The Last Run

In the spring of 2011, after the third whitewater kayaker I knew drowned in action in less than a year, I wrote the following story. It was all I could do in my attempt to reason through the pain and fear. When I was done with it, I felt like a real writer. I had put all of my emotion into words. Proud of what I'd created, I shopped it around for a bit and to my surprise it was picked up by a regional outdoors magazine. Unfortunately after six months went by and the editor said it was ready to go into the magazine, the publisher decided that it was too "dark" to include in the issue. I was paid half of what they promised me, and never heard from them again.

Ironically, in the writing business, they say that my story was "killed."

I've updated it a bit here for the 4th anniversary of the drowning of my friend Carl, which comes in on October 1.

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A year after his accident, friends and family members of Carl Schneider congregate for a memorial paddle down the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania. Schneider’s mother, Lynne, is in jeans on the left side of the photo (Eric Martin)

The Last Run

The overwhelming majority of drownings on US lakes and rivers involve novice boaters, fishermen, and swimmers. It is no different in whitewater, where accidents typically occur due to inexperience, substances or insufficient safety equipment. Drownings among expert whitewater paddlers on well-known rivers and creeks are extremely rare. So, how, after decades of infrequent fatalities among Central Appalachia’s whitewater elite, could three of its members defy classical statistics by drowning on rivers they knew well in a span of six months? It is not an easy question to answer.

The dark hollows of Central Appalachia are dense with over half a century of whitewater history. Pioneers of whitewater kayaking dug their roots here in the famous watersheds of the Cheat, Youghiogheny, Potomac, Gauley, and New rivers and many of them still call the area home. The East coast’s first commercial whitewater rafting operation, Wilderness Voyageurs, run by a former US National team kayaker, has thrived here for over 40 years. Dozens of outfitters have followed in the vibrant whitewater towns of Ohiopyle, PA, Friendsville, MD and Fayetteville, WV. In these towns, local kayakers can live a whitewater lifestyle by working as guides or instructors or by selling or manufacturing gear. The boaters here developed paddling and exploration techniques known and used world-wide. Boat and gear designs as well as safety and rescue techniques and accessories were developed and tested on these creeks and rivers. And Central Appalachia continues to develop some of the whitewater world’s most influential figures from safety officials to gear manufacturers and hundreds of professionally sponsored boaters.

The prolificacy of the sport in the area hasn’t come without a cost. On October 1, 2010, Carl Schneider drowned after being trapped mid-rapid in his kayak on West Virginia’s Blackwater River, a rite of passage run (locally one is either a Blackwater boater, or not). Nine days later, Mark Hanna drowned in full view of frightened friends and commercial rafters on West Virginia’s world-famous Gauley River at Pillow, the river’s biggest and most powerful rapid. Then, in April, Don Smith drowned on the Blackwater’s North Fork, a steep and dangerous, but commonly run creeking adventure.  The short amount of time between these incidents caused those of us who run these rivers to look deeply and reflectively at our priorities.

Schneider taught Italian at a small private school in Pittsburgh’s East End and was known for his jovial personality. When his wife left him in 2007, he escaped to the water. Within a few seasons, he had established a mountain sport lifestyle. When school was in session, he spent the weekends chasing water or, if the rivers were frozen, snowboarding at local resorts. Before long he was working the river all summer long as a professional raft guide and kayak instructor and the slopes on winter weekends as a safety ranger.

Schneider just above the famous 18-foot Ohiopyle Falls on the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania. (Jeff Macklin)

Carl’s presence on the river was legendary. His relaxed style was comforting to his kayaking students, and his larger-than-life personality infectious. However, he had a history of getting himself into trouble, earning him the nickname, “Carnage Carl.” Consider for example that after scouting out a blind drop on class 5 Drake Run outside Confluence, PA, I watched him unintentionally kick his boat down a snowy slope into the creek. He instinctively dove into the icy water, swimming through rapids after the loose kayak, and it nearly cost him his life. When the boat lodged on a rock, he was swept under it. Seconds later he resurfaced in a pool below.

Despite his reputation for close calls, Schneider paddled at an expert level and by the time he drowned he was among the top of the region’s heap of river rats. He logged countless runs on the area’s most notorious rapids and continued to ramp up the fear factor by paddling at night or in high water, or sometimes both. Because of this, even though the incidents came less frequently, the nickname stuck.

