"It's a really nasty hole. You DONT want to hit that wrong. If you get stuck in that hole I can't go in for you. We'll just have to wait until it spits you out." These words were spoken by Brooks, an expert kayaker and regular Great Falls waterfall runner who's house I arrive at the evening before our river run. I went there to speak with him, and the rest of the group (Jeremy, Alex, and Kathleen) to discuss what we're likely to encounter and develop a game plan. As the most inexperienced of the group, I need the information, and understanding it is very important. Following directions and being in the right place means we all have fun. We're discussing a rapid aptly named 'shoulder snapper'. It's the first rapid we'll encounter. No time to even warm up, and no easy way around it.
Kayaking for me is terrifying. Most Potomac River paddling is 'playboating'. This mostly involves purposely thrusting myself backwards into a churning, recirculating wave, knowing that if I'm lucky and don't immediately get spit out of it, i'll get 15 or so seconds of an endorphin rush. I'll be hurtling along a rushing surge of whitewater before ultimately getting flipped upside down, bouncing along waves head underwater, hoping not to be headbanging rocks. I'll begin setting up my 'battle roll', which will likely be futile, leaving me desperately hoping another kayaker has noticed my situation and paddles over to rescue me. A 'rescue' is when the 'rescuer' slams his bow into the side of my boat so that I can grab onto it and pull myself right side up. I'll try to hold my breath until the last possible millisecond waiting for that rescue. And then i'll hold it a little longer. When I hold my breath close to the limit, I find I have this little 'reserve' few more seconds. Don't misunderstand. I don't 'really' feel like I'm in any danger. Think of it like being waterboarded. You're not 'really' being drowned. The worst case scenario is that I 'swim'. Swimming is an embarrassing debacle. It involves pulling the 'skirt' that seals you into the boat, flooding it with water, and swimming out of it. In any kind of swift current, it always involves other people having to tow the rescuee to land, while somebody else goes after the boat and the paddle. In very swift water, you can travel a half mile downriver before everything and everybody is accounted for.
The beginner kayaking experience actually has some parallels to ultra endurance mountain biking. Only hours after completing a 10 hour race that involved cramping, puking, and bucketloads of cursing, I begin anticipating the next year's race. Kayaking has massive ups and downs. When kayaking, the massive adrenaline rush coupled with the challenge presented by 'surfing' the big waves all but erase the wildly demoralizing aspects of it.
After a combined 3 mile paddle and hike on the C&O Canal and towpath, we arrive just above our put-in spot at a place called 'sandy beach'. The dreaded 'shoulder snapper' is visible and we begin to discuss how we'll tackle this beast.
"This looks like no problem. Far left or far right look good," I say.
Jeremy answers, "Dude, you're way high up and that is far away. Trust me everything looks a lot smaller from up here."
"You can't see what's behind the far left, but trust me that it's too narrow and you don't want to be there. If you look carefully to the right, you'll see a tree there."
There's no choice but to cut through the middle of two beastly looking pourovers. A pourover is a rock that the water 'pours over'. A high levels, these become fast surfable waves. But if the rock is close enough to the surface, the water pours over and around it and straight down the backside, like a waterfall. The water cuts straight down with such force that it creates a recirculating 'hydraulic' or 'hole'. If you get stuck in that recirculating hole, ideally you stay upright in your boat and battle the opposing current and paddle hard to get above the billowing pillow of whitewater forming beyond it. Or, just sit there upside down and hope the thing spits you out. Realistically, a natural hydraulic like this 'will' spit you out. We discuss that we'll get into the 'chute' between the two pourovers and keep the boat angled left, so when we can paddle like hell to get behind the hole just shy of hitting the rock jutting out at the other end of the chute.
Sandy beach is a popular spot to put in for a 'gorge' run. Mather gorge is a beautiful rock canyon carved by the Potomac. The popular Billy Goat Trail parallels it 100 or so feet up. The sandy beach putin is typically a 'pool' of standing water. You paddle to the right, where you slide down some rocks and enter the main flow at a rapid called s-turn. However, today the sandy beach put-in is a rapidly flowing river of water flowing to the right, carving a new channel through and area that every day but today is a dry rock bed. Straight ahead is swirling rapid-filled channel, called 'center channel' which also previously never existed.
