“Why don’t you go and run the Savage on Sunday?” Molly asked
me a few weeks before a scheduled release on hands-down the greatest whitewater
river within 4 hours of our home.
“How did you know there was a release on the Savage?” I
asked, genuinely wondering.
“Uh, you put it on the calendar,” she responded, raising the
end like a question.
And so I had. The aptly-named Savage River of Western Maryland’s Garrett
County, was described by the late whitewater expert William Nealy as a “rocket
ride.” And it is. And, I absolutely love to paddle it, and paddle it, and
paddle it, over and over and over.
“Uh, okay. Yeah, that might be cool.” I pretended to be mildly interested, hoping
to trap her into persuading me into spending a weekend on the water. Meanwhile,
a smorgasbord of mental river maps, gear inventories, boat choices, and
possible additional adventures filled my head.
She fell for it. I hit the road on a Saturday evening just
after smooching the kids in their beds, a wild scheme of adventure planned for
the next 48 hours.
I had set several goals for my weekend and the first was to
paddle the Savage River at least five times and then as much mileage on the Potomac’s
North Branch as is possible in a day. And to bike the shuttle at the end of it
all. Okay, so maybe that’s three goals, but whatever. I was going B-I-double-G
and brought my fastest boat and packed small meals that I could eat on the fly.
On Sunday morning, the river was turned on at 8:30 am but
I’d been up for over two hours. I had dropped my bike off in the middle of
nowhere in Maryland, at a random access point on the bank of the North Branch.
Judging by the map I was looking at, I just might be able to get to the bike
and then ride it back to my car before dark. Uh, maybe. The way I was figuring,
I had nowhere to be for 48 hours so who cares if I put myself in a pickle in
the middle of nowhere in July. It’s not like I was going to freeze to death.
To wait for the release, I carried my boat upstream on the
Savage as far as I could (much further than a car could go, and more than most others
were willing to walk) just so I could put on first and paddle the ½ mile of
water above the official put-in, before all the other boaters got on. I’d be the
prince of the Savage, riding the blast of water out of the dam just as it began
to fill the riverbed. And I was.
Then I came upon a strainer, and I wasn’t.
That’s what kayakers call dead trees down in a river. This
one stretched all the way across the Savage, right in the middle of a rapid.
It’s easy to see why it would be a hazard, and once I saw it I was out of my boat and on shore lickety-split. Several others caught up to me and we came up
with a plan. Somehow my shift was to be the guy sitting on top of a 20-foot
high boulder (Memorial Rock, if you know the Savage) warning boaters to head to
shore. For an hour. I imagined my bike, 20+ miles downstream, awaiting my
arrival.
|
How crowded the Savage getsfor the July release. |
Eventually the water was shut off, but not before I carried my boat to
the downstream side and high-tailed it to the take out.
Time lost: 1.5 hours.
Goal one was going down in flames.
Back at the put-in area, hundreds of boaters now waited
while a crew worked on the strainer in the de-watered river. After an hour or
so, I was Prince Savage again, skirting the put-in crowds by again walking
upstream.
I paddled the Savage three times, a fantastic failure of a
day (I know 5 can be done; anybody want to try this summer?). On my third run, I began to look forward to the next part of my goal: to paddle
the “bubble” of water released from the dam on the Savage for an unreasonably
long distance as it dissipated into the North Branch of the Potomac River,
bound for Cumberland, MD. I had no idea how far, but would know I was done when
I reached my bike.
I paddled right past the take-out where several dozen
kayakers beemed from their final run of the day. Oh yeah, look at me go! Into
the North Branch I went, feeling proud of myself. I wasn’t exactly going where no man had gone before but for
some reason it felt daring.
Then the water flattened out and I found myself paddling
across a lake.
Now that’s a bummer. I didn’t see or hear about any dam in
my last-minute research. How did I miss a lake on the map? I paddled the
slackwater as it widened, and after a bit I could see a horizon where the water
vanished. I skirted up to the lip of the dam and then turned upstream so I could
look over my shoulder at what was below without slipping over. It must have
looked like suicide to the man on shore watching me, because he about lept out
of his overalls and hardhat trying to flag me down. Peering down a 30 foot high
abrasive rock and concrete spillway, I deduced that it would indeed have been
suicide. I paddled to shore and got yelled at.
The paper mill in Luke, MD uses the North Branch for cooling.
Hence the dam. Skunked again. What a dumbass.
Minutes later I stood on the shoulder of Rt. 135 in Luke,
dripping wet from 8 hours of paddling. I was nowhere near my car, and even
further from my bike. I stunk like the river. My boat
and I had leaves and grass all over from crawling through the weeds along the riverbank.
