Bill M wrote:I agree about the gauges. Having to go look tended to cause us to run the river even if it was high/low cause we were there. That caused some interesting trips.
Bill
We usually planned a trip by just going. Often with folks from other areas/towns, so people could drive a different crooked path checking put-ins along their way to the meeting place, and then we would decide where to boat (at least gas was c-h-e-a-p).
Levels were seldom known and interpreting local weather radar a science.... You could show up and everyone welcomed you... Because name dropping was in vogue, if you said the right name you were good to go.... No one had matching gear... A farmer john wetsuit, some wool, and a coated nylon top meant your were set for the winter.... Guide books were rare, usually out date, and best served the task of finding the put in and take outs... We also tended to support local business that would read nearby river level for us, typically a restaurant or gas-service station (a day old report was way fine).... pinned canoes were the norm.
^~^~^ different strokes ~ for different folks ^~^~^
right about the guages.
No more diriving around in the dark and rain Saturday morning 7 am checking levels and then back onto the "Phone Tree" trying to get a trip going.
I can do it with the laptop, a coffee and email now.
philcanoe wrote:We also tended to support local business that would read nearby river level for us, typically a restaurant or gas-service station....
Pardue's? I still make it a point to try to get gas there, maybe a snack or two, even though I no longer have to rely on them for level readings. I'm not even certain that the same people still own it.
The biggest change is the rapid Darwinian advance of kayaks on both white and flat water, and the near extinction of the canoe.
1950's in Maine: Canoes in front of almost every house and cottage on every water body. Never saw a kayak except in a picture book about Eskimos.
Early 70's in Florida: Canoes all over. Every outfitter rented only canoes. No such thing as a kayak.
1980 in northern California: More kayaks than open canoes in the Loma Prieta chapter of the Sierra Club. Tom Johnson's Hollowform kayaks predominate. Perception Quest making inroads. Kayakers already getting snooty about letting open canoes on their trips.
1982 in the Northeast: Whitewater trips dominated by open canoes, including the tire tubes and net bags full of empty plastic bottles. Elegant soloists in Old Town Trippers. A few brave boaters in the hot Blue Hole OCA. A few radicals in the ultra tippy Perception HD1 and John Berry's composite slalom boats.
Hundreds and hundreds of open canoes bouncing down the Dead River, the West, the Hudson Gorge, the Esopus on release weekends. A few kayaks mixed in.
April 1984: First run of the Cheat Canyon with only Nealy's cartoons as a guidebook. Didn't see a kayak on the river that day. Only rafts, about 20 open canoes, and one teenager in a Hahn.
My club, the AMC, rated paddlers. Canoeists forever had been rated on a skill matrix that included required bow and stern skills. Then the solo canoe eruption. How can you rate a paddler who paddles neither bow nor stern? Is it fair to the traditional tandemists? A puzzle.
Kayaks appear in increasing numbers from Tennessee or the Carolinas or some such other strange place. How the heck can we possibly rate a kayaker in white water when no one on the rating committee has a clue as to how to paddle a kayak? It worked itself out, and finally the kayakers produced offspring so fast they eventually took over.
By 1995 the tide had clearly turned against the single blade.
Now, just about everywhere in the USA -- except in a few states that border Canada -- the single blade has become the rara avis. Rec kayaks dominate flat water along with SOTs in warm climates. On my last two month flat water swing through the AmSouth, I hardly saw any open canoes except on a few outfitter/tourist venues.
Florida and other places are dominated by old geezers in kayaks. Some clubs will not allow open canoeists on trips. Canoes are perceived to be too slow, dangerous, un-elite and downright strange. Some of these kayakers have only seen canoes in picture books.
So I now almost always paddle alone. Just like I did on that lake in Maine in the 50's.
Saddest of all is the dying art of the single blade -- the most technically elegant, intellectually and physically satisfying, self-rewarding, poetic and magical way to propel a watercraft ever to grace the blue planet.
the single blade -- the most technically elegant, intellectually and physically satisfying, self-rewarding, poetic and magical way to propel a watercraft ever to grace the blue planet.
