Growing Pains

Carl Schneider, Mark Hanna, and Don Smith.

These names were in the past 6 months added to an unfortunate list that includes John Nickolas, Scott Hasson, Whitney Shields, Jeff Mayfield, Tim Gavin, and perhaps many others. It's our own regional list, and each mountainous region undoubtedly has its own list to which names are added at varying frequencies. However, to add three names to our local list of Highly Skilled Whitewater Kayakers Who Drowned on a River They Knew Well in such a short amount of time will cause those of us who run the same rivers they paddled regularly to have a deep and reflective look at our priorities.

I have written quite a lot lately about how I now feel while paddling and how my paddling has changed since Carl's demise on Tucker County, WV's Blackwater River (the same river as Tim Gavin, but at a different rapid). Many of our friends have responded similarly and have seen little water time. Since then Don Smith drowned on a solo run of the Blackwater's North Fork, a stretch of whitewater one ridge away that perhaps nobody knew better. When each accident happens, an obsession takes over and I read everything written -- fact or opinion -- about the event. It's my attempt to control the uncontrollable and I'm not the only one. Regional online forums were abuzz for days about Don's accident, just as they had been after Carl and Mark died 9 days apart last October (Mark drowned on the Gauley River, a few hours south).

I think that Don's situation feels the ugliest, though. He was a really freaking good boater and he paddled the North Fork all the freaking time. It's been suggested that Don had more runs on the North Fork than anybody else, anywhere. He was the guy who notified the boating community about shifts in rocks, about down trees blocking passage, about the water level, and about shuttle road conditions. He posted information about his backyard run only a few days before it claimed his life, saying on the online forum BoaterTalk that the "north-fork went to highest level in last 4-5 years today and its likely that there may be some changes, so be heads up on your next run. a number of other northern wv streams also went extremely high and there's likely to be rocks in different places and new wood." He signed the post simply, "d."

I heard more than one boater exclaim, "If I ever decide to run the North Fork, I'd have Don Smith lead me down." Apparently this was the position Tim Gavin held when he drowned on the Upper Blackwater in March,1998, and the gravity of it all feels awful. Others have been affected and wrote about it.

Allow me to amplify this. That Tim Gavin -- who by 1998 knew the Upper Blackwater better than anyone, and who had even designated the slot in which he was to drown "Matter of Time" -- and Don Smith, who virtually lived at the North Fork put-in and who was acutely aware of the new wood danger this week . . . that these two men constituted the first two fatalities on their respective home rivers speaks very strongly about the risks inherent even for the best-informed, most highly skilled among us. - Alden Bird, author of Let It Rain, a whitewater guidebook to the Northeastern US and Eastern Canada.

And this.

"it's miserable to keep losing friends, peers, to what is essentially play. Some people paddle for fun occasionally, some people paddle a lot for the experience and the joy. Some people paddle so much that it's a major, if not THE major component of who they are. . . . is [the coincidence of their fatality] only because they have a higher exposure." - JB Seay, blogger at Creek West Virginia.

Recently, well-known expedition kayaker and author Doug Ammons suggested that 'he died doing what he loved' is a cliche that needs to be retired. As it is certain that none of these guys loved being stuck underwater in a compromised situation, holding their breath and spending every ounce of energy they had trying, unsuccessfully, to free themselves, it is a reasonable proposal. That Don was solo also leaves open the possibility that he was breathing with his head out of water for a long time while he struggled, eventually succumbing to fatigue or hypothermia.

I know that what feels to me like an epidemic of dead boaters is not, and that nobody is out to get us. But, as I process these events, I sometimes think in probabilistic terms. The fact that Don paddled the North Fork as many times as he did may have increased the likelihood that he'd have a fatal accident there. But didn't it also make him better at reacting to accidents when they came? The mind swirls.

They call it Ten-Foot Falls, but it is more like Eight. Laurel Creek, WV

It would be enough to stop boating altogether, but there's just too much in it for me. I've never found an activity to provoke such intense focus as paddling whitewater. The consequences of not initiating the right sequence of precise moves within the setting of roaring whitewater in the bottom of a remote canyon bring on that focus. The world and its responsibilities are, for a moment, not there. In fact, they never were there and never will be. It's living in the present with no past and no future, just doing what I am doing, Zen-style.

