Urban Creeking!

Newsflash -- the post below caught the attention of a Post-Gazette employee, and it resulted in a feature article in the paper's GETout magazine. Here's a link to that story!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


I'd been eyeing up Nine Mile Run (9MR) for some time. Actually, it had been about three decades.


I grew up just at the top of the hill from 9MR, but we called it Shit Creek because of the inevitable outflow of a combined storm runoff and sewage system. The stream's "source" is an approximately 20-ft diameter pipe behind the old Foodland, and the water that flows out comes from runoff of the roads and residential areas of Pittsburgh's East End municipalities of Wilkinsburg, Edgewood, and Swissvale.

When I first decided to take up whitewater paddling I had no idea of the outer limits of the sport. Creeking, for one, attracted me because of its exploratory and adventurous nature. Essentially, creekers go out after a big rain to find small, tight streams to paddle down. However, we typically do it in the mountains, where the creeks are steep and the water is (mostly) clean. Waterfalls are a plus, as are steep, narrow slots. Some inherent dangers are down trees blocking passage ("strainers"), tight squeezes between rocks through which boats or bodies cannot fit ("sieves"), or sticky hydraulics that tend to recirculate buoyant objects like kayaks ("holes").

After spending a few years building up the skills to confidently seek out and paddle some of the steep creeks in the nearby mountains I was then lucky enough to then spend a few years paddling those creeks.

But, the mountains aren't the only place where creeks run high with rain.

Don't get in the water is pretty much what this sign says

Urban creeking comes with its own set of thrills and hazards, and 9MR is the perfect prototype for urban creeking. The thrills and hazards of the urban creeks are not necessarily the same as they are where the gradient is steep. The holes on urban creeks here are generally not very retentive but we really have to prepare ourselves for things like E.coli and side-stream culverts gushing into pools of swirling water. And you have to watch for blunt objects shooting out of those culverts (like plastic kids' toys, for example). Strainers are possible, and are sometimes created by a discarded shopping cart or 60's vintage Buick. There is a lot of plastic floating about, and a bottle containing a mysterious pale yellow liquid gets me as nervous as a pinning rock. Then, some urban creeks go subterranean. That's especially disconcerting, and when the pipe that the creek disappears into will fit a boat, we tend to get squirrely. On the bright side, at least we don't have to contend with rafts.

Shit Creek gets its name from what the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association describes as "The Problem":

Why urban creeking can be hazardous for your health

"Most of the City of Pittsburgh uses a combined sewer system, meaning that both sewage and stormwater flow through the same pipes. . . This means that each time we have a rain that the pipes cannot contain, sewage spews from these overflow sites directly in Nine Mile Run. . . If you are around one of these sites during a heavy rain, you might see a "fecal fountain", or combined sewer overflow, pouring directly into the stream."

That's sufficiently gross, and so urban creeking isn't advised when the water is too high. Rather, we're looking for that sweet spot where the runoff is as high as possible without mixing with the sewage.

This is extreme kayaking; not for the faint of heart. While it may be class 2 whitewater, the funk factor kicks it up to class 3, maybe even 4.

The view from an eddy formed by a cage full of rocks in Thompson Run.

A year ago, my friend Matte and I ran something called Thompson Run in Penn Hills, PA. The put-in is behind the dumpsters of the Kidz Corner day care, and after passing the Home Depot truck docks and going under at least three roads, the take out is just upstream of an impound lot in Turtle Creek.

Today, 9MR was at that perfect level. I was lucky enough to have some time just as it got there. The two-or-so miles to the Monongahela River in Duck Hollow was surprisingly scenic. How often does one get to paddle under the skeletal girders of old bridges built to carry slag from the steel mills? And to do it at the foot of mountains of the slag is icing on the cake. The paddling was just exciting enough; each of the approximately 12 drops were simple pour-overs or short slides with a rock bounce or two.

When I got to the Mon, I ditched my boat to be retrieved later and jogged home, straight into the shower. The entire excursion took under an hour. Typically, people would be suspicious of a solo descent of a creek not paddled before when there is no photographic evidence or witness account. In this case, I have a feeling the kayaking community will just take my word for it.

Git r dun!

(disclaimer: I don't actually think I'm the first to run 9MR, but I believe I may be the first to admit it!)

