Exploring the Oswego River

By Ken Relentless

The Oswego River, like the Wading River, is well known and serviced by the canoe and kayak liveries. A typical trip starts at the boat launch just off Oswego Road, crosses the lake and then portages the road on the other side at the dam. The journey continues downstream for several hours to end at the beach at Harrisville Lake. Typical. But that is not what a trip looks like for the Relentless Explorers. A trip for us crosses the lake and locates the upstream part of the river, located by an old duck blind at the far end. The Oswego River follows the edge of Penn State Forest and then turns away upon reaching the Papoose Branch. Not a lot to see there. The OSwego continues on toward the the cranberry bogs at Sims Place. The green dot is approximately where we reached on this trip. We had already cut through a 14 inch fallen pine tree and then where further blocked by multiple fallen tress a bit further up.

I did two different shoots this time. I used my Samsung Galaxy S5 cell phone to take two videos at a fallen tree and the Vivitar DVR to shoot video on the return trip. That camera was mounted on the kayak. As I find time to edit videos, I wil post them to this site.

Exploring the Oswego River with Kevin He-Man

By Ken Relentless

This Oswego trip, our second of the 2017 season, saw a friend of Don Relentless come along. Additional manpower was surely needed on our most of our previous upstream trips, but this time it actually happened. I dubbed him Kevin He-Man after he displayed He-Man like abilities in rapidly sawing through branches and heaving heavy logs skyward. I promised he would take the name Kevin Relentless after at least one more trip. And we did need a third person because there was much more deadfall to deal with beyond the furthest point of our previous trip.

Our kayaks at the Oswego Lake boat launch.	Ken Relentless with camera bag and cell phone.	The Vivitar DVR is mounted and ready for recording. Need to get that beard under control...	Ken Relentless and Kevin He-Man.	Kevin He-Man at Micks after the run. Try not to notice his ripped pants and dirty shirt.
This fallen cedar tree is one of the reasons why so many Pine Barrens streams become impassable. Without saws to cut through, you would have to ford over this huge log. It took close to 35 minutes to make both of these cuts through about 16 inches of wood.

Our Goals

By Don Relentless

Our ultimate goal is to reach the big pond at Sims Place near Warren Grove. We still have a long way to go.

Water levels: The gauging station for the Oswego is below Harrisville Lake. The water level should be above 2.85 feet or it will be very difficult getting through the patches of wild rice and the river gets shallow near Sims Place cranberry bogs.