We had 6 paddlers, 5 in kayaks and 1 in a Packraft, join us for a July 11th run from the Old Angler’s Inn put in on the Potomac River down to the Lock 10 take out. We had originally planned on paddling this run on Wednesday Jul 10th, but had to postpone a day due to a storm that came through Wednesday evening. The water level was at 2.71 ft and the discharge was 1570 cfs at the time we took the boats out according to the Little Falls gage. The group consisted of Alf Cooley, Diane Hobbs, Logan Hoffman, Margot Regier, Saerom Park, and me. We launched very close to our target time of 6:30 PM and arrived at Lock 10 at about 8:00 PM, a little bit ahead of our usual race with the sunset. This week we bypassed the Offutt rapids again since that channel is still impassable and proceeded river right down the Teacups side of the island. But we were still able to have some fun playing around Yellow Falls and Stubblefield Falls. I’m very happy to report that we had no incidents on this trip, and the only rolls that occurred were the ones we did intentionally to cool off. Once again, the entrance to the Lock 10 channel approaching the take out was pretty shallow, so we decided to explore a little to see if there were other possible passages, but we still had to drag our boats to the take out. We did spend less time playing in Yellow and Stubblefield Falls this week and arrived at the take out well before sunset.
The recent drought is taking its toll on the water level, and this trip is getting to be more difficult to run as the water level continues to drop. We will monitor the water level and see if we can take another shot at this on July 17th.
Submitted by
Dean Hawes