I paddled my surf ski today for the first time in about three weeks. Part of that time off was spent paddling up at the Gauley, and part was spent doing stuff having nothing to do with paddling. Yes, I do have a life away from the sport.
The Mississippi River has been below zero on the Memphis gauge for as long a period as I can remember. It dipped below zero around the eighth of June, and about a week later it was at -1.7 feet for the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race. It hovered up and down for the next few weeks before dropping precipitously in late August, bottoming out at -9.8 feet on September 1. After that it came up for a while, holding steady around -6 feet, but now it's dropping again and was at -9.3 feet when I paddled this morning. For now it doesn't appear that it will threaten the record low of -10.7 feet from July of 1988, however. The current forecast has it rising to around -8 feet by the end of the week.
When the water is this low, I have to proceed with caution as I paddle upriver along the Tennessee bank. The bank is lined with revetment, a matrix of concrete slabs placed there by the Corps of Engineers to prevent the river from eroding its banks, and some of this revetment has buckled after decades underwater, getting hammered by the river's currents. I lost my rudder once last year when it hit a piece of concrete that was sticking up near the surface of the water in an unlikely place.
No comments:
Post a Comment