Chapter 11- The River
Lock 14 (Canajoharie) to Lock 13 (Randall)
Discovery: Echoes of History
December 4, 2001 Cloudy, 50 degrees
Truckers traveling the Thruway blew horns at us.
Red-tailed hawks sitting atop trees screeched at us. Great blue herons
flying just above the water checked us out. Ducks, bobbing in placid bays
jumped from the water. Canada geese grumbled at our presence and then lifted
off the river en mass, chorusing disdain. It's amazing how much attention
you get while canoeing the Mohawk River in December.
When I planned this 8-mile float trip from Lock
14 at Canajoharie to Lock 13 at Randall, I had a problem. I didn't know
how to get to Lock 13. An earlier scouting trip took me to a dead end road
on the wrong side of the Thruway. This time I followed the same sign off
Route 5S, but drove a little further down the dead end road and saw a path
leading down to a pedestrian tunnel under the Thruway.
runs under the Thruway to Lock 13.
Denny Gillen and I walked through
the tunnel and located the spot where we could take out the canoe at the
end of our trip. It was a long walk to the car, so we stopped at the Lock
office and talked to Dave Pavlak and Dennis Moreno. The lock was closed
for the season so they were repairing water lines and upgrading the facility.
Dave told us the only drive into the Lock area was off the westbound lane
of the Thruway.
Denny and Dave were talking deer hunting, so I had
to drag Denny away to get our show on the road. We left his car in the
parking area near the end of the tunnel and drove the Jeep back to Canajoharie.
There was an improvement project in progress at the Village Park at the
mouth of Canajoharie Creek on the eastside of the bridge, so we drove across
the road to a parking area that offered easy access to the river.
I
t
was 11:15 when we launched the canoe. This outing had all the ingredients
for a great discovery trip. Waterfowl was everywhere. The canal dams were
open so the river was free flowing. We had a chance to catch some big fish.
AND, we were going to canoe between the Noses.
After a quick paddle upstream to the bottom of the
Lock 14 dam so I could explore "all the river" we drifted downstream. The
river was unusually low. It's always low in this area when the canal dams
are open, but with so little rain in the past month, there was no ground
water to feed the river. We discovered that even the major tributaries
in this area had only a trickle of water in them. The small tribs were
bone dry.
We launched the canoe in Canajoharie and paddled up to the Lock 14 dam.
This time of year most of the fish in the river move
into the deeper holes where they stay throughout the winter. If you can
locate these "stacked" fish, the action can be exciting. Bass season was
closed but walleye, northern pike and panfish were fair game.
The much-diminished Mohawk provided a unique opportunity
to locate bars, shoals, rock piles and boulders that almost always hold
fish when the canal is full. Some of them were quite unique and totally
invisible most of the year. There were the usual bars and piles of rocks
off stream outlets, but in some areas, for no apparent reason, there were
elongated piles of rocks running parallel to the shoreline well away from
the riverbank. As we paddled along the outside edge of one of these "reefs"
we got a real surprise.
There were plenty of ducks in the river, mostly
small groups of mallards.They paddled along the shoreline or crossed the
river when they saw the canoe, and then jumped off the water when we got
too close for comfort. Canada geese, on the other hand, seem to hang out
in larger numbers, often waiting until we were within 100 yards before
giving up their chosen hunk of river. Then they rose in mass, honking a
chorus of aggravation.
Around noon, we were drifting along one of the aforementioned
reefs when we saw a single goose standing at the lower end. It honked a
couple of times and disappeared. As we moved down this long barrier, we
heard geese honking, but couldn't see them. Then we saw the strangest thing.
At the crest of the rockpile, a line of wingtips appeared and disappeared,
moving upriver. It took a few seconds to realize that a flock of geese
was flying low, up the channel between the rockpile and the shoreline,
eventually emerging and gaining altitude well upstream from the canoe.
A pair of great blue heron followed us down the
river; often perching on logs and in trees until we were almost upon them.
They flew silently just over the water, their great wings pumping.
Red-tailed hawks didn't seem to mind our presence, although they often
screeched overhead or from atop barren trees.
Route 5S, the New York State Thruway, railroad and Route 5 join the
river as it passes between
The Noses. Photo taken three days after we canoed this stretch of
river.
Just east of Canajoharie the Mohawk Valley narrows
appreciably, shrinking to a mere 2,000 feet between The Noses. Route 5
and the railroad run along the north shore of the river, and Route 5S and
the Thruway the south shore, creating one of the most heavily travel corridors
in upstate New York. This is not a quiet stretch of river.
