Heroes and Rockers get some good use at Great Falls of the Potomac in Wash. DC!

July 12, 2005

The Jackson’s have arrived after a long drive from
the Ottawa at the steps of the capital of the USA. In this beautiful city
lies a gem of a river called the Potomac. Just upstream from the Capital
about 12 miles is where you will find the Great Falls of the Potomac.
The whole river drops about 60-80 feet in a few hundred yards. The beautiful
thing about the Potomac is the size of the river and the fact that it
never gets too high or too low. Although it is a natural flow river, it
services such a large drainage area that the record low was 500 cfs, more
than enough to still run the falls. Today it is running at about 20,000
cfs or so (my guess) and the options are endless for class V water to
run. I woke this morning planning on paddling with Danny Stock (star of
Strokes and Concepts DVD, and long time friend), Louis Geltman, and Nec
Poberaj. Louis and Nec bagged and it was just Danny and I. I have one
Rocker and one Super Hero. Danny chose the Super Hero and I the Rocker,
with the plan to switch out. Our plan was to run the first drop of the
Fish Ladder a few times and then run the Back Canyon. For those of you
who aren’t familiar with Great Falls, allow me to explain…

The put-in is at Great Falls Park in Maryland above
a low head dam (8 feet tall) with a nice warm up lake above it. The dam
is used to divert water into the pumping station where Washington, DC
gets its drinking water. Once you warm up you can boof the dam just about
anywhere (except the few places with rocks at the bottom). The dam is
1/4 mile wide! Then you have lots of choices, and depending upon the water
level some choices are better than others. Today the choices were to run
the normal Fish Ladder which is 5 slides that circumvent the Falls and
create a wonderful series of drops with a hole at the bottom of 4 of them.
The 1st Slide is a good warm up one with the hole being fairly easy to
punch, and a little space before the next drop. Kristine came down with
the camera to shoot us showing off the hole punching ability of the Super
Hero and Rocker. Not only were we able to get the bow over the hole and
carry out momentum downstream, we were able to launch into the air and
land 10 feet below the hole! We were having so much fun with this drop
that we did it about 5 times. Next in line is a class 2 rapid that leads
into the second slide only about 50 yards downstream. The second slide
starts testing your boat control a little more with a bigger hole and
recirculating eddies on both sides ready to catch anybody not able to
put their bow on top or keep their boats straight. IMMEDIATELY after you
get through the second drop the river splits in two; the left goes through
the rest of the Fish Ladder and the right is the Back Canyon. 95% of the
people in the Fish Ladder stay in the fish ladder instead of doing the
back canyon. However a recent log jam that was broken out resulted in
one single log in the fish ladder between the 3rd and 4th slides that
is in a precarious position for anyone not maintaining control after the
3rd slide. It also points upriver ready to catch any swimmer (swimming
the fish ladder is a really bad idea anyhow). If you stay left and do
the fish ladder you will run the third slide right under a walking bridge
(usually with spectators) and hit a hard reactionary on your right to
avoid a full on hole on your left that is up against a wall. The reactionary
lifts you up and drops you on the left side of the channel making a left
to right move to hit the entry of the 4th slide in good position. With
the log, stay left, boof the rock protecting the entryway and make your
way around the second rock. The 4 slide is intense on the way down, especially
now that at the bottom a tree that is the size of a Washington State Redwood
is dead center at the bottom of the drop. The line is to stay left and
aim for the crazy splashing water that looks like one peton rock after
another, however it is good to go. Then catch the eddy on the left and
ferry under the tree on the most downstream side of it, and peel out into
the next drop around the corner that leads you into the final slide that
puts you back in the main river. The best place to eddy out is on the
right side right above the 5th slide and you can see the looming hole
at the bottom. I have never been surfed in this hole and never intend
to! However it requires a decent line on the right or left of it to shoot
through consistently. There are two main ways to do the 5th slide. The
normal way is to peel out of the eddy and go straight down hitting the
corner of the hole with right angle and a boof stroke to carry as much
of the 30 miles per hour of speed you have through the hole. The cool
way is to boof the 6 foot pourover on the left at the lead in, catching
the eddy behind it and peeling out into the middle of the slide and still
making the final move at the bottom. Today Danny and I boofed into the
pourover and he said, "The water is really high and you won’t have
to peel out very hard to get right at the bottom." We were both struggling
to maintain our position in the boily eddy below the pourover in the middle
of the whole drop and I said, "OK, you go first and show me."
and he started to peel out a little lower than I would expect and got
rejected by the boil on the eddyline and said, "wow, the boils are
bigger than I expected". At this point we were both thinking, "wouldn’t
it have been easier to just run the drop like a normal person?" but
there we were and the move was not going to get any easier by waiting
to I took off, made the peel out high by the pourover, peeling out into
water that is going about 20 miles per hour at that point, and I had enough
time to ride my draw all of the way into the hole, nailing my line where
I wanted it and cleanly shooting through into the eddy. Danny was right
behind me and had an identical line. The last drop always is interesting
because if you are scared of the hole and push too hard right you will
bounce off of the wall back into the hole, or worse peton the retaining
wall just under the water, hurt yourself, and then bounce back into the
hole for a beating (like Gilbert Rocha in the Pre-World Extreme Championships
in 1996).

