them when the water level is very high, but there’s simply not that much to deal with there.

I only made it half a mile “upstream” (as it were) before deciding that it was getting too much into sledding and too far from actual paddling, so I turned back (with effort) and got one nice set of “rapids” a few feet long on the way back.  All in all, not a stream to bother with, but I was happy to see it was in fairly decent condition.

Back on the Comite, I paddled/drifted back to Blackwater.  Once I got there, I put all my gear ashore and then spent a little while intentionally swamping my canoe to practice handling it.  I seem to have ended up with some water in my molded seats, but hey, such is life, eh?