My Trip to Richmond
I just returned from Richmond on Tuesday night. It all started as a trip to pick up some boats for Cheat Training, but turned into a great day on the river with one of our friends and students, John Bell. His sister and family live in Richmond and provided us with a lovely base of operations and logistical support for our enterprise. You see, John has wanted me to lead a trip down there for a few weeks now, and Sunday at Dickerson I floated the idea by him. We decided to drive down on Monday, spend the night, then pick the boats up and run the James. Which is just what we did.
We arrived on Monday around 6pm and met the family. They were great and provided me with as much Guinness as I could handle (2 to be exact), it was St Patty’s Day after all. We had a great dinner and spent the evening playing with Lucy the Border Collie, conversing, and plotting our run down the James. You see, we were a bit vague on the shuttle details.
In the morning we picked up the boats from a nice woman who was sadly to busy to paddle, and then met up with John’s sister for shuttle. We opted to put in at the upper James section at the Pony Pasture put in. I followed John’s sister to the take out near at the Mayo Bridge (14th St). After a bit of uturning near Mortons Steakhouse, we secured a parking spot in a public lot on the other side of the flood wall. (We would discover the real place to park later)
Richmond is a really neat town, and a town in transition at that. They have made a real effort at the revitalization of the town, particularly in the areas by the river. Most of it has been done on river left, river right is probably the next spot to get a makeover. The last time I was in Richmond, I was there for one of Liz’s marathons, and we stayed at the Jefferson with her parents. We ate at some great restaurants, but the highlight for me was getting the hotels shuttle van to run my shuttle for my first trip to the James. They drove me to the put in and then picked me up at the end.
Once we got back to the top, John’s sister dropped me off and headed to tennis. Lots of ladies play tennis in Richmond. If I lived in Richmond I would have them all paddling. John and I put on the river around noon and stayed up in the rapids at Pony Pasture to put on a show for the walkers. The show consisted of us surfing a bit and going over the basics of boofing, a topic John has been eager to get into. The birds were chirping, the wind a bit breezy, and the trees just beginning to bloom. The river is generally flat with a few sections of rapids to break up the paddling. The upper section to town is a great place to take beginners and low intermediate paddlers. The water level was 5.3 ft on the gauge, considered a medium level. You can see a view of town and the river from the photo at the top.
John and I made it down to the rapids on the Lower. The first rapid we came to was on river right, it was a break in the dam. We ran First Break which is a wave train. We then worked our way down mainly river right, catching great eddies and boofing occasionally until we made it to the large rapid for the day. I believe it was called Hollywood, which was a fair size rapid. We boat scouted and then ran the large wave train, working right to left to avoid the large pile of rocks. For all the water pouring on it, it should have had a bigger pillow, which indicated it was a potentially gnarly place to get pushed into. We styled our lines much to the delight of our large fan club of enthusiastic high school students on shore above the rapid. They can walk to it from the foot bridge to an island.
We crept on down to a large bridge/dam. After peering over the edge, John suggested we run it where some natural rocks break up the flow on the left. After this we worked our way right to a large wave hole rapid, then an attain back up river and to the left to drop into a tree covered island. Hidden in here were two or three sweet boofing type drops. A bit higher and they would have been better, they were still quite good. It was neat to run creeky lines on a very wide river, through an island, in the middle of a large town.
We were next greeted by some great steps on river left, that I thought was for fisherman. Lo and behold we climb the steps and there was the best river take out ever, provide by the local paddlers. The take out truly was great. I have two photos John took, but will post them later as I am having trouble formatting them into the blog.
All in all, it was a fun trip. I want to thank John for providing the idea, Cheat Training for the incentive of tracking down long boats, and John’s sister and her family for having us down. I must also add a special thank you to our yellow Remix. The Remix 69 is a great boat that was a blast to paddle. It surfs and spins, is fast, and boofs great, gets out of holes, and is super comfy. The Remix deserves its own blog entry later. In final summary, go to the James sometime, it is a lot of fun.
