Kindly Old Dr. K’s Hydrosphere

The Attainment Race will be something different this year, if water levels cooperate.  If the gage stays around its current level we will race from Carderock Picnic Area to Anglers Inn.  This is two miles of intricate, knuckle-bustin’, route-finding hell.  All flatwater you say?  Try it going upstream and I think your perception will change.  See the map below.

If the water level drops too low we will probably head upstream and race from Sandy Landing (the road access on the VA side below Wet Bottom) to S-turn. 

Go to http://www.potomacfest.com/ for the latest information, to register and to volunteer.  If you’re a Potomac Paddler, the Attainment Race is your heritage.  This is the Potomac.  On the Potomac we attain.  ‘Nuff said.

On July 11-13, 2008, the Mighty Po will come alive with fun and competition.  Freestyle, attainment, boater-cross, the Great Falls Race, and a big party on Saturday at Anglers Inn restaurant are all included.  For more info go to http://www.potomacfest.com/

 Here’s a glimpse of the venue.

It was 50 degrees today, with 4.75 ft on the Little Falls gauge, about 20,000 cfs.  There are some good spots on the river for the right boat at this level.  For playboaters one of the good ones is Offutt Island Channel, a small channel on the Maryland side of the river with a nice little breaking wave to play around on.  It's not anything radical, but it's friendly and safe, adventure enough when the water still has ice in it.  Some local yokels and some folks from Team River Runner were out this afternoon.  For 24/7/365 boating you can’t beat the Mighty Po. 

I recently had the opportunity to attend a great conference on stream restoration and ecology the Mid-Atlantic Stream Restoration Conference at Rocky Gap State Park in western Maryland.  The conference featured some of the real rock stars of the river science world, including Dave Rosgen and M. Gordon “Reds” Wolman.  Being at a conference with these guys is the scientific equivalent of being at a paddling event with, say, EJ and Bill Endicott.

Although this isn’t directly paddling related, the work being done by these folks should be of great interest to boaters.  It’s unlikely that your favorite stream has gone untouched by the  principles and techniques we were at this conference to discuss.

For more information on this topic just google “stream restoration” and  you’ll be inundated with information.

Rocky Gap State Park, a beautiful venue

Vendors exhibits included some cool schwag, like a writing pen made entirely of corn!.

A couple hundred scientists and engineers chowing down.

One of several dozen technical presentations.

The man himself, Professor Wolman, one of the fathers of river research.

Backlund paddles have acquired an almost mythical status among paddlers world-wide.  Here are a few pix of the bent-shaft beaut I’ve been using about a year and a half. 

If you haven’t used a fine wood paddle, you owe it to yourself.  A Backlund or a Jimistyk is as different from a production paddle as Laphroaig is from bar scotch.  Every paddler who knows they’re in it for the long haul should have one. 

 Contact Keith at backlundpaddles@juno.com or Jimi at mrmodes@jimisnyder.com

Here is some footie from the Freestyle Nationals at ASCI last weekend.  It’s only roughly edited, no music track other than the event PA system, but it will give you a taste for what it was like.   This is far from comprehensive, but I tried to get at least a little bit of everyone. 

Picasa Web Video

This is the first time I’ve seen a top level freestyle comp, and it was loads of fun.  It inspired me to go up to Horseshoe on the Potomac the next day and throw down some.   

Results are in the last part of the video, and are available from ASCI. 

 Not long ago I got a CD that contains several decades of the Cruiser, the newsletter of the Canoe Cruisers Association in DC.  In perusing the old issues I came across this item, which I had forgotten about.   This is from August 1974.

What Jim didn’t say in the article was that we owed the new move to a boat innovation.  The boats we used were an early batch of Hollowform River Chasers, taken from stock at Appalachian Outfitters, where Jim was store manager and I was a clerk.  This batch had been disastrously under-cooked and were as flexible as saran wrap.  They were un-sellable death traps for river running but we decided to take a couple out to see if we could get some fun out of them.

What we discovered was that if you plugged hard into a wave or hole the entire bow would collapse down onto your legs like a pair of too-tight pants, the air blowing out the top of your skirt explosively.  The skirt would then re-seal around the waist making the flat bow semi-permanent.  With no volume in front and loads of it in the stern the boat was stable in a vertical position.  We found we could spin down the eddy line for long distances, standing on the foot braces and pulling cross-bow after cross-bow. 

Thirty-one years later I applied this experience when I started learning to playboat.  There are a lot of similarities in handling characteristics between our old flexy River Chasers and my modern playboat.  The world does seem to move cyclically.

Internet disclaimer.  Since there’s no such thing as putting too fine a point on anything on the net, let me say it plainly: I don’t really think we invented playboating that day. 

Here are a few pics from the last month or so. 

Starting line of the Potomac Festival Attainment Race.

Me at the Maryland Chute-Out (Photo courtesy of Monique Hubshman and Potomac Paddlers)

 Team Jackson at the Maryland Chute

My wife and son on the local reservoir

My daughter on the reservoir

Sandy and Charlie Walbridge on the Yough

Horseshoe, the venue for the freestyle and wave surfing events.  Bloody Good is downstream of the triangular dark rock and Horseshoe Wave is downstream of Bloody Good, near the paddlers.

Dane and EJ line up for the Wave Surfing event.  Team Jackson swept this event with EJ, Dane, and Jay Kincaid finishing 1-2-3 in the men’s division.

In the Freestyle finals, Jay Kincaid drops into Bloody Good, one of the Potomac’s most unfriendly play spots.

 At low water, the Attainment Race was a rock scramble for short boats.  Hand-crawling backwards up the ledges was one of the better methods tried by the contestants.

Contestants warm up for the Wave Surfing event at Horseshoe Wave.

On Horseshoe Wave.

Horseshoe at Great Falls on the Potomac.  After work park-n-huck