Mettawee,

Raceville to Grays Corner

Usual Difficulty	I-V (may vary with level)
Length	12 Miles

Gauge Information

Name	Range	Difficulty	Updated	Level
METTAWEE RIVER NEAR MIDDLE GRANVILLE NY
usgs-04280450	3.90 - 5.00 ft	I-V	01h30m	4.66 ft (rc= 0.7 )

River Description

Safety Warning: There is a dangerous sieve in the second drop. On April 11, 2004, a paddler got stuck in the sieve and drowned. It is not obvious if one scouts from the river-right side. Read the description in Boater Talk for more details. Photos of the sieve at low water are posted to the AW site. Scroll down to see them.

Kinda a smaller, creekier Bottom Moose. Big drops, with big recovery pools. Locals typically run a 2-3 mile section of Class III-V water. Put-in is upstream of Middleton Road Bridge (river right) and take-out is river left downstream of N. Granville near Upper Tpk Road. Call Sacandaga Outfitters for local experts.

Mettawee access issue

I got a call from the Forest Ranger who covers that area this morning asking for help getting this out to paddlers. The owners of the property on river left at the second drop, where Linda Weiss's accident was last year, are having trespass problems with "kayakers". After talking to the Ranger, I seriously doubt that paddlers are the problem (the spot is also popular with fishermen), and asked him to relay that back to the landowners.

Here's the deal, keep in mind that I'm getting this all second hand. Apparently, a few weeks ago, some friends of Linda's asked permission to go down to the river by the drop. The landowners were ok with that, under the impression that they would only be there a little while. They were there longer than the landowner's thought they would be and hung some flags (the flags were there when I paddled it last week). The landowners were still pretty much OK with that. Since then, they have put up new posted signs along the road and the access trail. Some of the signs have been torn down, people have parked in their driveway and by thier front lawn (the road is really narrow right there), and when they asked some people to leave, they were given a hard time. They blame all of this on "kayakers". Again, I seriously doubt that it is, but the locals over there aren't thrilled with people paddling the river since Linda's accident, so it's easy to point the finger at us.

So, please do not access the second drop from the road on river left, by the big brick house. If you want to walk down to the second drop, park at the steel bridge by the first drop and walk down the fisherman's path on river right. It's only about a 1/4 mile walk to the second drop. If anything changes, I'll post it.

Thanks, Ben