Whitewater is Magic

Whitewater kayaking is magical. Finding the balance between man and water is a dance. And when the rhythm is just right, there is no feeling like it.

I've been spending a lot of time surfing the 271 wave on the Cuyahoga River in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Last year ill health kept me out of a few sessions, so I got to pretend to be a photographer. Here are a few of my favorite attempts at capturing the magic there.

Cheat Canyon First Descent

Matt, AKA "River Ninja," John "El Presidente," Hull's Angel Jason and DBP admin Jivin' Javan.

Blazing sun cut across the crisp, cold morning air. Sharp blue skies were punctuated by the undulating mountains of West Virginia. The put-in for the Cheat River Canyon was as deserted as the bare branches of the winter trees. But there was no snow; only four boaters and enough water for a low-runnable paddle down the Cheat Canyon on a cold Sunday morning in October.

For three of us, it was our first descent of the canyon. Our group leader was the unshakeable Jason R. A founding member of Hull’s Angels, the initiation for joining his paddling group is to beat up a member of the Keelhaulers. Fortunately, we had him outnumbered at three-to-one. So he agreed to guide us down the canyon after having spent countless days on the Cheat (including the two days before our trip).

Jason has been paddling big water for a few seasons. Just weeks before our trip, he’d already had numerous marathon runs on the Gauley River (upper, middle and lower runs). The Tygart Gorge, Lower Big Sandy and New River Gorge were all old news to Jason. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he started calling specific named rapids on the Cheat Canyon “no-name” or “choose your own adventure.” Maybe because we had him outnumbered as Keelhaulers that was how he took a shot at the club-boater rivalry. Of course, we were grateful when he would rally us before the big ones – Teardrop, Coliseum and Pete Morgan – to show us the lines gracefully and flawlessly.

We had fewer than four combat rolls and no swims. Our paddling group consisted of just John Banach, Javan Robinson, Jason and myself. We made it a day-trip, so counting the long shuttle we spent at least eight hours in a car for maybe three hours on the water. It was beyond worth it. The Cheat Canyon is a special place where green water meets red rock, purple mountains, blue skies and of course seemingly endless frothy whitewater. The picture of the Class II approach into the Canyon from the put-in at Albright, where ghostly pillars stretch across the river without a bridge deck to give them purpose, is forever burned into my memory.

For three of us, it was another notch on our rescue belt. For me, the Cheat was my second personal first descent for 2016, and it was by far the biggest. Another epic trip that I will never forget. I can’t wait to go back for Cheat Fest in 2017 and get more days on the water in this beautiful piece of Americana. 

The view from the take out bridge at the Cheat River Canyon.

Bruised Ribs and Egos on Stonycreek Canyon

Punching Showers rapid on the Stonycreek Canyon. Photo credit: Matt Jackson

The spring of 2016 proved generous to paddlers in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, as one of the region’s great river-play runs ran often. I’m talking of course about the Stonycreek Canyon in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where they must get enough rain to fill the Quemahoning Reservoir in order to get the scheduled whitewater releases to turn the Stony Canyon into a playboater’s wet dream.

Typically the reservoir runs low and stops releasing by early summer. Last year, the Stony was running into July. Every-other weekend, members of the Keelhaulers Canoe and Kayak Club became fixtures in the shuttle parking lots at the ballfields and Carpenter’s Park.

On one June weekend the reservoir had enough water to release on both Saturday and Sunday, and a group of us turned the rare summer occasion into a weekend of paddling and camping. I had spent the winter and spring getting comfortable in my new down-river playboat, a banana-colored Fuse 64, and so every feature on the Stony became a challenge for surfing, spinning or just dropping into it for a beating. I had more than a dozen sessions playing in Swimmer’s on the Lower Yough, surfing the various waves at 271 on the Cuyahoga and anywhere else I could find a hole or wave to do some playboating work in.

Needless to say, I was feeling especially confident – despite really not having any playboating moves – when  I dropped into the surfer’s right side (river left) of the Third Sister rapid on the Stony Canyon to test my mettle. The rapid is a ledge drop that creates a wicked hydraulic at all levels, with a narrow playspot. I wasn’t entirely unprepared for the ride, but I wasn’t expecting to get so stuck that several times the thought “I am never going to get out of here” would run through my head. I was side surfing pointing river left. Then I was rodeo-riding into a side surf pointing river right. Then I pulled a flat spin. And on, and on it went for what felt like an eternity (but was really between 2 minutes to 3 minutes max). The upstream pull of the hole made it impossible for my meager skills to get me to surfer’s left, and freedom, where a break in the bedrock creates a tongue that provides the weary (and informed) paddler an escape. I managed to ride the hole, much to the entertainment of the small crowd enjoying lunch on the bank, without flipping until I muscled my way out to surfer’s right. The ride was certainly uglier than a dead pig wearing lipstick, but in my mind it was a success. I survived without rolling or swimming, and I got a few spins – unintended or not – in for posterity’s sake.

That day we paddled all the way down to Greenhouse Park, where we further exhausted ourselves playing in the wave for a few more hours as the last of the day’s water trickled away. We all had a stellar, confidence-building day and were ready for day two.

Pulling a stern stall in the Stony play wave at Greenhouse Park. Photo credit: Jeremiah Richard

Our micro-Keelhaulers crew included Javan Robinson, Josiah Colvin, Nick Conway, Jeremiah Richard and Pete Costello. It poured down rain that night, adding extra juice to our already amped-up attitudes for the weekend.

