Paddler Magazine
High Water and High Hopes
Some Like it Big: Huge water brings out the best
by Tom Bie
One of the most famous high-water runs of all time is undoubtedly that of Olympian Davey Hearn, who paddled the Potomac in 1996 when it was pushing 18 feet on the gauge and carrying somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 cfs. Hearn was arrested at the take out by Park Service police, but the judge dismissed the case before a defense even had to be mounted. "It was actually a very safe and prudent thing to do," Hearn says. "I'd ran it several times at that level. At 7 to 14 feet, there's a terminal hole that forms behind the Brookmont Dam, but at 18 feet it forms a huge wave that stretches a third of the way across the river. I wanted to be in that particular place at that particular time because I knew the wave would be there."
Hearn was training for the '96 Olympics at the time but he says he's always enjoyed the challenge presented when rivers run high. "Big water boating is the best kind of paddling there is," Hearn says. "There's more power to work with, there's bigger waves - that's where you put it all together. It's the kind of thing that gives you respect for the river. And if you didn't have it before, you'll have it afterward."
Hearn is also a veteran of the daunting Niagara Gorge, which Chris "Spe" Spelius made famous when he notched the first descent of the mile-long torrent in 1976. The run was illegal and Spe's paddling partner was arrested. But Chris, proving he knows how to pick a good line both on and off the water, escaped the not-quite-long-enough arm of the law. Spelius is one of the more famous big water paddlers the sport has ever produced, being raised in the West before bringing his high water style to bear as an instructor for ten years at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. As owner of Expediciones Chile, Spelius now teaches on Chile's ample supply of big water, including the famed Rio Futaleafu.
While Spelius and Hearn are two of several kayakers to have run Niagara Gorge, only one canoe has ever made the trip, paddled in 1988 by North Carolina's Nolan Whitesell. "Eight of us ran it at over 150,000 cfs," Whitesell says. "We did more scouting of that one rapid than I've done in 10 other rapids combined. The lines would change from hour to hour and when you were running it you were blind 80 percent of the time because you spent most of your time in the trough of a big wave."
Both Whitesell and Hearn say Niagara Gorge was running at a breakneck 25-30 mph and that the safety considerations of paddling that type of water can't be overstated. "The big danger is that it's basically every man for himself," Whitesell says. "There is a limitation to what any safety boater can do under those circumstances. You can be a quarter of a mile behind someone just by missing an eddy turn. And throw ropes become a joke-it's got to be a boat-to-boat rescue." Despite the danger, Whitesell says he loves big water paddling far more than some of the other "emerging trends" he sees in the sport. "Sliding down wet rocks has never been my cup of tea," he says.
