Kindly Old Dr. K’s Hydrosphere

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

 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

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

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.

If you paddle the Potomac you should read this article about the astonishing natural resources on our home river.

http://www.nps.gov/cue/projects/pogo/04_January_Bioscience_Cohn_.pdf

Potomac Festival’s coming.  Check out the venues on this video at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1jgRuUnO-Q

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