Bayou Fountain — The Lost Posts — January 17, 2015

Okay, everything is better again after some technical difficulties and a whole bunch of inconveniences.  So, here we go catching up with “The Lost Posts”.It was a chilly morning when I showed up at Highland Road Park for this excursion.  While it was only a couple degrees above freezing at 8am, it promised to warm up into a rather nice day.  While I was setting up, help arrived, and together we noted that it may have been more comfortable to start a bit later, say 10am.  (It was 50°F by 10am, which does seem a bit more like being-outdoors weather around here.)

With all the heavy rain that had come down since the last trek, I expected a bit of work.  Not too far down the bayou, we hit the first bit.  Just a simple downed tree catching a bit of flotsam, but it was a nice start.  (Nice, in that you warm up a bit when you start working.)  It didn’t take us long to dispatch it, and then on down the bayou we went.  Everything went fine until we came to the second powerline crossing halfway to Bayou Manchac.

Yeah.  Wow.  The rains had washed quite a bit down, and it pretty much all ended up caught right at old number 15, the original 65-yard monster jam.  I noted that it was the worst I’d seen it since we took three weekends to break through way back when.  Conveniently, my kayaking help this time around was every bit as qualified as anyone.  I had the waders, so I hopped out in the water and worked the sets, and he did most of the winch work.  (This struck me as rather the opposite of most of my days on the bayou, and I enjoyed it.)

It took more than the usual work, but we got it open and clear again.  We really ought to hit it at low water with a combined force of chainsaws, but for now, it was open again.  We continued down the bayou, running into just a bit more work.  Not much, really, as almost everything that could’ve jammed had been collected at old number 15.  After a more normal amount of work, we hit Bayou Manchac and turned back toward the park.

All in all, it was a hard but productive day.  It ended up in the mid 60s, too, which was warm enough to be a nice spring paddling trip.  Of course, there’s always more where that came from, so let’s continue in the next episode of The Lost Posts.