Water Trail Revival, cont'd

AMC Outdoors, March 2008

The Susquehanna River Trail

The Susquehanna long served as an artery linking what is now central and eastern Pennsylvania to the Chesapeake Bay. A series of water trails now encompasses 444 miles of the Susquehanna, including the river’s two main branches—the West Branch, starting at Altoona in central Pennsylvania, and the North Branch, beginning near the New York border. Each trail is managed by a different nonprofit organization, but the groups have worked to coordinate signage and maps. A paddler covering the whole route would experience a relatively seamless experience, the chief difference being that camping and access is more abundant on the 54-mile stretch from Sunbury to Harrisburg. Organized by the Susquehanna River Trail Association (SRTA), the so-called Central Section was the first water trail on the Susquehanna.

Billed as “An Island Adventure,” the trail traverses a wide and shallow stretch of the Susquehanna sprinkled with hundreds of low-lying islands, on which SRTA provides 21 primitive camp-sites. “We like to say the river is a mile wide and an inch deep,” laughs SRTA Corresponding Secretary Bruce Bishoff. “Some-times you’re in the middle of a city, but it never feels like it.”

Nature is experiencing a comeback in the Susquehanna Valley, which has been an industrial corridor since the 19th century. Bald eagles, reintroduced to Pennsylvania in 1983 when there were just three breeding pairs in the state, are now a common sight along the Susquehanna. The river is cleaner than it has been in generations, and some local leaders are looking for outdoor tourism to fill the void left by the decline of traditional manufacturing.

Because the low-lying islands are often underwater during floods, the campsites are enticingly rustic. Most consist of a fire ring and a waterproof ammunition box containing a guestbook. “If we put much more out there the river would just take it away. Though last year it left us a nice picnic table about 12 feet up in a tree,” Bishoff says. There are no toilet facilities, meaning you’ll have to pack out solid waste. (Here’s a hint: Google the term “groover.”)

For more information, visit: www.susquehannarivertrail.org.

Potomac River Water Trail

The Potomac River Water Trail is a slow float through the cradle of American history. Starting near Cumberland, MD.—the gateway to the Ohio in Colonial times—the trail follows the Potomac downstream approximately 400 miles to the lower Chesapeake Bay. The route passes through Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., site of abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 raid, and wends past Antietam Creek, where North and South fought a horrific Civil War battle three years later. The river trail passes through Washington, D.C., and the ancestral homes of George Washington and Robert E. Lee. It is a floating feast for history buffs, but also offers its share of sublime nature as well—from the wooded shores and ledge rapids of the upper Potomac to the saw-grass islands of the lower bay.

Much of the trail’s central section follows the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, allowing easy access to the hiking and biking trail that follows the canal, and giving paddlers the option to travel on the river or the canal that parallels its track.

The trail is a joint effort between the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the National Park Service, and neighboring state agencies. Waterproof maps of all three sections direct paddlers to access points, restrooms, camping and overnight accommodations, and places of historical interest. The map sets are available from the Maryland DNR.

For more information, visit: www.dnr.state.md.us.

Hudson River Watertrail

The 158-mile water trail from Manhattan to Albany boasts one of the most detailed river guides anywhere, a 160-page masterpiece complete with navigational charts and multiple entries for every river mile. That’s fortunate, because the lower Hudson is no ordinary paddling trip. “The river—and everybody refers to it as ‘the river’—is actually an estuary. It’s tidal all the way to Albany,” says former Hudson River Watertrail Association (HRWA) President Dan McLaughlin. From the Federal Dam at Troy, N.Y., to Manhattan, there is no appreciable change in the river’s surface elevation. Seals have been spotted 60 miles inland. Barges and ocean-going cargo ships travel all the way to Albany. While the tides, ship traffic, and shear width of the Hudson—more than a mile and a half in some places—can be intimidating, they also give the river an inviting rhythm. “The ship pilots wait for high tide to head upriver, so it’s very unique. The ship traffic comes in waves,” McLaughlin says.

Surprisingly for a river that flows through one of the world’s biggest cities, the Hudson is a wellspring of life. The twice-daily tidal movement and seasonal temperature changes create ideal conditions for the algae and plants that nourish fish, crabs, muskrats, and migrating waterfowl. Osprey and bald eagles are growing more common in the Hudson Valley.

Each year the HRWA leads a group paddle from Albany to New York City. “We do runs now with about 30 through-paddlers, and others join in for a day or two. We leave as close as we can to the ebb and paddle for about six hours a day,” McLaughlin says. “We spend 10 nights camping, 11 days on the river. It’s been wonderful. It brings awareness to the river.”

The HRWA ultimately plans to extend the trail all the way to the Canadian border, via Lake Champlain. The extension is still a work in progress, but a group paddle along the entire route is already planned for 2009, 400 years after the explorer Henry Hudson sailed up the estuary to what is now Albany.

For more information, visit: www.hrwa.org.

- Jeff Moag is managing editor of Canoe & Kayak magazine and a fan of Maine’s 92-mile Allagash Wilderness Waterway. He last wrote for AMC Outdoors about the effect of climate change on northeastern rivers in March 2007.