I got NY permissions but not NJ permissions. So, I contacted a reginal ST. By his response, I believe he gave me temp NJ permissions. So, I filled out all the info then clicked 'add reach' or whatever in the left hand corner. It seemed like it went through but when I checked the NJ list, it was not there. But then I noticed I would not even be able to add or deleate info on an existing reach. So, I did the same thing but under NY, where I have permissions. same result. I was able to add or deleate info on an existing river (all thogh I did not) and I was logged in. I didn't try on either occasion to put the Lat & Long or the google, custimize or other. Would this have defeated it? I added reaches before and found the Lat& long thing a pain.
I would try again if someone walked me through. I'm at jaydeeriver@yahoo.com or 347-834-2934. Or, here's the info:
This is definetly a 'wam-bam-thank-you-mam' kind of run and you get a lot of bang for your buck. By name it's the Wanaque River but in reality it's a creek/brook run. early May 09, we ran it at a low level, about 110cfs or 2.70ft. I would say at such a low level it was basically a CL3-3+ run with the drops being CL4. At such low level, a person O.K. on CL3 wanting to do CL4 should be fine since it's not too pushy and making the small micro eddies should not be too much of a problem as well as if one gets caught in a strainer, he or she should be able to get out and help from others a bit easier. At more acceptable levels I would just say CL4. At such levels, catching micro eddies will be real important and nessacesary. There's a fair amount of wood.
We started at the hikers' bridge across the road from the dirt turn-out on East Shore Road. Some of us started just downstream of the bridge (too low to paddle under), and some of us walked a couple of yards to avoid the first drop (see picture). Said drop is scoutable from the road before you unload your boats. The first drop is I guess 5 ft. There's a rooster tail that will A) pin you you'll boof over but I doubt) or C) if you hit, but not dead-on, you'll flip. Let us know what happens to you if you hit, we wanna know without the possible consequences. We ran it just left of the rooster, no problems. After the drop, a small rapid then a short pool. From this pool, if I remember correct, from where I was, creek-left, I only saw one way, through vines and rock bouncing, messy. I think someone else took a clean line on the right that I didn't see being too lazy to ferry over. After a few drops and whitewater you get to a drop worth mentioning, perhaps we'll call it 'kiss rock'. At the days low water level, there is only enough water for one route. All the water goes down this drop, I guess about 5 to 6 ft and slams into a boulder about the size of a half minivan. You WILL hit this rock. My buddy ran it, the rest of us walked it. He angled his kayak pointing about 4-5 O'clock going left to right, hit the rock semi-sideways and got pushed off right of the rock. At higher water I'm quite sure a clean left line will open. As it was, the water formed a 'ramp' half way up the rock and wonder if it can be boofed at higher water. Let us know if you do this.

After some more rapids, I cant remember if there was another drop or two, but you soon come to the 'big-one'. You get on a CL3+ rapid, followed by a slide that I guess is about 10ft long, 6ft down that has a small hole at the end, into a ledge of swirly water with a water seam, then goes over a 10ft(?) waterfall into a big deep pool. The waterfall isnt the hard part, getting to it might prove tricky. As small as the hole is, a buddy told me he got stuck in it for a bit. I was also told that one day someone got flipped in the swirly and ran the fall upsidedown and backwards, but was OK. When I did this drop, I bypassed the edge of the hole but then got pushed toward the wall, a swirly eddie. I managed to eddie out and run the fall sweet but wasn't sure it was gonna workout real good. This is a fun and awsome drop/falls. There's a picture on google earth of the falls taken from downstream. After the big pool I guess you got about a 1/4 mile to the reservoir. It is legal to paddle here and flat water paddlers paddle there.

Put-in and take-out: [maps.google.com] Type in Hewitt, NJ for map of area. For the take out we parked at the historical iron houses, but keep in mind this area is for visitors of the historic house so be curteous, conserve parking space and conduct yourself in a way that reflects well on paddlers. They sometimes have tours here and spaces then are really needed. Please, do not change clothes here and do NOT don't park in the handicap parking. Give visitors to the house the better spots near the entrance. If this lot is full, drive about a 1/4 further down Greenwood Turnpike, there's a dirt lot on the left on Greenwood just where E. Shore road comences toward the put-in. Now head to the put-in, drive up E shore road and look for a turn-out on you left and a hikers bridge over the creek on your right. You can probably start as far up as the road will take you, all the way to Greenwood Lake 0.8 of a mile.
Gauge info: The gauge is Wanaque at awosting; [waterdata.usgs.gov] Minimum is about 110cfs or 2.70 ft. I've been told in the fall, Sept. I think, they release from Greenwood Lake for two weeks, everyday!

forgetit, i figured it out.

James,

After getting us all worked up, you could have at least given a link to show off your workmanship.
[www.americanwhitewater.org]

Google maps links can be a real pain. They are mostly not necessary now with the AW mapping feature. A few things may give you a hard time with the AW mapper. The AW mapper uses degrees.decimal format. If you put in degrees, minutes, seconds format it does not compute. If you don't know what the Lat/Long is for a put in or take out, just put in a number that is somewhere in the vicinity, such as from another nearby river. Then you can click on the Map it button, scroll around, zoom in, and get a precise location. Drop the marker where you want it and the Lat/Long is automatically entered.

Google Earth can display Lat/Long in several formats if you are using that to find locations and distances. Go to the Tools Menu and the bottom item is Options. Click on that and you will see 4 different options for lat/long display as well as myriad other options. Choose the top option, which is Decimal Degrees. Now the Lat/Long displayed a the bottom of the Google Earth page will be in a format that the AW Mapper can understand.

