Potomac Race Is a Moving Experience
By Angus Phillips
Washington Post Columnist
Tuesday, May 18, 1999; Page D3
The current drought may not be every whitewater boater's dream but it does bode well for the 44th Potomac Downriver Race, scheduled to start at about 1 p.m. Sunday at Rocky Island, below Great Falls.
In some years, spring rains force numerous postponements of this Washington tradition. This year, the weather appears to be cooperating, water level is summer-like and organizers hope for a big turnout. "All paddle-powered boats and boaters welcome," says the invitation from the Canoe Cruisers Association.
However, the eight-mile run down Mather Gorge, through four sets of rapids from Rocky Island to Sycamore Island below the American Legion Bridge, is not for everyone. Back in the 1950s, in the days of wood-and-canvas canoes and first-generation Grumman aluminum boats, it was considered an experts-only run that drew some of the top racers in the land.
"It was very competitive back then," said Tom McEwan, the legendary Washington whitewater adventurer who runs the Calleva School of Paddling in Germantown and will send some of his students to the race this year. "Now, it's a great family race. You have safety boats at all the rapids. It's a good time to take kids. But you still need intermediate paddling skills to do it. You should have run the river enough to be familiar with it before you go."
McEwan made his first run down the course in the early 1960s, when he was a junior in high school. He and classmate Wick Walker finished, but not first, and set their sights on taking the prize the following year. "We wanted to beat Bob Harrigan and John Berry, who were national champions at the time," he said.
Walker and McEwan got special dispensation to skip spring sports at Landon School and train. They got lucky when the event was canceled four straight weeks because of high water. When the starting gun fired, they were primed.
"We paddled so hard that when we crossed the line at Sycamore Island, Wick got us over to the bank by some bushes and I threw up," McEwan recalled. "We saw Harrigan and Berry chuckling at us, but when the times were posted, we'd won by three minutes."
Harrigan, a co-founder of the race, can still chuckle at the memory. At 72, the former national whitewater champion paddles only for recreation these days but spends many days hiking along the river near his home in Glen Echo.
He and a few others hatched the idea for the race after he accompanied Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on part of Douglas's historic hike down the length of the C&O Canal.
"I said, 'Why don't we have a boat race, get some news in the papers and see what we can do to preserve the river?' " Harrigan said. He and his paddling mentor, Andy Thomas, feared rich people would buy all the land along the river and trash the wilderness with fancy estates.
The first race in 1956 drew 30 entries. It was won by Olympic gold medalist Frank Havens and his brother Bill, stalwarts of the Washington Canoe Club, who paddled in the classic "high-kneel" position of flatwater racers. Frank Havens had won his medal in flat water at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.
The Canoe Cruisers Association was formed in part to run subsequent races and quickly grew into one of the biggest paddling clubs in the nation. By the 1970s, the Potomac Downriver Race was a fixture of the spring season for whitewater racers, a chance to race against Washington's budding army of future world champions, including slalom racing legends Davey Hearn, Jon Lugbill and Cathy Hearn.
But as skills and equipment improved, the eight-mile run through Wet Bottom Chute, Maryland Chute at Difficult Run, Yellow Falls and Stubblefield Falls went from being a challenge for experts to an easy run for intermediate boaters, as long as the water level stayed reasonable.
Participation has been declining, with the field falling from a high of more than 100 boats to 40 to 50 boats now. It's a shame, because the Downriver Race offers a fine opportunity for weekend boaters to safely run what has been dubbed with good reason the finest stretch of urban whitewater in the world, with a chance at a prize and the promise of a picnic at Sycamore Island at the end. That's not a bad deal for $15.
Registration for the race runs from 10 a.m. to noon Sunday at Great Falls Park on the Maryland side of the Potomac, with a competitors meeting at 12:15 p.m. There are numerous classes available, including parent-child, open canoe, decked canoe and kayak, youth and seniors.
Most competitors say the hardest part of the race is the portage to the starting line, a quarter-mile hike down the C&O Canal towpath followed by an overland slog to the river at Rocky Island. The course is straight downriver. Racers immediately bash through the standing waves at Wet Bottom Chute; most then go left to cut through the Maryland Chute at Difficult Run, switch right past the put-in at Old Anglers Inn to take advantage of stronger current, then go left through Offutt Island Chute, swing back to river right through Yellow Falls and thunder down the middle through standing waves at Stubblefield Falls.
Spectators can watch from the rocks overlooking Maryland Chute by hiking up the towpath to the Billygoat Trail from Old Anglers Inn, then tiptoeing across the rocky shallows to the boulders overlooking the rapids. Or they can go anywhere upstream of there, along Mather Gorge by following the Billygoat Trail.
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