We embarked on our second day feeling ready to conquer the Stikine. Fortunately, it was just the Stony. I’d spent the night around the campfire egging on Javan, who has shown some incredible growth in a short time paddling. I kept telling him that if he dropped into the Third Sister hole, I would aim for a repeat performance. I kept telling him it wasn’t that bad, but it would be an epic ride. Javan isn’t one to shy away from a challenge, and given his physical fitness level of somewhere between 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee, he can almost always muscle his way out of a tight spot.

As we approached the hole, we were all paddling single-file. Javan was up front and dropped straight in to start surfing. His Dagger GT sliced back and forth, the bow only submerging periodically before bursting back through. But it was clearly more of a bucking Bronco than a pony ride, and he started struggling to control his direction. That’s just when Josiah was lining up to drop in. Javan darted left as the hydraulic starting moving Josiah sideways, and bam! The arrowhead-shaped bow of the GT found soft flesh between the padding of Josiah’s PFD.  

Josiah was in pain, yet no one but him knew just how much. We took a moment to gather the group, and then we continued down the canyon. Josiah’s moans grew louder, and he slowly drifted towards the back of the pack. At one point, I think I heard him mutter “My ribs are broken.” As we drove home, he started complaining the force of the wind with the windows down made his sides hurt. A few days later, he learned that he’d left the canyon with bruised ribs thanks to the unintentional contact at Third Sister with Javan’s bow. He had to take a brief hiatus from paddling, but in the end we all learned two valuable facts. Never drop into a playspot if Javan is already in it. And the Third Sister is the ugliest sister! So if you ever paddle with our small group and hear someone jokingly say “Go for his ribs!,” now you’ll know why. 

Finding Nirvana in the Cuyahoga Upper Gorge

Me going for the boof line at Welcome to the Jumble/Staircase rapid on the Cuyahoga River Upper Gorge (Sheraton) section. I nailed it, despite some low-water scraping at the lip and plugging hard. Photo credit: Shawn Yingling

I embarked on my meager whitewater kayaking journey five years ago. That’s when I first set my sights on the Sheraton section, or UpperGorge, of the Cuyahoga River. My kayaking quest started in 2010, in a rented kayak, using a rec paddle to struggle to stay straight on a 5-mile flat water trip down the Cuyahoga River between Kent and Munroe Falls. I was hooked instantly.

I quickly bought a crossover rec boat of my own and was running entry-level sections in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park every chance I got. I soon progressed to a true whitewater boat, met some “real” paddlers and learned about our area’s hidden gem – a Class V stretch with two small waterfalls hidden in plain sight between a highway and a huge hotel in Cuyahoga Falls.

As I learned to paddle, the Cuyahoga Upper Gorge remained the carrot-stick dangling in front of me, driving me on. Although it took a few years for me to stop thinking of it as a never-going-to-happen paddle experience and start imagining myself running between the gorge’s steep, rocky cliffs.

Almost six years after I started paddling the season had finally come. In 2016 I truly started to believe I would paddle the Upper Gorge. I had a near bomb-proof roll. I’d been running Class III-IV for two years. I felt ready. But I wanted my personal first descent to be in optimal conditions. That meant I was waiting for warmer weather, longer (and brighter) days, a level that wasn’t above recommended flow or below bare-bones flow, and a solid group.

Finally, in late July, a summer rainstorm delivered just enough water to bring the Upper Gorge back to life. It was 80 degrees. The level was low-runnable. And a few of the local shaolin masters who could run the Upper Gorge blindfolded, regardless of level, including Tommy Piros, Shawn Yingling and Don Howdyshell, thanklessly agreed to set safety and guide me down.

I won’t detail how I navigated every nuance of the run. There’s a great video that does that. Instead, I wanted to express the larger-than-life feeling that comes from floating in a place where only an exclusive group of people have ever been. As the Upper Gorge bent from south to west, and the run started to level out in the Gorge Dam pool, the setting sun set the gorge walls ablaze just as we were paddling out. The roar of the adjacent highway and bustle of downtown Cuyahoga Falls faded away. The mind-altering peace of this special place settled in, and it felt like home.

Truly there is no better feeling than a first descent. Four years of anticipation, the unmatched positivity of the group and a gigantic feeling of accomplishment left me truly and spectacularly amazed by the power of this short, urban whitewater trip. I hope someday, when the time is right, you too will know the best whitewater the Cuyahoga River has to offer.

*Disclaimer: the Sheraton section of the Cuyahoga is for experienced paddlers only. If you don't know what the word "boof" means and don't have a bomb-proof roll, do not attempt this run.

Kayaking the Year Away in 2016

Hapy days.

“What are the hashmarks?” Aside from a great conversation starter, the hashmarks on the backside of my paddle are how I loosely tracked my days on the water for 2016. I started the year off on the water on New Year’s Day and on Jan. 2. Back-to-back days on the water to start the year was more than I could ask for. And it helped me set my hopes high.

So to informally track how many times I got in my boat I started scrawling marks on my paddle blade. Each slash represented a day on the river, somewhere, paddling Class II or better. I had hoped for 50. I came close and notched 39 days on the water. Family obligations slowed my pace. Trips involving two days or more on the water helped. In the end, it represented 39 gloriously happy days with friends, two epic first-descents and a tremendous amount of personal paddling development.

Really it amounts to less than one day a week. It doesn’t sound like much. Especially knowing one of our area paddlers notched 300 days on the water in 2016 (#amazing). But I got a great mix of park-and-play time, big water runs and lots of down-river play sessions. Even one day would be enough. So far, so good for 2017. Where will 2018 find me?