The Plan

Our intrepid plan starts by meeting in NYC at JFK on the night of May 24th. We will drive to Taylor’s parents’ house, where we will catch a few hours of sleep before the real adventure begins. The next morning, Taylor’s parents will drive us a few hours to the starting point, at the Upper Works Trailhead in the Adirondack Mountains. From there we carry our gear in dry bags and our packrafts 2600 feet and 8.7 miles up the trail to Lake Tear of the Clouds, the beginning of the Hudson River and just 1000 feet below the summit of Mount Marcy, the highest point in New York. From there we have under 2.5 days to make it 28 miles downstream, sometimes walking sometimes navigating - depending on the water level - the small stream as it forms a more pronounced river.

On the morning of May 28, we will meet a local guide with a whitewater raft to help us get from the confluence of the Hudson and Indian rivers through the Hudson Gorge and down the class 3 whitewater to where we will meet Taylor’s parents with a canoe. From there we turn in our rafts for the canoe and we continue our journey down the Hudson, paddling during the day and sleeping in tents on the riverbank.

We plan on stopping in the riverside towns every day or two to resupply as we float downstream. Around Albany NY, we will encounter numerous dams and locks which we will have to portage around. At the bottom of the last dam, about 153 miles from NYC, the river turns into a tidal estuary and is heavily influenced by the tides, flowing backwards every 6 hours at 1-2 mph. This will dictate our paddling times too! The river will get wider, deeper, and more developed as we get closer to NYC. Our plan is to end our journey past the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazzano Bridge, which marks the point where the river meets the ocean.

We will then paddle back to a take out point on the western shores of Manhattan and portage through the city to a rental car location. But that is another adventure...

Our ambitious and slightly insane plan on this Hudson River odyssey has us paddling from source to see in just two weeks. The only officially recorded successful attempt is 17 days so if we make it maybe we can claim some sort of world record?!

Let the paddling begin!