Carl W. Schneider -- 1975 - 2010

A guy 6 feet 5 inches tall pulls up on a Vespa scooter wearing rooster pants and the mustache of Salvador Dali. He walks into a school, speaking Italian. Sometime later, the same guy dons a full-face protective helmet, seals himself into dry gear and a plastic kayak, and launches into the most remote and beautiful whitewater he can find. In a snowstorm. Later still, he is found discussing fine wine and gourmet ingredients while serving some of the most sophisticated foodies in Pittsburgh at one of the city’s leading restaurants. If we define age to be the accumulation of experience rather than the number of years since birth, Carl Schneider outlived most of us. 

Talking to many friends about Carl in the past few days, it’s become clear to me that he was as unique a friend to everybody else as he was to me. Who doesn’t want to be part of this guy’s life? Carl was dripping wet with experience, culture, and passion and as his friend I was lucky to be close enough to get splashed from time to time. I think everybody here got splashed a little. Even people who didn’t know Carl got splashed, like the lucky patrons of the quiet neighborhood coffee shop where I used to meet him to catch up every week or so. Carl couldn’t contain his larger than life emotions: sobbing with pride when he described his students’ accomplishments and then bellowing with laughter while telling rafting stories. After some time we had to change our meeting place.

For whitewater boaters, Carl was more than an activity partner just as he was more than a teacher to the kids at St. Bede’s School. Carl did not come first for Carl, a fact I found out countless times during my friendship with him. One particular day on a small, secluded stream called Fike Run, I found myself pinned against a rock in my kayak. Within milliseconds of my desperate situation, Carl had released himself from his boat and dove into the icy water so quickly to help me that his boat and paddle were immediately swept away downstream. Of course it’s no surprise that Carl would help me when I needed him to, but doing so in this situation compromised his own security. Without his boat and paddle, he would have been marooned in the forest, soaking wet, in the middle of winter.  Fortunately we found his gear shortly afterward on the side of the creek.  

A few months ago, Carl and I led a group down a section of whitewater on the Youghiogheny River in Swallow Falls State Park in Maryland. Toward the end of the run, Carl and I decided that we’d continue and paddle the flat, shallow stretch below our intended take out and continue into the next section of whitewater, which was about 5 miles below. For one reason or another, nobody in our group wanted to join us. But, Carl and I were both feeling good and decided to continue anyway, just the two of us. Soon the river flattened and became shallow. We got stuck in places and had to get out of our kayaks and walk in the inches deep river. When we did, we would let the boats float aimlessly around us, stopping each time they’d hit bottom and then freeing themselves after spinning. As we talked our conversation mirrored the action of the boats, circling and swirling between relationships, love, our pasts, and our futures. Of all of the exciting whitewater we paddled that day, the part where there was no thrill at all ended up being the part that we agreed was best. Was it because human interaction, which is stifled by the intensity of roaring whitewater, is a more potent experience than any river can provide? Deep human interaction was something that Carl somehow cultivated with everybody he came across, and that’s obvious by the reaction we’ve seen in the past 5 days.

Before my wife, Molly, and I moved into the house we had recently bought in Carl’s neighborhood, we showed it to him on a summer afternoon. As Carl ducked under the doorframes of our second floor, we heard shouts of “Signore Schneider!” Downstairs we found a crew of children. They were in our living room, too excited at seeing their beloved teacher in the middle of summer to wait for us at the front door. They were our new neighbors, who live on our street, and they had seen him walk in with us. The kids were as excited to be with Carl as I always was on the river. He made his students and colleagues, his friends on the river, and his friends and customers at Legume all part of his family. 

I sat down with a third grader who is a neighbor of mine a few days ago. She has been a student in Carl’s class at St. Bede’s since Kindergarten. She started the conversation by telling me how sad she was and that she knows that she’ll never forget Signore Schneider. She described to me with enthusiasm the finger puppets he created and the stories he read to his class. She told me that Carl’s class was “way much more funner” than any of her other classes. By the end of the conversation I was jealous. I wanted to be in Carl’s Italian class. It made me realize that although Carl didn’t have the opportunity to have any of his own children, he left a school full of them who will never forget him. At the end of our conversation, she revealed to me that she wasn’t ready for Signore Schneider to die because she had a Christmas present for him. But, she said, she knows how much he loves his friends at the restaurant up the street, so she may give the present to them instead.

I’m so proud to have been your friend, Signore Schneider.

Carl, somewhere between the Top Yough take-out and the Upper Yough put-in.

