After much dithering with a dedicated team of ditherers, the Trip Coordinator landed on the Cacapon for this Sunday’s Paddle. Alf estimates 1,300 cfs at Edward’s Run at the time we put on.
How is this? We’re calling it pentagulation - 5 data points. Alf uses the gauges at Cootes Store, Moorefield, Winchester, Passage, and Waites and tosses Great Cacapon as an outlier (too high). Methodology available from Alf upon request.
In case you don't have access to an Alf to assist in pentagulation of 5 gauges, I'm including AW’s calculated gauge (Tony Allred’s) for additional reference. This calculation (available on American Whitewater) put the river running at 2390 cfs at the time of put in (12:30), and 2230 using that same gauge at 3:00 when we took out. This is AW’s “high runnable” stage. Using the gauge at the Bloomery Bridge we estimated it to be about 2 feet, 1 inch when we met at the take out around 11, and 1 foot, 10 inches by 3:00.
Given the swiftness of the current, we opted to run the high water sneak lines on all the ledge drops. River right for the first two and left for the last one. The first ledge drop had a nearly river wide hole to punch (with the exception of the right slide/sneak). The other two ledge drops were pretty much washed out. At this level, the Cacapon takes on a different character. There were fun, bouncy wave trains throughout the run. With no rocks to be seen anywhere! So, not really in the least bit technical. But a swim would have likely been long given the swiftness of the current. Fortunately, with this group there was none of that nonsense. Just easy riding nice, bouncy waves.
There was drama, but it was not ours, fortunately. Upon paying Mr. Sines our parking fees he shared that a Boy Scout troop had put on the day prior (while the creek was rising) and had gotten into trouble. SWR units (local and surrounding districts) had to be called in to retrieve everyone. Fortunately, no one was injured. There are several local articles about it online, one here. (30 paddlers, 9 canoes found). We found several sites (I lost count, definitely more than the 2-3 mentioned in the article) of canoes tied to trees on the river banks. We found two paddles (one stuck in a strainer), and two other canoes that were in pretty poor shape (one partially submerged and another caught/wrapped on a strainer). It appears that at least some of the canoes must have flipped at the first ledge drop. For me, it underscored the importance of always checking levels and weather before putting on a river.
We had nine paddlers (Alf, Barb, Wayne, Ginny, Gary, Lisa L., Greg, John S. and myself). All in all it was a lovely day with good company on a beautiful creek.