We begin by angling our boats to the right 'upriver' and ferrying through rough current to the eddy at the other side so that we can check out the remnants of 'Daves Wave' which is another rapid that only forms at levels even higher than this. For me this is already very tricky. In order to reach the eddy that allows you to paddle upstream, you have to ferry far enough across the river to a spot where you begin feeling the 'suck' into the center channel. If you push too hard or are too weakened to attain upriver, you can succumb to the center channel current, fall backwards down a ledge, and into a portion of the river that I haven't researched or discussed. I was able to handle this first task successfully. Dave's Wave was a small wave in a wide fast-moving torrent of water. We practiced some eddy turns into the fast current here as a warmup. I also purposely flipped myself over in this current with Eric nearby to give a practice battle roll. I really needed the confidence boost of having a successful roll here, but was really afraid because there was not much room between this rapid and 'shoulder snapper'. The worst thing that could happen here is I run the shoulder snapper pourover upside down. I missed my first roll attempt, popping halfway up, getting a quick breath, and then flopping back over. Eric quickly reached around my boat and flipped me back up, as there was not enough time to mess around with more than one attempt and separate the group. Bummer that I missed it, but it did feel good good to go through the motions once.
We follow each other one behind the other and each break the eddy line in the pre-discussed location just before shoulder-snapper. This is a calm spot behind a rock wall that protects us from the moving water where we can discuss the order of operations. We point out again at surface level how we're going to tackle this. From this vantage point, it's difficult to tell how wide the hole is, or whether the rock that we want to avoid is just a small rock protruding above the water, or the tip of a much wider rock, leaving us less time and room to avoid it. The plan is to do this as a 'lemming line', one after the other, so we are close enough together that to make any rescues easier and to allow Jeremy and Eric to 'coach' us if needed. Jeremy goes first, then Alex, me, Kathleen, and trailed by Eric. I approach the chute gingerly and calmly. "Angle left! More Angle!", yells Eric from behind. I correct my angle but hit the chute a little too far to the right. "Paddle left! Hard!", yells Brooks. Lucky for me, his nearly 20 years of experience paddling this river gives him a clear memory of things that I cannot yet see. If I paddle lightly, I should avoid the rock. However, I listen and I paddle hard to travel river left. This was very good advice, because what looked like the small rock was actually just the tip of another large pourover that was totally invisible to me until I saw it as I narrowly cleared the left of it. As the rapids ahead were manageable, I turned my boat backwards to take in the sight of the rapid from behind, to get a glimpse of the invisible side. The pourovers were 4 foot drops, that from this side were pure rock formations with water spitting over the sides. As I righted my boat to face forward, a side current hit me and rapidly flipped me over. This time I got my roll.
The rest of the river was more along the lines of what I expected. Fast current and waves, but no rocks or careful maneuvers to worry about. These are forgiving places to flip over, as rescues are much easier for experienced boaters, and fast current, waves, and boils test rolling ability unlike what can be practiced in a pool. For most of the trip down the gorge we floated together and let the current take us. The cliff walls wizz by us at astonishing speed for the roughly 10 minute float down 2.5 miles of river.
Our final stop is a popular and much anticipated playspot called 'Center Chute'. As expected, it was crowded, with about 15 paddlers lining up in the eddy along the rocks for a chance to dart out into the current and back into a large frothing whitewater pillow behind a fast-moving 'green water'. 'green' is what they call the fast moving clear water that makes up the downward portion of a pourover or wave before it turns into whitewater. For this playspot, you angle your boat upriver and slightly left as you paddle hard across the eddy line into the fast current. If you have a good boat angle and hard ferry stroke, you can keep your nose angled upwards and ferry out enough into the current, then gently let up so that the boat falls back down the green of the wave and partway into the frothy whitewater. A good surfer can spend minutes here. When you surf a good wave, your senses are knocked completely out of whack as you are standing completely still, yet experience the sensational thrill of surging forward at super speed as the water rages under you and beyond. There is a skill to staying in the wave. Leaning properly, proper paddle placement, etc. However, for me, it's a feeling of pure adrenaline static. I cannot think lucidly and am in a complete state of ecstacy for a few short seconds as i'm stopped in my tracks and take this wild ride. In only a few short moments the rapid flips me over. Upside down I can feel that I am churning upside down in the fluff. I mentally begin to setup my roll, but before I can try, by chance the churning water catches the upper lip of my upside-down boat and flips me back up. If I was in the right frame of mind, I may have been able to continue the surf, which would have appeared to be a phenomenal acrobatic maneuver. however, i let the wave spit me back out, where I exit via the eddy and get back on the line for another shot.
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