When that focus is incomplete, runs are spoiled with swims and nasty inconveniences. I have never been witness to a river fatality and so those inconveniences have at worst been pinned kayaks, broken ankles, bruised elbows, and broken boats or paddles. But, what can possibly replace the intensely profound place I find myself when I'm queued up to run, and then running, a big drop on a steep creek? Somewhere between quitting altogether and arrogantly ignoring the risks there must exist something. Something that can invoke the intensity of an all-day creeking expedition on a snowy February day or the controlled chaos of a big-water river run after a summer downpour.

Each year, just before the annual Cheat River downriver race, my approach to boating undergoes a temporary change. I may pass up a trip down a juicy creek for a flatwater workout. Or, better yet, I might paddle upstream through some gentle, class 1 whitewater. With a few of these training runs under my belt, I usually feel ready enough to race. Even though this spring has been the best creeking season in more than five years, I still passed up my pick of any local intense runs for gentle streams twice this week in the name of training. The Cheat Race is next Friday and I wanted to get in some extended workouts. I feel that I got the training I needed, but I also have been discovering something else. The focus may be there, too.

Attaining is good for you

Going downstream on class 4 or 5 water and going upstream ("attaining") in class 1 or 2 water have more in common that I remembered. A requisite sequence of precise moves. Complete boat control. Intense focus. A beautiful canyon. And, to spice things up, I paddled creeks I'd never been on before. So, the exploratory nature was there (kind of). The more I attained this week, the more I realized that there are only a few things that the two styles do not have in common. The roar is subdued and the power of the water diminished, but the risk -- THE RISK -- is reduced dramatically. I'd do it alone without even thinking twice, and there's no need for a shuttle!

Attaining is a more intense workout than paddling downstream, and the consequences of a missed line are obvious. I simply drift back and try again. Ultimately it's not going to replace river running or creeking, but it just might get me what I need on the water while I contemplate the risks of paddling the way I used to.

Git r dun.

***Note: There's a longer and more unfortunate list that includes many more names, including the recent deaths of Isaac Ludwig and Ed Gaker. These guys happened to pay the ultimate price on a stream they didn't know well, but were elite boaters nonetheless and were not attempting the impossible.

***A little self-promotion: In 2008 I wrote an article titled The Upstream Afterthought for the American Whitewater Journal after I'd competed in my first attainment race.

IV

As if it was some kind of strange sarcastic twist on our personalities, Molly and I met in a McDonald's.

Molly and Me in the Tulip Tree, no idea of what lie ahead

The context of that chance meeting makes the scenario more relevant to who we are. A friend had organized a night hike trip up Old Rag Mountain in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. Our lodging for the weekend was a rustic hike-in cabin called the Tulip Tree and so our large group needed to meet someplace. With a large lot, bathrooms, and hot food, McDonald's in New Market, VA was the best rendezvous we could come up with.

In a completely un-romantic scene, I walked out of the McDonald's men's room shaking my hands dry and was introduced to the woman I would eventually marry. It was Friday, April 6, 2007.

Four cruises around the sun and now we're in a wildly different scenario.

Yesterday I was able to pull off an evening not unlike something I'd be doing four years ago. As if I had all the time in the world and nobody waiting for me at home, I rushed off to go paddling right after teaching a 3:30 lecture. It was just me, and when I got to the take-out of Fike Run just north of the WV border, I met up with essential strangers. I'd communicated with two of my partners for the day via email/facebook, nothing more. After quick salutations we loaded boats to a single vehicle and off we went. "Fikes" is a very tight but gentle stream with a handful of steep rapids worthy of a class 4 rating. It's particularly beautiful, lined with rhododendron and evergreens; a lush, green corridor within the morose brown-black woods of the PA winter. A short time after putting on the creek, we were hit with a short, powerful snowstorm, and within an hour of that, the sun was out, brightly reflecting off the riffles and blinding us. The contrasts remarkably gave me a taste of many of the finer moments that paddling secluded stretches of whitewater can provide, and more so than I'd expected in a single river trip. 