I paddled with Carl nearly every weekend for several years and we were also neighbors and close friends. After one of his near-misses on Big Sandy Creek near Bruceton Mills, WV, I had told him that I wished he’d use more caution. I explained that if he drowned it would have a tremendous negative effect on me. I never actually expected it to happen but when it did, paddling whitewater was the last thing I wanted to do for some time. Many of our friends were also impacted and responded by seeing little water time. Nick Yourd, one of Schnieder’s fellow raft guides, expressed it well in 2011: “shit that never has scared me is stopping me from boating. I would run Meadow, Sandy, Upper at any level last year. But I’m scared now to get on anything.”

Carl Schneider’s death was the second ever by a kayaker on the Upper Blackwater. It was an ideal day with his boating crew: off-duty raft guides capitalizing on some overnight rain. Beau Smith, a friend of Carl’s, was leading a separate crew and was in an eddy above Flatliner Falls when Carl paddled over to say a quick hello before dropping over the relatively small 4-foot falls. It would be the last time anybody saw Carl’s notorious smile and signature handlebar mustache. Within seconds he was wedged upside-down between boulders with thousands of pounds of hydraulic pressure holding him in place. It wasn’t until his friends secured a rope to his kayak that they were able to extract him from the pin. Since then, one other kayaker, a young DC boater named Bob Norr, drowned in the exact same spot. At least two others have been pinned in the same spot at Flatliner in the prior 15 years, though they were able to free themselves thanks to lower flow.

Friends and family members of Carl Schneider on his beloved Youghiogheny River a week after his accident (unknown)

Mark Hanna was a successfully self-employed tradesman who owned his own company and paddled whitewater nearly every weekend. Pittsburgher Kent Reigel was with Hanna when he swam out of his boat on the Gauley. The swim put Hanna head first into an underwater rock sieve and the strong current prevented initial attempts at extraction, even though he could be seen from above the water. After pulling his kayak to the riverbank, Reigel’s 16-year-old son walked up to the scene. “I stopped him to let him know what he was about to see,” Reigel recalled in a shaking voice. Hanna was dead by then, but efforts to revive him were still in progress. All Reigel and his son could do was watch in horror.

Mark Hanna at Rattlesnake rapid on Tennessee’s Daddy’s Creek.  (Jeff Macklin)

Just when it seemed that things had cooled off, Pittsburgh Attorney Don Smith was killed on a solo run of the North Fork of the Blackwater in Tucker County, WV in April 2011. Smith was an exceptionally good boater and had run the North Fork more than anybody else, anywhere. He logged countless runs on all of the local class 5 waterways, often showing others the way. There is literally no class 5 creek in Central Appalachia that Smith had not paddled. His nickname, “Blackwater Don,” was known nationwide and when out-of-towners came to Northern West Virginia to paddle the expert runs, it was often Smith who led them. He paddled the North Fork solo at low water regularly. And so it was Smith who acted as the unofficial steward of the class 5 Tucker County streams, notifying the boating community about shifts in rocks, down trees blocking passage, water levels, and even shuttle road conditions. In all likelihood his efforts prevented many accidents before his.

Don Smith carries his kayak out of the North Fork of the Blackwater after an autumn run.  (Curtis Heishman)

When one of Smith’s regular kayaking partners, Curtis Heishman, couldn’t reach him on his cell phone after knowing he’d been on a late morning run of the North Fork, he didn’t take it seriously. “It was common to not get a hold of Don,” he said of his friend. If anybody was going to solo the North Fork successfully, it was Smith. Unfortunately, at the foot of a double-waterfall called Rainbow Room, Smith became trapped on a log. How long that log was there before it snagged Smith is still a matter of speculation. Uniontown, PA native Dave Carey found Smith’s body the next day and recovered it and then paddled the North Fork several more times that week. When asked how he was able to go back so soon after dragging his friend’s body out of the dangerous river, he responded, “The water level was perfect. Don would have told me I was a pussy if I didn’t.”

Don Smith paddles over Double Indemnity, a falls just above Rainbow Room. Rainbow Room claimed his life in April 2011. (Max Blackburn)

Smith's passing was a profound mark in the annals of whitewater paddling. Alden Bird, author of the Northeast US’s current most extensive whitewater guidebook, Let It Rain, put Smith’s drowning into perspective. “Allow me to amplify this. That . . . Don Smith, who virtually lived at the North Fork put-in and who was acutely aware of the new wood danger . . . constituted the first fatality on his home river speaks very strongly about the risks inherent even for the best-informed, most highly skilled among us.” JB Seay, locally grown boater and blogger at Creek West Virginia (creekwv.blogspot.com) wrote, “It's miserable to keep losing friends, peers, to what is essentially play. Some people paddle so much that it's the major component of who they are. . . . is [the coincidence of their fatality] only because they have a higher exposure?”

