[Journal entry for October 29, 2011; Upper Delaware River] Lee Reiser, Harris, Ted, Ron and I paddle a 22 mile stretch of the Upper Delaware River, from Lackawaxen, PA to Sparrow Bush NY. We leave Lee’s car at the Sparrow Bush launch, and then drive the boats up-river to the launch at Lackawaxen, PA, by the Roebling Bridge and the Zane Grey museum. The day is grey, dry when we put in, but with snow predicted for later in the day. I am using Hraun, my plastic sea kayak. Lee, Ron and Ted have plastic kayaks, too, but Harris has a whitewater canoe. We are all wearing foul weather gear, me my dry suit, neoprene gloves and hat. Harris and I are in our boats and ready to go, first. We paddle a bit up the Lackawaxen River, whose confluence with the Delaware is adjacent to the launch. We spot a bald eagle flying above the river. We then all set off. Lee uses his thermometer to determine the water temperature is 50F and the air temperature is in the high thirties. As we have been expecting, wet snow begins to fall about an hour into the paddle. It falls quite heavily, sometimes reflected in the smooth water so some of it appears to be rising, not falling. The Delaware is running fairly high. The rapids are fairly lively, but as I’ve done them many times before, they are not so fear-inspiring as I once found them. Shahola rapids is said to be the biggest. I have no trouble with it. I accidentally shoot over one of the big ledges of Stairway Rapids (as does Harris), one that I had intended to avoid, but did not see it in time. It was level with the river and almost invisible on the upstream side, but the water level dropped several feet beyond it, with lots of churning foam, too. Fortunately, I flew across without incident. We saw several more bald eagles, all adults with white heads and tails, during the course of the day, and some ducks and Canada geese, too. We stopped at the delta of Twin Lakes Creek for lunch. This can be a very pleasant area on a warm sunny day. Today, which the snow, I found it chilly and dismal. But we chowed down quite a bit of food, which we needed to fuel our continued paddling. The river, on the other hand, was quite pretty in the snow. The snow coated many of the bushes along the banks and gave the fall foliage a pastel appearance. We reached Elephant Feet rocks, across from the Sparrow Bush launch at about 3PM, about four and a half hours after we launched from Lackawaxen. My one hundred thirteenth day of kayaking this year. After retrieving the cars from Lachawaxen, we had dinner at Arlene & Tom's Restaurant in Port Jervis NY.