So the mouth of Wanaque at Monksville Reservoir is approximately:
Lat: 41.1436 Long: -74.310

Plug those numbers into the Wanaque take out boxes, then click on Map it. Drag the resulting map around to the best take out and drop the marker exactly where you want it. You can drag it around or just scroll and click on the Drop Marker Here, button. The lat/long is automatically updated.

Plug in the same numbers for the put in and then just scroll to the actual put in.
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On a different note, that reach title is kinda long! How about just, "Hikers Bridge to Monksville Reservoir". If it turns out that the upper section is good also, you can change the name to "Greenwood Lake to Monksville Reservoir".

Great job on this reach so far! Looks sweet!

A few other comments. And, please, do not take offense or infer any harshness or criticism by the number or length of these comments. This is all intended as gentle constructive, instructive, helpful remarks, to assist you in using the system to create a 'fully robust' description of the river/reach that you love and have graciously shared with your fellow boaters.

1) There appears to be a second copy of this reach: #6828 appears to be fairly good, #6829 is a duplicate which is rather screwy, and should be deleted. (All remaining comments refer only to reach #6828 which should be kept.)

2) Please capitalize the river name.

3) As Paul suggested, please shorten the reach title. The title does not need to be quite so specific -- the description and mapping will do that. So, for the title, I think actually "East Shore Road to Monksville reservoir" would be better, since it appears that East Shore Road is much more of a 'main' thoroughfare (therefore acts as a more general 'locator' for the reach. Additionally, it parallels the whole stretch of river, and could allow for various put-in points. Again, the specific location (or locations) recommended for put-in would would be detailed in the description (in the 'Directions' tab)..

4) Once you have entered the lat/lng coordinates (as detailed in Paul's earlier reply), please click the 'pull-down list' next to "Custom Route", and click on "shuttle/custom from putin-lon". This should allow the automatic software feature to create shuttle information (via Google). On very rare instances these directions may end up being screwy, so after you turn this feature on, and after you save your changes (by clicking the "Add/Update" button), make certain to go to the "Directions" tab (when viewing your reach) and verify that the directions which Google has created are (at least something close to) correct. Sometimes the exact location of put-in or take-out may need to be adjusted to make sure they are on the correct side of the river for the mapping to find the correct roads and routing. Sometimes (very rarely) the Google routing cannot be made to work correctly, and will just need to be turned off.

5) The YouTube video you link to looks like this is a great little run! Besides the video, do you have any photos of it? If so, it would really 'dress up' the description on AW if you would upload a couple of photos, and put one of them as the 'featured photo' on the reach, by going into edit and putting the photo-id (from AW, once the photo is uploaded on AW) into the "AW Photo ID" box. Make sure that after you enter the photo ID number, you actually click on the photo which the AW editor pulls up. Failure to click on the little photo means the edit will not be saved!

6) I (and I hope many other users) almost always pull up state river lists on AW "by drainage". This allows rivers to be displayed and grouped somewhat geographically (rather than just alphabetically). This also 'pulls in' rivers in adjacent states which share drainage basins with the state you are looking at (which can be a handy feature). However, for a river to show up in the correct 'drainage', the "HUC" needs to be filled in for the reach. If you have the reach up in "Edit", scroll down near the bottom to where it says "HUC", then click the "explain field" icon/link, then click "Use this link" to get the EPA 'Surf Your Watershed" link. You'll enter the Zipcode for the nearest town and get the EPA HUC for the rivers in the area. It looks like this reach should be part of the 02030103 - Hackensack-Passaic Watershed. (The EPA page also returns 02020007, Rondout Watershed, but that looks like it is further north and west.)

That should do it! Again, what you've got so far is marvelous. We all know the AW edit pages can be a bit trying to work with the first few times. And . . . a lot of the whole thing will be changing shortly, when the "new site" (as is being discussed in a separate thread on this message board) is actually implemented. Many of the basic pieces of the edit/update system will be the same, but some great features will be added and the overall layout will be changing significantly. So, there will be a new 'learning curve' when that happens.

Rob Smage
AW member since 1992, volunteer since 2000, Midwest Regional StreamTeam Editor

The HUC number is also available on the USGS gauge information page. The Wanaque River is stated to be in Hydrologic Unit 02030103.

Reach #6828 is the only one that is visible on the State List. I did see the link to the duplicate reach associated with the gauge. Looks like the duplicate reach has not been published, so is not normally visible to the public.

Just blank out the information on the duplicate reach and make the reach name something like, "This reach page available" so it is obvious that you intend to use it for a new reach. Then, next time you or anybody else wants to create a new reach you can overwrite that one.

JZ, HUC will fill automatically now if you provide lat/lon for the 48 lower continental.

Hmmm, just for the 'lower 48'? Alaska and Hawaii (and Puerto Rico, as a U.S.protectorate, or whatever it's called) won't work the same way? (They all have zip codes, and they all have USGS gauges.)

Anyway . . . aside from that . . . the 'pop-up' info (when one is in 'edit' for a reach) should probably be changed to mention that fact, so people don't waste their time trying to figure out how to find the HUC. For those who DO fill in the HUC, am I right in assuming (or gathering) that the system does not override what they have entered?

Rob Smage
AW member since 1992, volunteer since 2000, Midwest Regional StreamTeam Editor