It has been suggested by many adventurers that 'he died doing what he loved' is a cliché 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 Smith was solo leaves open the possibility that he was breathing with his head above water for some time while he struggled, eventually succumbing to fatigue or hypothermia. Like Seay, I sometimes think in probabilistic terms. The fact that Smith paddled the North Fork as frequently as he did increases the likelihood that he'd have a fatal accident there. But didn't he know the river so well that he’d be better at reacting to accidents when they came? The mind swirls.

Personally, with each tragedy, I have become more contemplative in my approach to kayaking, an activity that at one point was the primary driving force in my life. An obsession takes over and I read everything written – fact or opinion – about the event. I talk to friends and acquaintances who were there, those with most knowledge of the waterways involved, and others who may have other details. It gives me the insight to write this, but more importantly it’s my attempt to control the uncontrollable and I'm not the only one. Regional online forums buzzed for days about Smith’s accident, just as they had after Carl and Mark died nine days apart in October of 2010. 

Carl Schneider at the Pittsburgh restaurant where he worked. (Ashley Rose)

Ironically, Smith was the one to notify the community online about Schneider’s accident and then publicly consoled Hanna’s son online. Smith also specifically directed remarks to Hanna’s close friend, Marty Sullivan, who was the first to grab hold of his leg after he went into the sieve. “It’s tough to be there when things like this happen. I hope you're doing ok Marty. Please don't forget to think of the people who are still with us that were caught up in the accident. I've seen a lot of stuff go down over the years and have definitely lost some sleep and felt maybe some PTSD afterwards.” Sullivan has been paddling Central Appalachian creeks and rivers consistently since 1972. In that time, he has lost friends and acquaintances to the river, but claims that the three casualties between October 2010 and April 2011 represent “the worst I’ve ever seen.” Because of this, Sullivan paddles more conservatively. “There are places I’ll never paddle again.”

Hanna’s death-trap came just below Pillow Rapid, which is a nationally known rapid through which thousands paddle on a typical Gauley release weekend. Among the dozens who watched him become trapped, there were doctors, EMTs, and veteran guides. A defibrillator on a commercial raft was available. Despite the virtual hospital present, the Gauley still took Hanna from his friends and family forever.

The lessons (or lack thereof) of Schneider, Hanna, and Smith are clear to American Whitewater Safety Director, Charlie Walbridge. “For Carl Schneider, the only lesson learned is that Class 5 water carries serious risks and you may not recover from a mistake. Mark Hanna taught us that the ‘clean’ run-out of Pillow is not clean after all.” (Despite its enormous size and notoriety, Pillow has been thought by some to be so benign that boaters routinely get out of their boats to leap from a boulder and swim through it, myself included.) “I've stopped running the Upper Gauley because my roll isn't strong enough. Don Smith might well have survived if he'd paddled with a partner, according to those who recovered his body. Solo creeking increases risks significantly. The saddest thing to me about many high-end accidents is that they're hard to prevent. We all make mistakes, and hard rapids are often intolerant of that.”

The gravity of these accidents has changed boating for many of us in Central Appalachia. Beau Smith stopped boating for months after Schneider’s accident and has seen little river time in the past four years. “For me, Carl's accident shattered the whole notion that being a better boater makes you a safer boater.” Unfortunately for those who continue to paddle class 5 water, JB Seay’s standard, to paddle “engaging, difficult whitewater . . . far enough back from the edge of their abilities to be safe and comfortable” is tricky to define when you’re on the river. I’ve certainly changed my paddling endeavors and now embrace a more conservative style.