It wasn't perfect, though. The incredible place where I'd found myself on Fike Run yesterday evening would not have been possible without scores of strategically more difficult river trips over several years, as well as thousands of dollars in gear and the logistical planning of several other similarly equipped boaters. I even had to carry my heavy boat a half-mile through the woods. But, in a complicated mess of emotions, responsibilities, and conflicts, it just wasn't perfect. I though of Otis and Indie asleep in their cribs at home. I reminisced about Sugar Creek, the class 1 stream I paddled with Molly a few weeks ago, and considered this coming weekend's canoeing opportunities. I remembered Carl, my friend who drowned six months ago while paddling a different remote stream. Because of Carl's incident, I admired the water,

Hiking into Fikes

boulders and trees for their entrapment potential, and then had to remind myself to admire them for their perfect natural coexistence. I ran the creek twice, got off the river just as visibility was fading for the evening, and was changed into my street clothes before anybody else had even unzipped their drysuits.

I remember boating with people like me, when I was more like them. I told myself that my priorities would never change, that exploring the natural world and the human capacity within that world would always remain at the top of my list. What I didn't know, however, was that a few years of maturity and experiences doing the exploring with a partner would change the definition. Now I have three partners. The priority is still there. It just happens differently now. And, I won't stop paddling whitewater, it's just that my style has changed.

When addressing the Old Rag hiking group four years ago, our organizer for the weekend had

Mid-hike transfer, Red Creek/Rorbaugh Plains, Dolly Sods, 2009

referred to me as "Moses" since I was going to be leading the group of young Jews on the night hike.

There is no bad weather: Pulling Indie in her sled.

The only trace of my existence Molly had been made aware of before that meeting was through two emails that I'd sent to the entire group. In one of those emails, I mentioned that "There is no bad weather; only bad clothing," a line that has stuck with us.

Despite being imperfect, my day on Fike Run was instead perfectly timed. It was a gentle reminder of what life was like "living the dream," a bachelor's life in the whitewater Mecca of Morgantown, WV, exploring the rivers and mountains nearly every day of the week. This time I drove home to my family, and that beats the pants off my lonely loft apartment in Morgantown.

This morning, I presented Molly with her anniversary gift. It is the anniversary of a wonderful coincidental meeting that changed both of our lives forever. It wasn't a date we picked because it was best for a wedding venue or for guests' schedules; it was chance. The gift was a canoe paddle that she'll use on Sunday and on every other canoe trip we take and embossed on the blade, next to her initials, is the leaf of the Tulip Tree.

Git r dun

Sugar, baby!

With the sun beating down on our faces and twinkling in the waves, I thought about what a perfect name it was -- Sugar Creek. How sweet it was.

Molly and I were probing the usually easy but sometimes complicated class 1 creek in our canoe while Pop and our friend Wade trailed. It was still mid-March, so 65 degrees is unseasonable, and to have a bankfull of water on Sugar was even lower in probability. But, when we pulled up to the Rt. 427 bridge on Friday with gear and boats at the ready, we saw that we had gotten lucky. Sugar Creek had water.

It was a short ride, about 5 miles or so, to the confluence with French Creek, and the twisting bends of the creek made for a few exciting moments. In mid-March in Northwest PA, the water's cold. Ice cold. But, the canoe race the four of us intend to enter is next week, and so we need to train and Sugar Creek was the only viable gym.

Sugar Creek is a great prototype for class 1 canoeing. Wave trains didn't get too high to threaten a swamp, but without a good line the threat of a tip was there. Islands channelize the creek, providing several options to choose. Every bend in the creek has the possibility of a strainer (we saw many), but the shallow water and low flow are unintimidating. The strainer shown here caused a canoe to spill, but the paddlers were quick to retrieve their gear and didn't even get all that wet.

 

If Sugar Creek is running, then French Creek is high. Spilling on French in March would be a serious situation, and so when we decided to take the "hero" line through a section of big waves (maybe 3 feet), we went totally overboard on safety. Deep, cold, fast water was enough of a threat and so we set a rope and outlined a plan should a capsize occur, Pop and Wade went first. No problem.  

There is no gauge for Sugar Creek, but when we paddled it this past Friday, French was up at about 7 ft at Utica and falling very slightly. We put-in on the river left side of the creek where 427 crosses it near the Sleepy Hollow Golf Course, though it can probably be run from a point much higher, in Cooperstown I believe. The first possible take out is in the town of Sugar Creek, where two bridges cross the creek about 20 feet apart. The second possible take out is on the left bank of French Creek, just after the confluence. Or, if you're in for a longer haul, you can paddle French Creek to the Allegheny and take out at Franklin's Wiegel Bros Marina. If you do that, be sure to let them know in advance, and give them some business. Their paddle shop is well worth keeping around.

