Lost & Found

Or Sad Sweep Strokes with Hand-Held Hip Pad

Selfie before surfing. Bryan Kirk in the background.

Little did I know, as I set up the camera, that the 1.5 hours of surfing with Bryan Kirk and others would amount to just half of my river time that evening. Or how grateful I’d be for that bum modicum of minicell. 

I was late, which of course never happens. The best shortcut to Observation Deck Wave (O-Deck) is running Great Falls. Since I was alone, the next best thing would be to zip down the Class II-III to the top of the Falls and then hike down the Flake, which separates Center and Virginia Lines. As luck would have it, my late arrival coincided perfectly with three boaters’ boofing the aqueduct dam just ahead of me. At 3.45 feet on the gauge, the Center Lines are too low and Spout, the last drop on the Virginia side, is too risky for my carbon fiber Ringer. So, I thought I’d run Pummel, the first, beefy drop on the Maryland side, then take the Alpine Line, which connects to the Center Lines and the Flake. Anand was in.

I threw a crappy kickflip a few waves above the drop, reset, and launched. Pummel gives the best boat-landing skips if you boof well, hopping you towards Virginia over the aerated water below the 12-foot drop. Anand skipped in just behind me, and we took the slot towards the Flake. “You know…the best way to avoid rocks,” Anand said, “is to run Maryland all the way down.” I didn’t take any convincing, excited to take the Ringer down the bottom drops on the Maryland Lines for the first time. 

We ferried out past the Charlie’s Hole slot, a scary do-not-enter spot, and Anand dropped into Z-Channel first. He was pretty far right, and I saw him get back endered. I aimed further left and instead of hitting the first big curler wave parallel to ride it left, I decided to charge and punch it perpendicular. Instead of punching it, the powerful break swallowed me and flung me over and down towards the next reactionary wave coming off the Maryland cliffs. I rolled up and sprinted for the river-left eddy. I could see Anand towards the middle of the current, under control, and headed down towards Horseshoe. 

From the eddy, I watched his clean boof of the hump on the river left side, then I ferried out past the middle and back into the meat. A few quick acceleration strokes and I lined up the launch pad at the lip of Horseshoe’s left side. The lightweight carbon Ringer always seems to float a little extra on the way down a vertical drop, and Anand was right—nothing but a big crashing wave train to land on and ride down towards O-Deck.

I met up with Bryan at O-Deck Wave and, for the next hour or so, we surfed the first and third waves. For variety, I set up my phone to record from the rocks on the Virginia side and managed to fit both waves in the frame. If you weighted the left edge just right and paddled like hell, you could catch the Anvil, the rowdy, steep middle segment. I could make it in the Ringer and, after we swapped boats, just barely in the Necky Jive that Bryan had brought. Bryan threw a picture-perfect, blisteringly fast spin on the Anvil in the Ringer. And I was impressed by what the Jive could do considering the decades-old design. I got a near-vertical blunt on the third wave and enjoyed a fun spin-to-backsurf on the Anvil. 

All the sprinting for the Anvil sapped our strength, and we called it quits by 5:30 p.m. I surfed back over to Virginia to grab my phone, while Bryan went for one last surf. Climbing out on the slippery rocks, I balanced my boat on a rock, tucked my paddle into a crevice, and scrambled up to reach my phone. I’d foolishly left the screen on full brightness so the battery had died. Hopping down, I saw Bryan headed off towards Rocky. I picked up my boat to empty it and accidentally dislodged my paddle from its nook. It skittered for the water like a startled watersnake, but I managed to pin it between my boat and a rock. A second later though, a strong surge snagged the extended blade and sucked the paddle out towards the main current and out of my reach. I leapt into my boat, sadly sitting directly onto—and peeling off—my foam hip pad in my haste. I could see my paddle bobbing and charging down in the direction of Fisherman’s Eddy but lost sight of it as I put on my sprayskirt. I grabbed the hip pad like a hand paddle and angled out of the eddy after my paddle, scanning the rocks and micro-eddies along the banks. 

I saw no sign of it as I continued through Fish Ladder Rapid (now often called Portage) and down towards S-Turn, puzzled how it could evade every eddy on the way down. Still, once I reached S-Turn without a glimpse of it, I returned upstream, where two teens were making out on the clifftop downstream of the Virginia Observation Deck. They joined the search as I ferried back and forth to Fisherman’s Eddy. Nothing. Even as I hiked up to where the drama had started. 

Hand paddling out for the second time, I drove hard for Mather Gorge, head swiveling all the time. I passed Patrick Khaghani, who started looking as he attained. I continued nearly as far as the Fairfax swiftwater rescue ramp, where Mather Gorge bends left towards DC. Nothing. A second kissing couple joined the search from the cliffs. 

Settling in for a long evening of hunting, I began the attainment back towards Rocky. Patrick, who had gone as far as the base of S-Turn, mentioned that Calleva River School’s Cheat Elite crew were headed up from the Chutes. Finally, relief. Given how hard it would be to spot a black paddle in the dark, it helped knowing that at least half a dozen paddlers would soon be sweeping up the gorge.

I hopped out at the top of Rocky, Bookend, and finally at my least favorite attainment, Treadmill, then climbed with my Ringer to the top of the cliffs. Great vantage point but no paddle. I soon had to turn inland from the cliffs to jog along the Great Falls trails, where I asked the mother of some cartwheeling kids to message my family from her phone before hurrying on.

At nearly 7:00 p.m., with the sun setting, I started the rocky descent towards Fisherman’s Eddy with a sudden slip and hard sit-down on my butt, clunking the Ringer on the rocks beside me. Carefully, hoping I hadn’t further mashed my herniated disc, I stood and took stock of the slick path ahead. I scanned the slope all the way down to the big eddy at the bottom. There, floating lazily, miraculously—even mockingly—in the middle of Fisherman’s Eddy was my paddle.