Don Smith (center) stands in a safety position at Rainbow Room on the North Fork of the Blackwater. Smith ultimately drowned at this rapid, in the channel shown on the right of this photo. (Max Blackburn)

Is there a silver lining? It is there, unspoken among those who were affected: lessons learned, enhanced vigilance, and communication within the boating community. On the heels of Schneider’s and Hanna’s accidents, various organizations met to formally discuss rescue protocols. A meeting that involved WV state park officials, rescue volunteers, and local whitewater boaters took place in Tucker County, home of the Blackwater River. At that meeting, rescue personnel asked local kayakers to assist in swiftwater rescues. This is one of the few instances nationwide of a partnership between professional first responders and private enthusiasts. Because of Carl’s job as a raft guide, his accident solidified unions and communication between the guide community and recreational paddling community. Each spring since then, Three Rivers Paddling Club, to which both Schneider and Hanna belonged, hosts a swiftwater rescue clinic in the mens’ names. Money raised at the first clinic, as well as donations at Schneider’s funeral, were given to the Tucker County volunteer rescue group. They needed to replace a defibrillator that was dropped in the Blackwater after it had been used unsuccessfully on Carl. Impromptu vigils, honorary river trips, and memorials at the sites of the drownings have brought the boaters who knew and loved Carl, Mark, and Don together. In a few weeks on October 5, Carl’s friends will attend the fifth annual Carl Schneider Memorial Paddle on the Youghiogheny River in Ohiopyle. At the first such gathering, Carl’s father, Bob Schneider, clad in neoprene and floating in an inflatable craft, found his own silver lining in the discovery of what his son meant to the people with him on the water. He said, “it is gratifying that Carl influenced so many in a favorable way and that so many returned his friendship with such loyalty, warmth, and love.” But of course it’s not worth it; when it comes down to it we all want our friends back.

Days before the 2011 Carl Schneider Memorial Paddle on the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania, a decal portraying his handlebar moustache and wide grin appeared on this trolley in Schneider’s whitewater hometown of Ohiopyle, PA. (Ben Scoville)

Don Smith died in April 2011, just as the spring creeking season was getting good. Instead of joining, I watched from the cyber-sideline as our region’s famous creeks hit the “juicy” levels perfect for kayaking. I even decided against doing my favorite annual kayaking event, the Cheat Canyon downriver race, in early May. My excuses for not getting out – work and family – were only part of the reason. As I began to get back out, the first few times I got in my boat, images of Carl, Mark, and Don blurred my focus as I admired the water, boulders, and trees for their entrapment potential rather than for their perfect natural coexistence.

Whitewater is a strong addiction and eventually I was able to find the focus I needed to paddle the rivers I love. But it is different now. For several years I had been taking Molly out to see the beautiful rivers we're lucky to have here in Central Appalachia. Before long we were back on the river together, too, enjoying the river. That August, we paddled a section of the Youghiogheny River that was new to her. I had been down it dozens, maybe hundreds, of times over many years and in all conceivable conditions. Despite my confidence and knowledge of the river, as we approached a crucial rapid I did something I had never done there before. I portaged.

Carl Schneider at ease on the banks of the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania. (Ashley Rose)

DIY Kayak -- Strip Building

I'm building my own kayak. It's going to be a lot of work.

And, since I am learning minor details as I complete the project, I'm going to archive the lessons I've learned here. It will be a single post that I edit as I go. I have found other blogs outlining the process, but found it annoying to click through all of the entries.

First, some details. I'm building a Guillemot Mystery racing boat. I pulled the trigger and ordered the forms in late March, 2014. They arrived within a week, about ten big 24 x 36 pieces of paper with full-scale precision drawings of the forms to make the boat. To summarize the process and undermine dozens of hours of work, it's a simple process -- I'm going to build a skeleton of the boat (spine and ribs) and then cover it with really long, thin strips of wood. After it's all set, I'll remove it from the skeleton and seal it. The spine is called the strongback, and the forms are like ribs, or cross-sections of the boat, every ten inches.

I hope mine looks as good as this one!

The result will be a 20 feet long boat that is very light, tippy, and hard to control. It will (hopefully) be very fast. That last detail is the reason I picked this design, and the reason I am willing to put up with a tippy boat that's hard to maneuver.

I will update this post with more steps/lessons as well as images as the project goes on, and grade myself on each of the steps after they're complete.

Here goes:

This form will be 20" from the bow.

Step 1: Glue the designs onto boards. I'm using 3/4 inch thick fiberboard (got it at Pittsburgh's material re-use center, Construction Junction and I'll hopefully be re-using lots of materials for this project) and 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. Already I learned that even though the paper may look as if it's smoothly adhered to the fiberboard, it can still wrinkle and so it's important to spent several minutes smoothing each one out after it's been glued.
Supplies: $9 for the boards, $109 for the designs (inc. shipping), and $10 for the can of spray adhesive)
Grade: I give myself a B for this task. I could have been more careful with the glue and needed to be more diligent about smoothing out the paper.