Beach 2010

I'm not a beach guy. In fact, there aren't many things that would drive me to agree to schlepping umpteen hours to a beach for two weeks. The criteria for doing so this year, naturally at the request of my wife, were very convincing. Our newborn, Otis, would be 4 weeks old and probably very fussy (he was). And so, there would be lots of family support in the form of grandmothers and aunts (there was). Additionally, someone brilliantly suggested that my in-laws rent the same house that my family rented for the week following their rental (they did). So, it was a no-brainer. All of our family support would be at the beach anyway, so we might as well go where they could be useful (we did, and they were).

Our extremely long drive to our home for two weeks took a total of 27 hours, door-to-door. Granted, it included a hotel midway, but it also included stop-and-go traffic bad enough to trigger PTSD-esque flashbacks to the seven years I spent stopping and going while living in the DC area. The drive home was strategically much more palatable thanks to some coffee-and-chewing-gum fueled early morning and late night driving.

I'm calling it a success. In fact, I'm adamant about it; it was a huge success. Family dynamics were thick, but so was the menu. I paddled a kayak in the surf more in 14 days than I had in the past 14 months. I was even able to get a few evening surf sessions in big 6 foot waves that, on more than a few occasions, flipped me to end over ejection provoking end. And, collecting a kayak and paddle among big waves with a strong riptide and no flotation spells a struggle. It was exhausting, and incredibly fun.

Despite my initial proclamation (not a beach guy), being at the shore with Indie, Otis, and their cousins brought about wonderful beach memories from my own childhood. Parents smeared on sunscreen and started happy hour early and the kids dug in the sand, played in the surf, and went to bed exhausted. Then, at the end, Molly and I had a romantic sunset stroll on the final evening.

But there was one particular evening that really made it worthwhile.


My father-in-law is a cancer fighter. That is, he's not a survivor as of yet because it has been less than two years since his last chemo treatment. But he's cancer-free with under 6 months to go. In two years I've watched him waste away to less than 130 pounds while spending the majority of some days doubled over in pain. An active man for decades, at his worst he couldn't muster the energy to walk a block. But I have not heard him complain, aside from one day, when he told me, "I'm sick of this old man shit; I want to have some fun."

He paddled his recently purchased sea kayak exactly four times in the week he was at the beach, and all but one of those rides ended in a capsize. Each capsize was followed by me and others swimming out to him to help drag his heavy boat ashore, a seriously difficult task. Yet every time I could see that he was more excited than he'd been before to keep trying.

When he paddled off the beach for his last attempt, we (his spotters) watched anxiously as he did everything right (when a wave is coming at you, lean back and paddle as hard as you can) and finally made it to a point out beyond the crashing waves. He was completely out of our reach, and capsizing at that point would have required long, hard work to retrieve the boat. Both I and his son began swimming out, anticipating the worst. I could hardly see him as I dove under each oncoming wave, but watched as he carefully turned himself around among the deep swells. Then, as if the physics of wave surfing all of a sudden made sense to him, I watched my cancer fighter father-in-law ride a huge swell 50 yards from sea to the beach. All of a sudden, I was swimming back to shore as he zipped past me, just forward of the crashing crest, squealing like a kid on a carousel. I think that we all closed our eyes for a second and tried to let the memory burn into our heads a little.

All choked up, I acknowledged that the wave he rode was the single most positive moment I've witnessed in the 3 years I've known him; even more inspiring than all the clean PET scans.

Git r dun!

Foursome

It's 9 am on the day after our little Otis was born at 1:38 in the afternoon. Soon he'll be 24 hours old, and two days ago was Indie's 17-month birthday. Two cribs, two car seats, and lots of diapers of two different sizes will now occupy our home, cars and life in general.

Otis and Molly are peacefully sleeping right now and I'm sitting quietly tapping on my laptop while listening to Delta Spirit. Family and friends have been coming and going as much as doctors and nurses. It's a beautiful sunny day outside our hospital room window and so, of course, we're all hoping to go home today. They say we probably will, after dinner sometime.

I took this photo of Indie stuffed into my hiking boot when she was less than a week old. The boot maker, Alico, operates out of the Italian Alps and I purchased the pricey clod-hoppers at a serious discount about 7 years ago. I have used them for miles and miles of hiking and backpacking and was wearing them when I met Molly. The characterizations of our family in this photo, and the story behind it, are numerous. Our family is now complete, and we're ready to start getting to it.

Otis came quickly. He was a week early (not very -- Indie was two), but after Molly took a long labor-inducing morning walk yesterday, the time lapsed from the first contraction to delivery was about three hours. Most likely this says nothing about who he will be, but optimistically and perhaps naively I will assume until proven otherwise that Otis will be just as impatient and quick-to-act as his Daddy. These qualities are not necessarily good ones, but at least we'll be at the same pace when packing the car to escape the city.