Happy New Year, 2011

Of all things, two double ear infections, two cases of conjunctivitis, snowpack enhanced rainfall, and very supportive in-laws turned my 2011 New Year celebration into a paddlefest.

It started with a trip to the pediatrician's office on Dec. 29, where we found that the antibiotics we'd been giving our daughter, Indie, for a week were not working. So, her single ear infection had turned into a double, and both eyes had followed suit as a result by contracting pink eye. Her baby brother, Otis, had naturally picked up her infestation and had a double ear infection as well. So, with no ethical way to actually see any of our friends or relatives for the next couple of days, we packed up the car and headed to my wife's family's cottage on French Creek near Utica, PA. And to make it a real holiday, we planned and shopped for a stellar feast for New Year's Eve.

Holing up in the cottage wasn't an issue because we'd be able to keep the kids occupied in the small space or outside when it wasn't too cold. There wasn't enough snow to ski, but rain in the forecast made an impression on me and so I strapped the creek boat to the roof and tossed in my helmet and life jacket. I was skeptical, but as it turned out I found myself in the right place at the right time for about four days in a row.



12.31.2010 -- From the cottage, it is my regular routine to paddle a rickety old wildwater boat (a fast and light, but extremely tippy whitewater racing kayak) upstream from the cottage. French Creek would probably be considered class B flatwater (the classes are A, B, and C; A is a lake and C would be small riffles) in the vicinity of the cottage, but it's wide and shallow so paddling upstream requires some work. I had to use an alternate launch because my typical put-in eddy was blanketed with thick ice. Staying close to the shore because that is where the current is weakest also affords me the best chances of sneaking up on wildlife. On this day it worked, and the highlights were a bald eagle within 50 feet, a muskrat swimming right up to my boat at my turn around point (near sleepy Carlton, PA), and evidence of a hard-working beaver near the Custaloga Town BSA camp (though no beaver, unfortunately). I was feeling risky for some reason, and on the way back I tried a few small channels around islands that had the potential of being choked with ice. I went 1 for 2, and had to gorilla walk across a 40-foot slab of eddy ice in order to get out the bottom of one of those channels.

The scenery was as remarkable. A very cold December meant there was ice everywhere. I was able to see that the creek had cycled through freezing over followed by the water level dropping several times because of the ice rings around the trees lining the shore. Big slabs of ice floated down the creek looking for the next place to be lodged. Large eddies were like skating rinks, and the geese had left footprints, feathers and droppings on them. The cottages I passed were dark and empty.

I got back to the cottage after only about 90 minutes and told Molly it was the best paddling experience I'd ever had while based at the cottage. Then it started raining.

The New Years Eve feast then commenced. A big, fat marinated roast went on the grill and scallops on the fryer. After dinner and once the kids were asleep, Molly and I spent the evening watching the fireplace from a cozy spot on the cottage floor covered in blankets listening to the rain. I cannot think of a better way to ring in a new year (and we slept right through midnight).

01.01.2011 -- The rain continued all night and by morning there were large, dead trees floating past the cottage in French Creek. On a whim I drove down the road with Indie to check out a tributary of French called Mill Creek (my new creek-finding partner joined me on three scouting missions in the four days). I found ts headwaters in a big marsh at the top of the canyon and followed it on a local map as it drops a couple hundred feet over a few miles through a nice little gorge that terminates at Utica. I expected it to be mild whitewater with a lot of portages over dead trees, hand-built footbridges, pipes, and power lines. Indie and I drove back to the cottage and I figured that if I could squeeze it in later that day, then great. If not, I'd still have a blast attaining the torrent that French Creek had become.


I found time to paddle it, and I was wrong about Mill Creek. Six pretty simple portages around strainers was not much, and the whitewater was fabulous. I put in off a county road called Foster Road just below bridge with insufficient clearance to paddle under. I was between farm fields in thickly vegetated marsh a hundred yards wide. It was hard to figure out where to go, and at times I became concerned I'd never find the actual current that becomes Mill Creek. In many places barbed wire lined the wash I was paddling (fortunately it never crossed, but this is not unheard of). I had to push through the thick brush, protecting my face from being scratched, and I even bounced down an enormous beaver lodge. As the current picked up, the marsh became a more well-defined waterway and a few rudimentary footbridges (presumably built by hunters accessing the adjacent gamelands) got me out of my boat. Then, just when it appeared that the creek was about to go under some impassible brush, it made a sharp right turn under a huge down tree. I dragged my boat across, and things went dark.