Step 2: Cut out the forms. I'm using a regular jigsaw to do this. When I cut out the first few forms, the saw shredded the paper near the cut, which made for a rough paper line and in some places the paper even ripped across the design lines. To solve this problem I scored the paper just outside the design lines with an exacto knife so that when the jigsaw shreds it, the paper just pulls away at the score. I could also have tried a different jigsaw blade with finer teeth, but using the exacto knife was easier.
Supplies: Jigsaw, blades, and exacto knife.
Grade: B+

My custom form-sanding set up

Step 3: Sand the forms to their precise shape. I don't have a bench-mounted belt sander that moves up and down like a pro would, so I've made my own (minus the movement). I mounted my vice to a vertical slab of countertop, clamped my handheld belt-sander in it, and built a bench around it out of plywood. Getting the detail on some of the sharper corners may be tricky, especially the end forms.
Supplies: I already had all of this -- Sandpaper, belt sander.
Grade:B+

Step 4: Build the Strongback. This will be a 16'4" long, hollow box made of plywood. Sounds easy, right? It would be if it wasn't necessary that it is absolutely dead-on straight, and the dimensions precise to the 1/16 of an inch (and I'm a total hack carpenter). Of course plywood only comes in 8-foot long pieces, adding to the suspense. As of the end of the summer, I'd built my strongback out of some boards I took out of a basement shelving unit. It was good wood, but with several decades of use, the resulting product was not sufficiently straight (according to two far superior woodworkers). So, I disassembled it and am back to the Step 4 drawing board.
Supplies: Plywood, Drill, Wood screws
Grade:

Step 5: Mount the forms to the Strongback. Most of these will be simple; just screw down a small piece of scrap wood to hold the form in place, and then screw the form to it. However, the two end forms and several of the inner forms that are near the bow and stern must be custom-fitted because their shapes depend on the thickness of the forms I'm using (which are 3/4" instead of the 1/2" used by the designer).
Supplies: Scrap lumber and wood screws

The cove/bead edges fit into
each other without creating voids

Grade:

Step 6: Rip long boards of wood  into thin strips (1/8" for the top, 3/16" for the bottom), and cut cove/bead edges into them. I'll be using either Poplar or Basswood, and will be using a regular table saw with a thin detail blade for the ripping. Then, I will use a router and the proper bits to do the cove and bead.
Supplies: Table saw, blade, boards, router, bits.
Grade:

Step 7: Strip the boat by stapling the strips to forms and gluing the cove/bead joints. This is a long process and will take up most of the time building this boat. And, it must be done twice -- once for the top (deck) and once for the bottom (hull).
Supplies: Lots of glue, staples, and spring clamps.
Grade:

Step 8: Take out the staples and shape the boat. This essentially means make it round by knocking down all the ridges where the strips meet with a spokeshave, plane, and/or sanding.It'll be done separately for the deck and hull.
Supplies: Spokeshave, plane, and lots of sandpaper.
Grade:

Step 9:
Supplies:
Grade: 

Oct. 2015 Edit: Fuck it. I'm not doing this. I'd rather paddle a kayak than build it. I don't have time for this shit.

Shavers Fork

We had just landed and then unloaded our boats. We were wet but it was threatening to get dark and chilly soon, and so all of us sprung into action to make our campsite. Except for one, that is.

Immediately we all reluctantly began to notice it. Our eldest companion, clothed in nothing but a grim smile, drip-dried in the center of the group as we milled around fetching cookware, preparing our dinner, hanging up wet gear, and securing the wobbly picnic table -- general campsite maintenance upon our arrival. It reminded me of the famous gorilla in the middle of the basketball practice video. Everybody tried to pretend he wasn't there by looking elsewhere as we worked. I know he had a towel, but maybe he was saving it for something else?

It was an awkwardly long time before he was satisfied with his level of dryness and put on some clothes. By then dinner was stewing, tents had been set up and several of us had embarked on the challenging task of throwing a rope over a tree limb so our food could be hung later, out of the reach of critters.

It was Sam's birthday again! We were on the Shavers Fork of the Cheat River in West Virginia in at a lower-than-one-ought-to-be-paddling-it-in-May level, commonly known to my whitewater brethren as ELF boating (extra-low flow). The frequency of dragging heavier craft (like our trusty EKC Grumman) touched on absurd, but I'm pretty sure we all look back on that trip in 2012 as a very good one.

