Popolopen Brook

Popo Update--following Hurricane Irene--Posted by Jeff Sharpe in NPMB.com--

The mighty Popolopen seems to have fared pretty well through the highest water she's seen in at least a century. The water was high enough to remove the hiker's bridge from it's foundation on river left. Fortunately, the bridge is still anchored to it's river right foundation and is not a hazard to paddlers. I got a run in this afternoon at a nice medium-low level. The river bed has clearly changed at the visual gauge (faintly painted yellow markings river left at hiker's bridge). It was reading zero but was probably more like a previous 1 ft.

There's almost no wood on the run except a very large tree that extends all the way across the top drop in Hungry Hippos. A line is still there but some basic pruning should clean it up a bit.

Some rapids changed around but mostly for the better. From top to bottom, here's what I noticed:

- some of the FU rocks in the last section above the hiker's bridge have been pushed aside

- the rock in the exit slot at Hungry Hippos (the Hippos mouth) has opened up a bit. It's probably a bit more forgiving of a hole now though still definitely capable of producing swims.

- the lead in stuff to Chutes and Ladders is totally rearranged. At the pillow rock where you used to head right to limbo under an old telephone pole, the pillow is gone and so is the telephone pole. Unfortunately, the pole was replaced by some new wood in almost the exact same spot. And there are new rocks upstream and left of the old pillow rock. You can't go left anymore and you definitely can't ride the pillow. The line looks okay but we walked since the crux of Chutes and Ladders also changed significantly. The chute on the right side looks more or less unchanged but the sievey, pinny mess that it dumps you into is now more sievey and pinny. I think you can still dog left if you can catch the eddy below the chute and then run a little sneak to set you up for the slot boot and then the last part of the rapid (where most people, myself included, usually re-enter the river to get the awesome 10 foot sliding drop into the big pool).

- the entrance to Sorry has cleaned up and you can now enter center, head left down the channel and then back center into an eddy. There is a new piton rock in the exit of this first section of the rapid. If you go for the 'high speed boof' option down center left you definitely could slam right into it. If you're like me, catch the eddy and then run the little sneak route center right. Of course, at high flows that eddy is tough to catch and all bets are off. The rest of sorry paddled beautifully. I think a few other little FU rocks may have shifted put of the way.

- the top of Candyland was unchanged I think. It's possible that the setup to the first boof may be slightly different. Or maybe I just took a slightly different line than usual. The three boofs in the second part of Candyland were largely the same although the first in that set also now has a center right line in addition to the normal center left boof.

- the boogie between Candyland and Concentration had some slight changes; nothing major and it all paddled really nicely, but definitely changed a bit.

- Concentration looked a little woody. I didn't venture in there. The portage is just too easy.

- the big slot boof on hard river right below Concentration is even bigger and wider too. It's just plain awesome. I believe you can also run center down a big boof there as well now.

- Some of the boogie in the next section had some small changes but nothing of note.

- the rapid in the lower half of the run that is a notch above everything else in length and difficulty changed. There used to be two rocks that you had to cut between moving right to left. That whole rock jumble shifted around. Now you want to run a nimble little line left to right between two different rocks. It was pretty clean and probably on the whole a little easier than the old line.

- the last rapid changed a lot and is definitely cleaner now with a nice exit on the right.

I think that's about it. The Popo is still the best run in the area by a significant margin...and maybe is even a little better now.