So, what's going through my head when I think about Molly, me, Indie, and Otis? Canoes packed with lots of camping gear segue into oar-rig rafts and baby backpacks into little hiking boots and hand-widdled hiking sticks. I ponder the geometric arrangement of pak n plays along with the tent and sleeping bags in the back of our Subaru. Then, I think that we may need to get a trailer. Being only 17 months apart, I fantasize about Indie and Otis, ages 5 and 4 respectively, best friends 'splorin the woods together while Molly and I set up camp at some newly-discovered swimmin' hole. I see lots of our friends and family members joining us there, and Indie and Otis trampin' about with their cousins.They come back to camp, like I did with my brothers, sister, and friends, with some slimy bug or neat-looking leaf to show all the grown-ups. I hope that Molly's fear of snakes and my fear of heights are not genetic.

What will I do when Indie and Otis ask about Disneyland, or even Kennywood? This is why we keep Uncle Jeremy around.

Gittin' r dun.

Father's Day 2010

It had been several years since Molly and I had been able to get Jeremy to accompany us on an adventure. The last one, a point-to-point hike along Big Sandy Creek in Preston County, WV, was an overnight and because there is no worn trail along our route, a bushwhack. Things have changed, and there are approximately 1.95 new crew members who will  always be joining us on future adventures.

My first Father's Day, in 2009, had been a great one. I convinced most of my family to join Molly, Indie, and me on a hike along Meadow Run in Ohiopyle, PA to a spot called the Cascades. With the fantastic Cucumber Falls, the Meadow Run Natural Waterslides, and the Youghiogheny River itself all within a few hundred yards of each other in Ohiopyle, the Cascades don't see many visitors. If this 40+ foot cascading waterfall wasn't located so close to other attractions, it would be its own attraction. However, it's in Ohiopyle, and only the beautiful spots that one can easily walk to are visited by the masses. That's what I love about the Cascades.


After some tips from a friend and some Internet sleuthing, I settled on a spot about 1.5 hours from home on some backroads. It was a gamble, but so is any adventure to parts unknown. I vaguely knew the area from a day of paddling a while back, but for the most part we were heading into some PA State Gamelands we'd never been to before. I pieced together rough directions from geo-caching and climbing websites to a swim hole on a creek that not many boaters have on their radar in a forest not many people venture into. Getting there early to beat the sleeping rednecks is my usual policy, and we were on the road by 8:45 am.

We only made three wrong turns, but two of them were off the dirt road and put us at spots where the road terminated right away. It is all part of the process, and in this case the payoff was tremendous. In fact, it's remarkable that the first place where we pulled into the weeds to park was the right spot; a trail led us a couple hundred feet into the woods right to the hole. At first glance, I knew we were looking at a gem.


The walk reminded me of that last adventure with Jeremy, in particular in the crossing of Big Sandy Creek. Moving to rock to rock without going into the freezing water required choreography, and descending the last bit of trail to the swim hole with a very pregnant woman and a cute little redhead was no different. And, it was a team effort once again. I had Indie strapped to my back, so I was occupied in keeping my own stability while Jeremy sherpa'ed Molly down the steep, rocky trail. The extra weight of a pregnant woman isn't really the issue; it's the forward shift from her regular center of mass. Preventing her from falling forward was key, and there's nobody else I'd trust more than Jeremy for that.

The hole was about 40 feet across, but the deep section at the foot of the falls was only about 15 feet across. Still, that was plenty of room to take the plunge. It was an easy scamper to the top of the falls, a precarious stutter to the edge, and a bum ride down the slick slab of rock into a freefall. It took my breath away the first time, but if it hadn't, the cold water would have.

Indie was incredible. I never expected a 17-month-old to require such focus, but I was completely occupied with making sure that she was never on her own accord near the water. As soon as we picked a spot for Molly to hunker down (amazing, isn't she?), Indie was on the trail. She digs dirt, scratches bark, and climbs rock while she squeaks, yakety-yaks, and claps. I find a strange mixture of pride while being unnerved at how her capabilities exceed her judgment. It's a dangerous combination, but with some diligence it fortunately only amounts to minor bumps and scrapes.

Just like Indie, but with a bit more grown-up sensibility, Jeremy and I climbed around on the waterfall and took the slide-plunge a few more times. The sun began to rise to an overhead position, warming us up enough to keep playing. It was a fantastic day in the mountains. I can't wait to go back with our little boy and when Molly can enjoy it, too.

Git r dun!