All of a sudden, I was on a rushing creek in a gorge that the sun could not reach. The fog steaming up from the water was thick, and there were rapids. Rapids! Not big ones. Not difficult ones. But, for a place that for several years had seemed devoid of the one thing that I have sought out more than anything else in this world, finding whitewater here was cause for jubilation. As the rapids steadily increased in intensity to class 3 (on a scale of 5), the portages diminished in frequency and I was smack in the middle of my own little slice of whitewater creeking heaven. With visibility still at a minimum, I came to a sharp bend in the creek only to discover a buck standing in the water, staring up at me. The water was only about 6 inches deep at the shoal he was standing upon. The buck's body length took up the middle half of the creek's width. His shoulders were broad and his antlers mixed with the branches behind him, camouflaging them in a way. As I floated toward him he did not budge, and so I shouted, "Yah! Yah!" kind of like how they do when they're rustling cattle in the movies. Either it worked or he decided that he didn't want me colliding into him, and so he splashed off, out of the gorge, when I was about 10 feet away. It was one of the more profound paddling moments I've ever had.

I'd seen enough at this point to be completely ecstatic about Mill Creek, but it kept getting better. After going under a bridge, the gradient of the creek increased even further and I was now in continuous whitewater. For over a mile it went on. Fortunately there were eddies to paddle into, because it was so dark and foggy in the gorge that I needed to use them to control my speed in case I came up on a low bridge or dead tree (which happened several more times).

The Mill Creek Gorge -- Foster Rd to Grant St

Arriving in Utica, I didn't want the fun to end. I briefly contemplated just jumping in my car and running it again, but decided against it when I thought of the responsibilities awaiting me at the cottage.

01.02.2011 -- After the adventure on New Years Day, I was feeling like I wanted to keep things intense. The small creeks had run out of water, and so I got a ride to Cochranton, PA and paddled my wildwater boat 16 miles to Franklin on a severely swollen French Creek. After more than two hours of paddling in heavy swells at a balmy 25 degrees Fahrenheit, I'd gotten my fill. Ice coated the deck of the boat, my jacket, and my mittens. I could smell the faint aroma of ammonia that comes with long, continuous effort. Then I became cold. Freezing cold. On the ride home, my father-in-law gave me the best chocolate donut I've ever eaten, from the Shop n' Save in Franklin.

01.03.2011 -- With every intention of keeping things at minimal exertion as a means of recovering from the previous day's long trip, I found the icing on the cake by paddling the 6.5-mile stretch of French Creek above the cottage with my father-in-law. This was the coldest day, and there was a lot of ice floating around us, looking like somebody had dumped a huge amount of snow-cones in the creek around us. I was especially nervous about a swim in the 32 degree water, so I paddled my most stable boat and brought lots of extra gear.

Just putting on the creek at near-flood stage was tricky because the contrast of the heavy current with calm eddies at the put-in created a tenuous situation. If my partner for the day would flip in his kayak, he would be swimming a flooding creek, surrounded by floating ice, and the air temperature was in the 20s. Fortunately, after looking around a bit, we found a little spot under a bridge where it wouldn't be too hard to sneak out the bottom of the eddy, making the transition much milder.

Since safety was a primary concern, we stayed close to the shore and planned the safest route way in advance whenever it was ambiguous. But we couldn't stay too close to the shore -- thousands of trees stuck out of slackwater as half-submerged benches and patio furniture threatened to be swept away. The clearance under each bridge was half what we know it to be. Where islands typically split the creek into channels we saw only branches sticking out of the water marking their location.

Pop at the put-in -- Cochranton, PA

I was able to relax after a short time, confident that nobody was going for a swim, and fully enjoy the time on the water. My father-in-law complained of cold hands, then of numb hands, and then he stopped complaining because even though his hands weren't working, it was the first time he was able to get on the water for months. We both arrived back at the cottage smiling, ear to ear, ready to start thawing out.

Git r dun!

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!

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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!