Kindly Old Dr. K’s Hydrosphere

We just got a record snowfall in the Mid-Atlantic and the area is still digging out.  I took a chance that the river might be accessible despite lots of roads still unplowed, and it paid off.  The parking lot was a bit of a challenge but it was good to go.  I was alone until I was almost ready to drive away after paddling when another group of desperate boaters. showed up.

Here are a few pics of the Potomac surrounded by two feet of snow.

The lower parking lot at Anglers Inn

The C&O Canal towpath was snow-covered but usable, thanks to the xc skiers.

The obligatory self-portrait, to prove I was there.

Cupids Bower, just above Anglers

Maryland Chute in the snow

Another party heads for the put-in

The last couple years I’ve been learning how to playboat and how to handle modern short boats in general.  It’s been a tremendous learning experience and loads of fun.  For all the advances in modern boats, though, there’s one thing they just don’t have, and can’t have, based on simple physics: SPEED.  A fast boat means a long boat, and a long plastic boat means a heavy boat, which defeats the whole purpose of having a long boat in the first place. Fast, light boats are simply not available in the marketplace except for highly specialized craft like squirt boats or slalom boats.  Great at what they do, but they come with heavy trade-offs in terms of comfort, safety, and cost.

When I started paddling in the early 70s almost everyone built their own boats for the simple reason that good whitewater boats were unavailable any other way.  The few commercially made boats were so inferior that they couldn’t be expected to last more than a few river trips without major repairs.  The modern paddler who wants a high performance river boat is presented, ironically, with the identical dilemma, i.e. the boat he or she wants isn’t made or sold anywhere.

Luckily, the old boat-building culture hasn’t disappeared completely.  Stashed in workshops and under decks across the country are untold numbers of boat molds awaiting the attention of the discriminating paddler.  My favorite long boat of all time was the Prijon Olympia 400, aka Augsburg, designed by Toni Prijon for the 1972 Olympics in Germany.  This boat is a contemporary of the Hahn C-1 that is still popular with C boaters in some areas of the country.  I’ve always felt the handling characteristics and aesthetics of the Prijon were superb and I still have the old one I built ca. 1973, although UV degradation has made it unpaddleable.

I casually inquired around the DC area for quite a while before I discovered that Carter Hearn (father of paddling legends David and Cathy Hearn) still had an original Augsburg mold.  This mold was made by Ted Waddell, one of the best local custom builders throughout the 70s.  Carter agreed to let me use the mold.  Carter’s son Davey and his wife Jennifer operate Sweet Composites, a complete source for all boat-building materials and equipment.  After quite a bit of dithering, I finally committed to the project, bought the materials and picked up the mold from Carter.  So, for the first time in at least 20 years I’m building a boat.  Here’s how it starts.

Carter helped me load the 80+ lb mold onto my car.

It may have been decades since this mold was opened.  It was amazingly clean and ready to go.  Ted Waddell built outstanding molds and boats.

This is the deck portion of the mold.  A little cleaning with water, get the cobwebs off and it’s about ready to go.  Note that the cockpit hole has been covered up; this indicates this mold was intended for vacuum bagging.  I’m sticking to old fashioned hand layup for this project, keeping it simple after a long layoff from the trade.

Here the mold halves are hanging in the shop, the hull below to be worked on first, the deck hanging above out of the way.  They will take some more cleaning, waxing, and covering with mold release before we’re ready to start laying glass.

More to come as the project develops.

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. 

We got a bubble of water on the Potomac last weekend and it changes the whole character of the river.  You never paddle the same river twice.  Here’s a little video comparing the flows over just two days.  Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Fellow Traveler Update 12/28/07 – She’s still there two weeks later, despite higher water.

For the last month or so, this heron has maintained a constant vigil over the small fish in the Maryland Chute on the Potomac. I’ve paddled through the chutes a dozen times recently, from 8:00AM to dark, and she is always in the same spot. She’s having great success, as I’ve seen her snarf up quite a few small fish, and she doesn’t mind if you play in the hole just a few feet away. She doesn’t like it if you eddy out on river left near her, though. What a joy to see our fellow travelers on the planet enjoying their day on the river.

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. 

This is Colin Kemp, World Kayak guru, formerly of Washington, DC, currently of Reno, NV, on Observation Deck Rapids near DC.  The guy with the tripod is Roy Sewall, a pro photographer who asked us to “pose” for photos for his photo art book about the Potomac.  This was fall of 06, I believe.  I’m not sure if the other photographers were working with him or tourists.  I just like the way this photo turned out. 

 One of the cool things about O-Deck is that it’s right below Great Falls.  Colin is looking upstream at an 80-foot high cascade right in front of him.  Intimidating and very impressive.

The white stuff on the rocks is a type of diatom that turns white when it dries out during certain seasons.  When it’s wet it’s green/brown and slick as ice.

I blitzed up to the ASCI whitewater course today, and had fun.  I got in some playing, got stuffed briefly under a raft, got spun silly in the surging whirlpools.  The main thing I went for was to try out the portage escalator, which wasn’t operating the last time I was there (also ‘cuz I ended up with a free season pass, but that’s another story.)  The conveyor was the kind of thing we used to fantasize about in the old days when we dreamed of whitewater becoming as big as skiing, but I never expected to really see one.  It’s bizarrely cool.

  As a bonus I ran into an old compadre whom I hadn’t seen in probably 20 years, Steve Draper.  Drapes is one of our finest slalom racers, coaches, and race organizers.  It’s always a great pleasure to see the old gang still representin’. 

 Drapes and I at ASCI

Going up the ramp

Queueing for the ramp

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

James Sneeringer explains all about the Maryland Chute-out in this video on YouTube.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

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.

Couple of  pix from the Savage last weekend.  The pentagonal catechism of Mid-atlantic paddling is the Yough, Cheat, New, Gauley and Savage.  The Savage has been hard to catch for almost 20 years, so it’s nice to have it back.

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