The other line that Danny and I took just upstream
of there is the Back Canyon. The photos don’t really do it justice. After
running the 1st and 2nd slides we eddied out and had Kristine hike down
to the eddy at the bottom of the Back Canyon. She is still about 30 feet
above the river where she is taking these photos. We scouted the run to
make sure nothing had washed into it (this drop is where I had my closest
brush with death in 1996 when testing the Kinetic prototype with Sam Drevo,
pin under a log, swim, broken ribs, etc.). I am careful to check familiar
drops for new obsticles now. It was good to go so Danny and I got in the
water (after I waved and blew a kiss to Kristine way downhill and downstream).
From where we started we would have to do a ferry accross a wave (we were
downstream of the entry drop of the back canyon) and be pointed upstream
or straight accross to boof into the drop from the side. I made the boof
OK and the water at the landing was going from my right to left really
fast pulling my bow left hard causing me to do a brace on the right, eating
some valuable time needed to get to river right for the second drop in
an 8 foot wide crack with a hole on the left and a reactionary on the
right. I braced right and pulled through on the right stroke, then did
a hard left sweep to get my boat turned to the right wall where there
is a flake that is one boat width wide that if on it can carry you clear
of the worse hole on the canyon, but puts you on top of a very peaky boil
line that will either drop you left into a big reactionary or right into
a shallow but clean drop with a reactionary on the right. Luis Geltman
tells his story of hitting the left reactionary and not bracing into it
enough flipping and tearing his shoulders and chest up, something about
contusions, black and blue over his whole front side and not wanting to
do that again (we were drinking beer at Black’s bar last night and I didn’t
hear the whole thing.). Well I got over the boils to fall left and managed
to guide my Rocker in between the two reactionaries, leaving one relatively
non-threatening hole left to punch and then catch the eddy where Kristine
was taking photos. The hardest part of the drop is doing an attainment
to catch a wave, and to enter the rapid in a very non- traditional way,
from below and from the side to boof into a rapid that can’t be broken
into parts, but is a top to bottom run. So it is mentally a challenging
peel out, especially if you haven’t done it before or in a long time.

We got to the bottom of the 5th slide successfully and checked out Portage
hole (a good playboating spot) did a couple of enders in our Super Hero
and Rocker, and then paddled back accross the Fish Ladder into "Sandy
Beach"; an inlet that has a sandy beach and is the place most people
put in at to run Mather Gorge (below Great Falls). It is hot and humid
in DC so Danny and I took our gear off and spent 15 minutes cooling off,
swimming around in the 75 degree water before walking back to the car.
Yes, you can do all of this and simply walk back to the car, cool!

