Bluestone

Re: Mill Dam Rd. It is very important to get permission to put in here. Permission is easy to get, but GET IT! Otherwise you risk having your car towed.

Bear Claw is aptly named due to the shape of the major undercut on river right. What isn't clear in prev descriptions is that the rapid starts with about a ¼ - ½ mile of long, sloping, river-wide ledges. The river widens and gets shallower. The ledges feed most of the water to the river right side and a smaller portion to river left. Most of the ledges have some kind of hydraulic at the bottom to stop your boat – which could be a problem with more water. The last drop is a 5 – 7 foot broken drop into a funky hole. This riverwide hole is broken up by a large sloping piece of rock in the center that barely had water covering it at about 1300 cfs/6 ft. If you are on river right, you have about 2 – 3 boat lengths before a paddler is spoon-fed into the undercut. River left drops you into a large eddy and a good place to photo the carnage. After we ran the rapid and got a very close look at the undercut, my recommendation is that once you get to the long, sloping ledges do everything in your power to stay river center or river left. This is not an easy thing to do because all of the current is moving to the right and its shallower in the center, the ledges are barely covered at 1300 cfs/6 ft, and there is barely a boat’s length between each ledge. If possible, you will want to run the final drop on river left. It’s a little bony, but way preferable to the alternative. If you have an “out-of-boat” experience in this rapid, the paddler should swim / move towards river left and let the boat and gear go. A flip or a swim in the last drop could be deadly. I would definitely call this rapid a class III rapid with class IV-V consequences – sort-of like a much longer Dimple Rock on the Lower Yough but with a decapitation ledge about head height. Do not take this rapid lightly.