Merrimack River and Stony Brook Kayak Trip - North Chelmsford / Tyngsboro

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This past Saturday I met up with a group of kayakers from the Merrimack River Watershed Council for a nice quiet paddle on the Merrimack River.  The MRWC offers free weekly trips along the Merrimack watershed for paddlers of all abilities.  You can find a link to their upcoming trips here.

I met up with our trip leader for the day (Bill) and about a half dozen other paddlers at Southwell Field in North Chelmsford.  The put in allows power boats to launch but it wasn't too busy on Saturday morning.  Probably because there is another power boat launch across the river in Lowell.  The parking lot at Southwell Field is shared with some ball fields so parking  was a bit tight as there were quite a few games going on.  Nobody in our group seemed to have a problem finding a spot though.

Put in at Southwell Field

After some brief introductions and an overview of our trip we headed upstream toward Tyngsboro.  The river is pretty wide and deep in this section of the Merrimack so the current isn't really noticeable.  There are a few houses along the banks but nothing overly exciting to look at.  There was a bit more power boat traffic tn that part of the river but it was a good opportunity for me to experience some waves. Luckily they didn't pose much of an issue.

Heading upstream

Our trip took us to the northernmost point of Tyng Island (home of the Vesper Country Club).   From here we turned back downstream on the inside of the island.  The section of the river on the inside of the island is much more narrow and has a more intimate feel to it.  The wildlife in this section seemed to increase as well as we saw a couple Green Heron.  We continued downstream into the open section of the river and were surprised that this portion of the trip had only taken us an hour.  Along our trip back downstream we came upon the Chelmsford Police Boat who were looking for some jet skiers that were apparently tearing up and down the river.  We took our time paddling back to the put-in for a quick lunch before the second leg of our trip.

Back downstream inside Tyng Island

The second leg of our trip took us just a bit downstream to the mouth of Stony Brook.   I couldn't find a lot of information on the web related to Stony Brook but from what I can tell its source is Forge Pond in Westford, MA.  At the mouth of Stony Brook there is a cool little rail bridge that a couple guys were fishing from as we passed under.  At this time of the year the brook is pretty shallow so we couldn't head too far upstream but the section we explored was by far the most interesting part of the trip.  The section winds through a series of tunnels and archways beneath some old mill buildings.  Our trip leader suggested bringing headlamps but my lamp proved to be too weak to see anything in the last tunnel section.  I borrowed another headlamp from a fellow kayaker and found this last tunnel to lead to nowhere (well, a brick wall). It was actually pretty creepy traveling down this tunnel.  The tunnel itself was only a couple hundred feet long but it was so dark that you couldn't see more than a couple feet in front of you.  As I was paddling through the tunnel I could hear the voices of my fellow kayakers who were waiting at the tunnel entrance echoing as if they were right next to me.  There was also some water dripping on me as I paddled through the tunnel which brought the creep factor up a notch.    The tunnel ended with an old rusted pole, a wall and unfortunately a bit of trash piled up at the end of the tunnel.   As I tried to turn around and head out I learned that the tunnel was less than 10 feet wide, so I would not be turning around in my 11 foot kayak.  I had to paddle backwards in the dark using the walls of the tunnel to guide me back out.

Mouth of Stony Brook

Mortarless Archway

Tunnel under a mill

Creepy Tunnel to nowhere

The brook got more shallow upstream so was about as far as we could go so we headed back to the put in to finish a nice little trip.  Total distance of this trip was just under 5 miles and it took us about 3 hours including a stop for lunch.