Now, I have described only one part of Great Falls, at one level, the
Fish Ladder and Back Canyon. These are about 1000 cfs out of the 20,000
cfs in the river. Start back at the low head dam, boof it, then go straight
down the middle of the river and you will find yourself in class 2-4 rapids
before the world drops out in front of you. You have three major choices:
Run the Maryland side (river left), run the Middle Lines, or Run the Virginia
side (river right). At today’s level the two intelligent choices are Maryland
(hard left at Pummel, then left of Charlies, and then down the meat at
Horseshoe or far left on an easy creek line) The traditional line is the
Center line which consists of "Grace Under Pressure" (I named
that rapid back in 1993), an un-named class 3+ into the Fingers, a 20
foot waterfall with several lines of varying difficulty. Out of towners
get confused and lost by the time they get to the fingers and unfortunately
risk going down Subway or Twist and Shout if they haven’t carefully scouted
the lead in and the slot to take at the bottom drop. It is not like a
normal river since it is SO wide with many look alike lead-ins. I watched
Arndt Schaeflein from Germany (an awesome creekboater) run off of the
fingers 10 feet too far right and land on a rock at the bottom that is
4 feet out of the water and bend his boat in half. Another kid did the
same thing but landed sideways and broke parts of his body (I don’t remember
which ones, but I think his back was one of them). With that said, I let
my kids run it, and Dane has run it numerous times, and certainly knows
where to go. Emily hasn’t run it yet but would love it.

As the water drops there is the standard Maryland or Virginia sides with
the Spout on the Virginia side being a 25 footer that is sweet! Both sides
are unbelievable with many various sublines in each side allowing you
to challenge yourself as much or little as you want. The kicker on the
Maryland side is Charlie’s Hole. Unfortunately known more recently because
Scott Bristow went into it by accident and was never seen again. (a rock
just downstream backs it up and the green water goes super deep, likely
under that rock.) Charlie’s Hole is not to be run by anyone considering
swimming as an option in the case of a very hard surf in an extremely
hard hole to get out of. I stopped playing games with that drop after
Scott’s death there, no longer assuming that "you can always swim
out". One game, however, that I thought was quite cool, back in 1988
was with Corran Addison.

First off, Charlie’s Hole is a long V-shaped slide at about a 45 degree
angle that carries alot of water in it and it freefalls for about 4 feet
into a vertical hole with an overhanging wall on the right and a 45 degree
wall on the left with the eddy feeding hard back into the hole. The green
water is so thick and fast and vertical that it punches a big hole in
the river and surfs you underwater for at least part of your surf, if
you should be so unlucky to be there. Well, the green water looked like
it went so deep so fast that i figured that it made an eddyling under
water just like on top of the water. My idea was to have Corran line up
on the eddyline below the hole and wait for me. I wasn’t going to tell
him what I was going to do. My idea was to plug my Dancer deep, following
the green water about 10 feet under water but with a slight left hand
angle and be on the left draw to pull my boat accross the eddyline while
10 feet under water, causing me to pop up in the eddy on the other side
of Corran. Well, without hesitation I did my standard catch the little
hole at the top of the slide and do a spin in it, then I lined up on the
left of the slide letting my bow drop and having just a hint of left hand
angle, and once my whole body was under and the force of the water was
on my back, I reached for the left draw and WHAM; it powerflipped me at
the bottom of the river and raked my right hand accross the rock at the
bottom and before I knew it I was rolling up, and was on the other side
of Corran! Cool! I put my hand up in the air for a fist pump (I was psyched)
and blood was already running down my arm. I still have scars on three
places on each finger (one on each knuckle). Corran was impressed but
not enough to try it.

Yes, I can go on and on about the Great Falls of the Potomac, like the
time I ran it solo at 100,000 cfs, or all of the extreme races we have
had on it, etc. I am happy to be here!

Enjoy the photos and come check out this river some time!

🙂 EJ