Things weren’t looking good. I put my thumb up and was picked up by a truck with
kayaks stacked in the back. I got a lift a half mile to the next access point
below the dam.
The North Branch was very nice, and very long. My back began
to ache and my stomach rumbled.
By 6:30 pm I was still paddling, and beginning to worry. I
needed time to bike back to my car, over 25 miles away, and I hadn’t even reached
my bike yet. Or maybe, I worried, I had paddled right past it without noticing.
It takes a serious knucklehead to get lost on a river. There’s only one
direction to go: downstream. But I was tired! Did I miss it? Was I looking in
the wrong direction when I passed it? There I was, thinking I might have to
hitchhike again because I hadn’t been watching the shoreline.
At 7 pm I reached the bike with a sigh of relief, changed
from boat gear to bike gear, and rode back to the car. Retrieving my bike
later, I’d put over 100 miles on my car in order to paddle and bike a bit more
than half that. It felt like a silly accomplishment, but an accomplishment
nonetheless.
That was day one. But, I’m a father of two toddlers and when
I am off on my own in the mountains, I go WHOLE HOG, baby!
I headed north, crossing the sub-contintental divide into
the Yough watershed and set up my tent. I was asleep within minutes.
On Monday morning I hid my boat in the weeds near the Yough,
and headed to the whitewater town of Friendsville, MD. I was about to embark on
my next objective, one that had been brewing for far longer than any from the
previous day: to run the Upper Yough. I mean run it, on foot, in the woods, along the river, ten miles upstream.
And there I went.
There is a path along the river to a former town called
Kendall, which is now a few broken stone foundations way, way back in the
woods. Within the first mile I instinctively hopped over a copperhead, then looked
back to confirm that I’d just hopped over a copperhead. That's when I probably should have thought hard about what I was doing alone, in the middle of nowhere. But, I didn't think about it and as the trail narrowed,
still a rail grade, it was clear that not many people use this trail. After 4 or 5
miles I reached a dead end. And, the topography is sufficiently steep and strewn
with monster boulders that there’s only one place to go.
I needed to cross the river. That is
ridiculous – this is the Upper Yough, not a swimming hole! No man in his right
mind is going to swim across the Upper Yough in running shoes and no life vest.
Ah -- an added bonus to schedule releases is knowing when there is
no water in the river. So I waded right
across the Upper Yough in the boogie water between Triple Drop and
National Falls, like it was no sweat. Really it was no sweat; I was up to my waist, no higher.
With my lower half soaking wet I continued to run upstream,
this time on rougher trails presumably packed down by boaters scouting or chasing boats. The trail was a dashed line of bushwhacking and scouting trails.
Each time I lost the trail, the river was my anchor; head upstream.
Deep in the woods I happened upon an old man named Glen who
was chaperoning his grandson, fishing for trout. We talked for a time about the
mountains, the river, and the way things used to be. It reminded me to buy my
own copy of Youghiogheny: Appalachain
River, by Tim Palmer, so I could read it again. (I did, and did, and so
should you).
When the trail ended for good, I was still about two miles
from the official put-in and my boat. Alternating between walking in shallow
sections of the river and bushwhacking, I trudged on, crossing the river a few times to look for better paths. By the end of it all, I probably
ran about 80% of the Upper Yough. The rest was walking, crawling, bushwhacking, and wading. I reached my boat feeling satisfied. And tired. And hungry. Now I
just had to paddle the ten miles back to Friendsville. But, the water hadn’t
arrived.
With a lot of time on my hands and no place to go, I took one
of the best naps ever in the grass next to my boat.
As the water began to rise, throngs of boaters arrived. I
woke up, ate some more, and joined the first group of kayakers that I was
familiar with. At National Falls, I summoned some of the bravado I had before
becoming a father and boofed the
right side, just for some icing on the cake. I nailed the line and whooped in
the eddy like it was the first time. Morale was high.
After the big rapids calmed into riffles, I
relaxed the outfitting of my kayak, unstrapped my helmet, and laid back on the deck
of the boat. The sun was beating down on me. I looked skyward and reflected on
the past two days, just as a bald eagle swooped overhead. My kids and I like to
go to the family cottage and hike to spot in the woods where we can peer across
French Creek at an enormous bald eagle’s nest. There are often two adult birds
there, and every time we go we hope to see chicks.
I was ready to go home. I declined a beer at the take-out,
strapped my boat to my roof, and hit the road.
Git r Dun.
(Note: I'll get back to my Gringo tale of adventure in Puerto Rico, as well as several others that have been accumulating in my head, very soon. Summer's almost here!)