New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

The Suncook River draws me near again.

Thursday 06/01/2006

I have been involved with the Suncook River for years. I first began canoeing the Suncook in the early 1970's. I was into white water canoeing for a few years with a neighbor who lived in the same apartment complex as me near the river in Allenstown. Several times we ran the white water stretch from Pittsfield down through Websters Mills in Epsom where some serious class IV rapids are challenging in the spring flood conditions. I also fished the river from shore when I lived in Allenstown and canoed the slow water section I now live along in the late 1970's before buying a house that overlooks the river in 1979. I have fished, tubed, kayaked, rafted all over the river, and even snorkeled the mile between my house and my good friends house over a mile down river a couple times. The last time I had duck itch from head to toe for several days after.

But now I have a whole new river to learn. Literally! And circumstances today had me learning the new stretch and really enjoying others learning too. I was in the office this morning and got an email from HQ that some folks from UNH wanted to know how to get to the new river channel for some water sampling and they really needed someone to show them the access points. So I met two vehicles full of UNH folks at 2:15 on route 4 near the Epsom Traffic Circle where the Suncook River flows under the highway.

The new river it seems. For over thirty years that I have driven over this bridge the Suncook River has flowed slowly and smoothly as far as the eye could see from the bridge. Even at flood stage there was hardly a ripple. Not so now. There are rapids right below the bridge. A whole new view since the dams no longer can hold back the water into a ponding affect. The Suncook River is untamed and wild and fantastic in appearance. Indeed the breach has caused the river to change dramatically even far above the new channel.

To my surprise out of the two vehicles poured seven people. The only one I knew before was Dr. Kim Babbitt a UNH wildlife ecology professor. Dr. Bill Mc Dowell, professor of Water Resources Management soon introduced himself and his assistant Michelle Daley and several graduate students including Anna Bourakovsky, Shelby Flint, Austin Stonebraker and a fourth, whom I only got the first name of, Witney.

They got right to work wading into the river for water samples and stream chemical analysis right below the bridge. We headed down river to the breach and new channel. Right where the river took a sharp bend is where it has cut an entirely new channel. I paced the width of the now high and dry old channel at just about 100 feet wide. A high banking to the south kept the river in check here since the Ice Age. The new channel shoots directly south and is 8 to 10 feet lower than the old channel and is several hundred feet wide. Standing at the apex of the two it is obvious that the river could never flow again in the old channel even with millions of dollars in repairs. Anyone standing there would quirkily come to the same conclusion.

I lead the crew on a full tour along the western banking of the new channel, over to the old dam on the east channel in across the new dry river bed back to our vehicles. Even though I could see new things at every turn of my head my thoughts stayed with me. But the professors and students were giddy with discoveries. Every time I looked at them one professor or the other was bending over looking at something, picking things up and pointing and teaching the students. A riffle at the top of the new channel looked interesting to me but Dr. McDowell spent some time thinking out loud how it had formed, what type of water flows had the few rocks pointed in a certain direction, huge rocks at that.

There is so much to learn about this new river, what will happen to the old channels and what will happen to the river below where so much silt and sand has washed and will continue to do so. The Suncook River is a whole new river and will see changes not taken place since the Great Ice Age. This whole group views this as a once a many-life-times opportunity to discover how a river forms. The Suncook River will take me talong on another adventured I could never have dreamed of. What a ride!