Birthday Boy Poses

As we typically do in the month leading up to Sam's birthday trip, online river gauges and guidebooks were bookmarked and dogeared respectively as the search for the perfect river to host our weekend ensued. Shavers Fork came up to a prime level one week out, and then dropped to the minimum recommended level. We had already fallen in love with the idea and so two days later we launched, hoping that the recommenders were river snobs.

They were not snobs. It was too low. But it was worth it.

Caught in the act of improper technique . . . no sweat; Stern man has it covered.

The night before launching, we camped at Stuart Recreational Area, near Elkins, WV, and then pushed into the crystal clear stream from the site. Wade, in his solo canoe, said it looked like good fishing. Wade comes from a family of terrible fisherman, according to at least two of his siblings. Naturally, he'd neglected to bring his pole and tackle.

Dragging in the shallows.

Jeremy and Zack, former camp counselors, elected to captain and co-captain the EKC Grumman, our sturdiest vessel, which had recently been retired from duty at the camp where the boaters had each worked summers for over a decade. The boat itself had a much longer tenure, floating kids of all ages on Cheat Lake near Morgantown for much longer.

Wade gets it done and stays dry

Alex came all the way from FLA for the trip, and he joined Sam as cousins afloat in the Old Town Guide canoe. Pop and I were back in kayaks for the trip -- he in his sea kayak and I in a slicey riverrunner called a Redline. The double-bladed kayakers loaded some gear into the canoes, ensuring that dragging them would be longer and more arduous. Not my problem!

SUP: Florida style

The Shavers Fork delivered stunning scenery and little flatwater -- exactly what we were looking for. Within the first mile we came upon a nice technical drop (class 2-) that required a line from the left shore through a couple holes. I have some memories of other drops, though they all run together at this point. In total only three other drops stand out as substantial, one with a 4-foot wide channel around a dead tree in a big hole, wiggling from the force of the current, and another at least 1/4 mile long with craggy rock cliffs extending from the right bank to the sky. The third, a broken out dam, had benign flatwater above and below (a sign of trouble in many cases) but turned out to be a cinch.

One of the many riffles

Belongs on a wall, framed, in the EKC office IMO

Once again we paddled much further the first day than we thought we would. What else are you going to do in a boat on a beautiful river in the sun with nowhere to be and lots of daylight? It ended up being about 12 - 16 miles through beautiful country. A seldom used dirt road followed up for a bit and most of the 20 or so permanent camps and cottages were for the most part tasteful. Other than that it was just what the doctor ordered -- peaceful, pristine, lush. I think Jeremy and Zack didn't even mind dragging the Grumman through the rock shoals because it meant they were looking around more.

We pulled aside at one point and ate lunch and soaked our Keen-clad feet in the water while Jeremy demonstrated all of his fabulous camping gear for us.

The long day was worth it because we scored a campsite with a picnic table. I have no idea where it is on a map, who put it there or owns it, or if it was legal to camp there. With no buildings in sight, we agreed that forgiveness after the fact is always to be prioritized over permission before.

After everybody had dressed into dry clothes, we cooked. That night, on the bank on the Shavers Fork, we filled a pot with deliciousness that none of us had anticipated. I'm not sure why our Shavers Stew turned out so perfect (perhaps it was the context) but it was the best one-pot group meal I've ever had at a campsite. We gorged ourselves.

A heavenly bend in the Shavers Fork

The next morning, it was much colder as we prepared to disembark. Pop tried out Wade's canoe and swam before he even got the thing out into the current. He banished himself from open solo boats for life and got back into his comfy 13-footer, soaking wet. He looked chilly.

It wasn't cold, but this guy is from FLA

Our second day went by in a flash, and before we even had a chance to stop for lunch we had reached Parsons, the town just upstream of our take out. When we arrived at the campground just downstream, where our car was waiting for us, we found a group of Bolivian dancers enjoying the day and swimming in the river. They were from DC and had performed at a county fair in the area the day before. As teenaged performers flirted with each other, we offered our boats for them to enjoy while our put-in vehicle was retrieved. They swamped every one of them and we all laughed as they swam them back to us.

"Setting up" camp

We couldn't leave Parson without ordering a ramp burger, and then we high-tailed it out of there to get Alex to the airport, four hours away in Pittsburgh.

Git r dun.

SavageYough

“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!)