Heritage paddlers go with the flow

By David Horst   sandhill7@gmail.com 

MUSCODA – The Wisconsin River is a powerful force on an average day. When the participants in Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Paddle 2011 returned to the big river June 25-26, the days were not average.

Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Paddlers approach
the Mississippi River.  See more photos

High flows and high water submerged many of the sandbars. That made for straighter paddling and fewer beaching hazards to avoid, but it also swallowed up the sandbar we had planned to camp on.
 
Online stream gauges report the river’s flow at various locations. For our paddle two weeks earlier, the gauge at out takeout at Muscoda read about 8,000 cubic feet per second, close to average for that section of the river. On this weekend, the gauge for what was now our launch point would reach 22,000 cfs. 

Imagine filling your two-car garage with water to the top of the doors … five times. That’s about what was passing through the 1,000-foot-wide channel every second.

We consulted with several people in the area on whether to cancel the trip. We decided to go with the flow, with one revision. 

We would end the first day’s paddle at Boscobel to avoid a low railroad bridge just above our planned takeout at Woodman. Our new friends Mark Cupp, executive director of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board, and Scott Teuber, owner of Boscobel outfitter Wisconsin River Outings, which provided our shuttle, cautioned us that the 28-foot Fox of the River voyageur canoe that leads us wouldn’t make it under the bridge with the water this high. 

That cut about nine miles off of the trip, but we still paddled a respectable 37 miles for the weekend, with the biggest thrill waiting at the end.

Seventeen boats launched from the DNR landing at Muscoda Saturday into a swift but friendly current. They carried 23 people and our first K9 participant, a Scottie named Serendipity who traveled with a mother-daughter canoe paddling team.

These paddles are open to anyone willing to abide by the safety rules and chip in $10 to cover expenses, so we never know how many participants we’ll find at the landing.

The crew of the voyageur canoe numbered only five, but they were determined paddlers. Among them was 80-year-old Marsh Buss of Neenah, who chose the better part of valor over paddling his own kayak, as he had done for all 12 segments of our Fox River trip last year. He wore the same wide smile on the river.

While we passed fewer tall bluffs than on the prior weekend trip, those we saw were mostly accompanied by soaring turkey vultures. It took more river miles than usual to get our obligatory eagle flyover, but it came with an eagle nest occupied by two eaglets.


The landing at Boscobel was complicated by a large eddy swirling around right in the path to the boat ramp. One by one, the paddlers experienced the rush of being swung around by the eddy and then strained to paddle back up river to the takeout.

Sunday’s launch was at a partially submerged Woodman Boat Landing on State 133, actually a few strokes up the Little Green River. Feeling good about a second nice day on the water, paddlers lined up side-by-side and chatted freely. We numbered 13 boats and 18 souls.

Before long, we were lunching in the shade at the Millville boat landing. It’s a lovely stop and a short hike to a pit toilet – a serious consideration for a 21-mile, mixed-gender paddle.


Large wooded islands and tall bluffs marked the way to Bridgeport. Two of our stand-up paddlers opted to leave their boards there and finish the trip in the voyageur, now holding a crew of eight and soon to need every back and paddle. 

There we also met three local farmers, who were fishing at the landing. One, they said, was 102 – old enough to be Marsh’s father, someone observed.

From Bridgeport we were only a few miles shy of the confluence with the Mississippi River. As we drew closer, the hills seemed to take on more shades of green. 

A wide band of much browner water and a passing barge told us we had reached the Mississippi. A chorus of hoots and hollers from the paddlers informed everyone else.

The turn onto the Mississippi was also a turn into a whopper of a head wind, which canceled out the benefits of the much-elevated flow. The water took on a substantial chop, with additional contributions from passing powerboats.

The four miles on the Mississippi were the toughest of our two weekends of paddling. As we trickled into the landing on County X in Bagley, anxiety turned to adrenaline, leaving happy faces for a group photo that marked the end of about 80 miles of paddling for the Wisconsin part of the Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Paddle.