The newest episode of InBetween Swims:The Whitewater Podcast is online!

The latest episode of InBetween Swims (The Do-ing of the Thing) is now online! Chris Emery of KayakMind co-hosts!!

- Christy Dobson swims!
- Nate and Heather Herbeck talk about 'Toxic Waters'
- Epicocity's Andy Maser gets ready for a first descent on China's Angry River - the Salween
- Chris Galloway reviews his award-winning "Green Race Movie"
- Chris Gragtmans studies and runs a first descent of Alabama's Desoto Falls.

Available on I-tunes or at the link below

(If you listen to the show via I-Tunes, please give the show a rating!)

Thanks for listening!

~jeffmc

InBetween Swims: The Whitewater Podcast

http://www.inbetweenswims.com/

(Photo: Joe Stumpfel on Big Brother - by Maggie Snowel of http://thinkrain.blogspot.com/)

Cheat Training Updates, Week2/3/4

Some Utube links below from the 8th during a high water event (7ft or so), the 15th in the 4's, and this past saturday in the 5's. One of the best shots is of Ted ferrying from Sandy Beach to the Garage. There wasn't a great struggle there, really good exit angle and nice smooth even strokes.
3/8/08
3/15/08
3/22/08
If anyone wants anything removed...erumuh...fern...just let me know.

My Trip to Richmond

I just returned from Richmond on Tuesday night. It all started as a trip to pick up some boats for Cheat Training, but turned into a great day on the river with one of our friends and students, John Bell. His sister and family live in Richmond and provided us with a lovely base of operations and logistical support for our enterprise. You see, John has wanted me to lead a trip down there for a few weeks now, and Sunday at Dickerson I floated the idea by him. We decided to drive down on Monday, spend the night, then pick the boats up and run the James. Which is just what we did.

We arrived on Monday around 6pm and met the family. They were great and provided me with as much Guinness as I could handle (2 to be exact), it was St Patty's Day after all. We had a great dinner and spent the evening playing with Lucy the Border Collie, conversing, and plotting our run down the James. You see, we were a bit vague on the shuttle details.

In the morning we picked up the boats from a nice woman who was sadly to busy to paddle, and then met up with John's sister for shuttle. We opted to put in at the upper James section at the Pony Pasture put in. I followed John's sister to the take out near at the Mayo Bridge (14th St). After a bit of uturning near Mortons Steakhouse, we secured a parking spot in a public lot on the other side of the flood wall. (We would discover the real place to park later)

Richmond is a really neat town, and a town in transition at that. They have made a real effort at the revitalization of the town, particularly in the areas by the river. Most of it has been done on river left, river right is probably the next spot to get a makeover. The last time I was in Richmond, I was there for one of Liz's marathons, and we stayed at the Jefferson with her parents. We ate at some great restaurants, but the highlight for me was getting the hotels shuttle van to run my shuttle for my first trip to the James. They drove me to the put in and then picked me up at the end.

Once we got back to the top, John's sister dropped me off and headed to tennis. Lots of ladies play tennis in Richmond. If I lived in Richmond I would have them all paddling. John and I put on the river around noon and stayed up in the rapids at Pony Pasture to put on a show for the walkers. The show consisted of us surfing a bit and going over the basics of boofing, a topic John has been eager to get into. The birds were chirping, the wind a bit breezy, and the trees just beginning to bloom. The river is generally flat with a few sections of rapids to break up the paddling. The upper section to town is a great place to take beginners and low intermediate paddlers. The water level was 5.3 ft on the gauge, considered a medium level. You can see a view of town and the river from the photo at the top.

John and I made it down to the rapids on the Lower. The first rapid we came to was on river right, it was a break in the dam. We ran First Break which is a wave train. We then worked our way down mainly river right, catching great eddies and boofing occasionally until we made it to the large rapid for the day. I believe it was called Hollywood, which was a fair size rapid. We boat scouted and then ran the large wave train, working right to left to avoid the large pile of rocks. For all the water pouring on it, it should have had a bigger pillow, which indicated it was a potentially gnarly place to get pushed into. We styled our lines much to the delight of our large fan club of enthusiastic high school students on shore above the rapid. They can walk to it from the foot bridge to an island.