The traffic noise on the thruway was augmented by
the frequent passing of passenger and freight trains. About two miles east
of Canajoharie, the river and the thruway run side by side for a half-mile.
On this stretch of river we were greeted with the blaring horns of truckers
traveling the thruway. We weren't sure if they were congratulating us for
taking advantage of a warm December day or questioning our sanity. In any
case, we waved in reply.
When the river turned away from the thruway and
trees lined the north shore, we saw a great blue heron perched on a log
in a setting that screamed, "take a picture." We were so intent on getting
close to this stately fisher we failed to see another great blue perched
overhead in the branches of a tree. When its great wings filled the lens,
I was too startled to push the camera shutter.
The Noses came into view at 2:20. I had climbed
Little Nose and Big Nose, and driven between them many times,
but the thought of canoeing between them held special meaning. This was
the passage for countless travelers in the valley from time immemorial.
It was here the Iroquois traveled in their dugouts and elm bark canoes
carrying furs for trade. Europeans followed in bateaux carrying furs, wheat,
whiskey and potash. When the old Erie Canal was built, Durham boats
and barges passed here carrying all manner of product and produce . . .
and thousands of settlers traveling west to mid America.
Railroads ran through here on both sides of the
valley in the mid 1800s, the Barge Canal became part of the river passage
in the early 1900s and the Thruway was constructed in the 1950s. Nowhere
in the Mohawk Valley do the sounds of history echo more loudly. 
It was at least another two miles to these ancient
landmarks, so we stopped at the mouth of Flat Creek, on the south side
of the river, to rest and eat lunch. It was easy to see why this was a
major crossing in bygone years. A huge delta of stones and gravel fanned
out into the river. Before the river became part of the seasonally-dredged
Barge Canal, this delta provided a shallow-water crossing. Spraker's Tavern
greeted travelers on the Kings Highway (Route 5) on the north side of the
river, and the village that developed further up Flat Creek was also named
Sprakers.
The stone and gravel deposited by Flat Creek
created an ancient crossing that became known as Sprakers.
There was no water coming out of Flat Creek, but its high-water deposit
of stones filled all but a narrow channel on the north shore of the river.
The canoe zipped through this channel at 1 o'clock.
Our next stop was at the mouth of Knauderack Creek on
the north shore of the river. Just upstream the Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Indian
Community was established in 1993 on the site of an ancient Mohawk village.
There was a mere trickle of water flowing from this tributary.
We passed under Little Nose at 1:30. As we
scanned the cliffs of the southern proboscis, we thought we saw the opening
to the cave that is often mentioned by valley historians.
Ten minutes later we passed under Big Nose. We had
been fishing along the way, Denny casting minnow imitation plugs
and spinners and I bouncing plastic jigs off the bottom. We didn't connect
with a single fish. Our hopes of success took a jump when we approached
the rocky outcrop opposite Big Nose. The water around this huge rock looked
deep, ideal habitat for semi-dormant fish. If the fish were there they
didn't want our offerings.
After we passed The Noses and hadn't caught a single fish, Denny
had had enough. He had grown tired of me saying Lock 13 was just around
the next bend, so I told him to pretend our canoe was filled with furs
and we were heading for Schenectady to trade them for gunpowder, balls
and whiskey. 
At 2 p.m. we passed a large rocky shoal. For future
reference I noted it was between a red & white house high on the south
bank of the river and a green & yellow house on the north shore. Just
downstream we passed the bone-dry mouth of Yatesville Creek on our right
and the tiny settlement of Yosts on our left. From there it was a straight
shot to Lock 13.
We lifted the canoe out of the river at 2:20, walked
through the tunnel and headed back to Canajoharie to get the Jeep. When
we got to the launch site one of the construction workers said, "I was
worried about you guys. Saw you launch hours ago and haven't seen you all
day. Thought you might have fallen in."
Today the Mohawk runs placid between The Noses.
Before we drove back to get the canoe we stopped in the village for soup and sandwich. It took awhile to find a place to eat. The Village Restaurant had closed at 2 p.m. and the pizza place didn't have soup. Fortunately, we discovered Peruzzi's Meat Market & Deli. John and Sherine Peruzzi dished up some of the best soup, sandwich and coffee we've had in a long time.
Follow the path of this discovery trip by clicking on Mohawk Valley Maps: by Maptech.
Type Canajoharie select New York, press GO! Click on margin arrows to follow our progress down the Mohawk Valley.
