A Tale of Two Paddling Trips
By Alf Cooley
In the evening of Sunday, Oct. 6, a friend alerted me to a local TV news program about 10 canoeists and kayakers being helicoptered out of the Potomac up by Rileys Lock that afternoon.
It quickly became apparent that the place in question was the George Washington Canal, where the CCA's Sunday Paddlers usually run our trips. We were not on the GWC on this particular Sunday because we'd been enjoying the good water (866 cfs) down on the Kellys Ford section of the Rappahannock.
Intrigued by how so many boaters could come a cropper and require such a spectacular rescue, to find and talk with these boaters I put out feelers through the Cabin John Fire and Rescue Squad and Fairfax Rescue, who effected the recovery. I also spoke with Gary Steinberg, CCA's head of kayak instruction, who has many contacts in the paddler training fraternity. Fairfax never answered; Cabin John, despite helpful beginnings, ended up quoting HIPAA at me, shutting down that avenue. But Gary came up with a friend of one of the paddlers, and within a week I was on the phone with a person who seemed to be the organizer. For many years he had taken beginner groups out to flat and swiftwater sections of the Potomac.
On this occasion the trip organizer had multiple novices in recreational kayaks descending the GWC at 4.5 ft/ 15,300 cfs on the Little Falls gage, a hefty flow with seven times the volume experienced during many weeks this fall at 2.8 ft/ 2,120 cfs level. Three of the kayaks flipped at undetermined locations along the GWC, but the positions of the left-behind and wrecked boats indicate that mishaps occurred at or above Surfers Ledge and Diagonal Rapid. After two kayakers lost their paddles and the leader exhausted his supply of spares in his canoe, the trip halted. One kayaker called 911, and recovery was out of the group's hands as local authorities took over. Two helicopters soon arrived and lifted at least some of the group via basket to a nearby green at Trump's golf course, and at least some were helo'ed across to Rileys Lock and checked for injuries, of which there were none requiring any treatment. They then Ubered back to their cars at Pennyfield. (To start, they had paddled up the C&O Canal to Violettes.) In all, quite an adventure.
Exactly who among the paddling group or groups was where remains murky. WUSA said, "In total crews rescued 10 people using different methods"—some rescued by boat, some by helicopter, with some having been on an island while others were on rocks and others were in the water—but apparently this summary conglomerates two separate groups and rescues on the GWC and on the main Potomac.
Later in the week, other boaters passed down the GWC and photographed some spectacular wrecked canoes/kayaks sticking straight up out of woodpiles and jammed under logs. One of these observers towed off a couple of the beached kayaks and advertised them on Potomac Paddlers website. In all, only three boats made their way back to the owner, the rest strewn about the GWC or simply missing.
It was fortunate no one was hurt, as the strainers on the GW Canal pose a serious risk to inexperienced boaters, especially at higher water levels. Their adventure could easily have become a fatal disaster. We contacted the trip leader, alerted him to the Potomac Paddlers posting and returned a ditty bag from his canoe and a breakdown kayak paddle that we found a month later. We discussed where the safety information on the CCA website can be found and invited him to come out with us when the warm season starts next year.
As it happens, the CCA Kellys Ford trip that October day also had its share of paddlers involuntarily in the water. Coordinator Wayne McDaniel reports that 18 paddlers joined in. Ten of them had never run that lovely stretch of the Rappahannock before, and "in a perhaps not entirely unrelated data point," wrote Wayne, "we had four capsizes," all at Sandy Beach rapid. But these paddlers were reunited with their equipment without difficulty and completed the trip without incident, and certainly without helicopters.
So It's not that swims don't occur—far from it. Rather, it's the contrast in post-capsize outcomes that day that is so worth noting: what happened (a lot, potentially dangerously) when the group as a whole wasn't fully prepared for the river conditions they took on, and what happened (not much) when river conditions were well-matched by the preparation and skills of the group as a whole.