We crept on down to a large bridge/dam. After peering over the edge, John suggested we run it where some natural rocks break up the flow on the left. After this we worked our way right to a large wave hole rapid, then an attain back up river and to the left to drop into a tree covered island. Hidden in here were two or three sweet boofing type drops. A bit higher and they would have been better, they were still quite good. It was neat to run creeky lines on a very wide river, through an island, in the middle of a large town.

We were next greeted by some great steps on river left, that I thought was for fisherman. Lo and behold we climb the steps and there was the best river take out ever, provide by the local paddlers. The take out truly was great. I have two photos John took, but will post them later as I am having trouble formatting them into the blog.

All in all, it was a fun trip. I want to thank John for providing the idea, Cheat Training for the incentive of tracking down long boats, and John's sister and her family for having us down. I must also add a special thank you to our yellow Remix. The Remix 69 is a great boat that was a blast to paddle. It surfs and spins, is fast, and boofs great, gets out of holes, and is super comfy. The Remix deserves its own blog entry later. In final summary, go to the James sometime, it is a lot of fun.

Attaining

I used to hate attaining. Learning to kayak in this area, one doesn’t find the term too out of place, in fact usually by the second beginner class we have people learning with varying degrees of frustration- Andre’s attain at Violette’s lock. People from other areas have a much more difficult time understanding, but once you’re here it kinda makes sense. Of course when I hated attaining, I had a Diesel, and no offense, but it probably equates to finding a large block of wood and trying to paddle it upstream. Once I switched to a longer boat it became a little more clear – I could actually go somewhere, failing all the time was frustrating and really not fun.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned while trying various attains on the Potomac. You could be at wetbottom in the 4’s where #1 you need endurance (certain levels create a mindnumbing burn). You also need to learn how edging your boat helps you deal with boils which are trying hard to push you out of the eddy. You need to expect your bow will be pushed over to one side or the other, but before it happens, you’ve already corrected it with a simple slightly modified forward stroke that flares out a bit because if you take a sweep or a stern draw….you’re probably downstream…

Maybe you’re at the top of the backchannel above dead cow and its 7 or 8ft. There’s a nice eddy on the other side, but you also look down a little and you can really imagine yourself upside down and scraping along the rocky island wall. But really, it only takes good exit angle, a good ferry with bow control, and some mental determination.

Maybe its 5ft and you want to attain center chute, sure you could go beneath the hole, but why? This is attaining, if you cant make it up center at 5ft you can at least challenge yourself that you CAN make it above the hole, right? If you can surf the top wave and hold that edge, just like you would in a playboat to get to the far side of center chute hole, you’ve already made it, if you surf the second smaller wave across, its pretty close but you can do it. If you commit to neither and hit the crest of the wave in between you’re not going anywhere.

Really one of the best things I’ve learned is to expect the expected?. I know that my long bow will be harder to control but if I can expect these events I can correct them with a good solid stroke or a good edge before its too late. Make your strokes meaningful, if you are going to edge, hold it, make it count. One executed stroke or edge can make the difference between success and trying 8 more times. That said, I still screw up all the time so its always good to be prepared for the unexpected.
Kristin, John, and I have started an attaining blog to keep up and log various moves we’ve tried. There aren’t any great pictures or videos, really just numbers. It would be nice to have most of the possible levels documented and listed by skill level or difficulty so if you have numbers feel free to post a note and we’ll get to them. If you’ld like to be a contributor let me know. http://attaining.blogspot.com/

Liquid Adventures 'Day of Creekin' Spring Creek Boat Clinics

Updated for 2009

Coming again, on Sundays in April, Liquid Adventures is offering a class in the basics of creeking, instructed and led by Tom McEwan.

Whether it be the Top Yough or the Lower Big Sandy or another river, we will meet at a convenient place to set up shuttle for the section we will run that day.  Naturally, at this time of year there is no predicting which rivers will be running on any given weekend, but we can say with certainty that there will be a creek or small river running somewhere in west Virginia that will be fun to run.  As the rivers require, we will stop to spend time working on specific skills - on running falls, or how to scout a complicated series of rapids, emphasizing elementary skills for running steep gradient and making the tight moves like, boofing, hole surfing, seal launching and setting appropriate safety.

The Rivers: A day or two before we make our final plans, we will be checking levels on the following rivers in the Northern Appalachians: the Lower Big Sandy, Top Yough, Middle Fork of the Tygart (Audra ST. Park), Tygart Gorge (Belington), Kitzmiller section of the North Branch, Shaver's Fork of the Cheat, Meadow Run (near Ohiopyle). These are all class III-IV in difficulty.

Skill Level: Participants in this program should possess a solid roll and are able to catch most eddies in Class III white water. Paddlers who run Dickerson at moderate to high levels are ready for this program.  There may be some weekends that we will designate for a more advanced group and other weekends for less advanced.  If you register for any given weekend, we will make adjustments as needed. 

Cost: $120 or package of 4 for $400.

Registration: click on registration. If you have not already, establish a logon, fill out contact information, and then follow directions to register for 'A Day of Creekin.'' Pick the dates you wish to register. Dates offered are April 5, 12, 19, 26.

What to bring: It would be smart to dress for the worst conditions: there is a 10- 15 degree difference in temperature between the DC area and the highlands beyond Cumberland. Bring a dry top/pants or dry suit, layers of fleece for underneath, something warm to cover your legs (like Hydroskin, paddling pants/fleece or IR Thermoskin), head warmer, Pogies or gloves, your lunch in a dry bag, float bags, and your creek boat.

Transportation: For the sake of efficiency, we like to carpool to the rivers. Once you register, we will email you a message with the email addresses of the others attending, and you will be welcome to contact each other to set up a meeting place and form a car pool.  Tom will already be up at Albright for Cheat Training and will meet somewhere near the designated river.

Basically fun!

Recently, I was out with paddling friend who had dislocated her shoulder about six months ago. She was just getting back into the boat, trying to get comfortable again. The levels were higher than they had been for a while, so we were keeping it simple. We critiqued forward strokes, put the boats on edge, did some ferries and eddy turns. It was time well spent...and it reminded me of two things.

First, can you spend too much time on the basics...strokes, edges, boat control? Maybe the better question is --- when did you last spend ANY deliberate time on your skills? As I've improved, there is a natural tendency to feel as if I've graduated from the basics. But championship teams and performers often get to the top precisely because of their focus on fundamentals. "Simple things done well" is the key to success, a coaching mentor often told me.

Second, you can take any easy situation and make it harder --- and more fun! We took an easy eddy and started driving at it harder, changing the angle of approach and playing with the exit angles. Simple ferries became "must make" moves. Putting the boat EXACTLY where we wanted became the only acceptable goal. Failure was punished only by disappointment --- not a beatdown. And success was measured by a good sweat and good fun. We had all of that and more, a very satisfying day on the river.

So, for me it means that any level is a good level...and any time I get on the water is a good time. Work on the simple stuff the next time your paddling options seem limited. Make easy moves harder by putting a little pressure on yourself. I think you'll find it just basically fun!

Forward Stroke Analysis for Cheat Training

Some of you out there may be wanting some help or tips on your forward stroke, particularly with Cheat Training in full swing. Hollie and Tom headed out to the canal the other day to do just that.  Look for more paddling tips from us this season as we periodically highlight key skills for paddling.  Go to this link for details on  forward stroke technique. 

Cheat Training Update-Week1

The Cheat Race has been an organized event for over 10 years. One of the highlights is the mass start at the usual putin near Albright, WV, and the race continues through rapids such as Big Nasty, High Falls and Colisseum for over 10miles ending at the Jenkinsburg Bridge where a couple of wonderful kegs await. In 2004, Tom started a program at LAKS to train for the race, bringing back long boating skills to new boaters in our area. If you don't paddle all winter, this program helps kickstart your spring, getting you in shape physically and mentally to improve and enjoy a new season of boating. Hopefully my video and editing skills will improve.

Cheat Training Update- Week1

Some post workout interviews.