Monday photo feature

Yesterday I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar for the third time this year.  Maybe this is a good time to remind readers what this route looks like.  The image above was generated by Adam Davis's G.P.S. device when Adam and I paddled around the Bar a couple of years ago.

The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the Mississippi River.  Paddling around the Bar involves leaving the harbor, paddling upriver along the Tennessee bank for a while, ferrying across the main shipping channel, rounding the north end of the Bar, coming down the channel on the west side (the Loosahatchie Chute), and then returning to the harbor.  The numbers on this picture are mile markers: Adam started and finished at the big red marker next to the word "Memphis," so he traveled about 10.5 miles in all.  I started and finished at the marina where I keep my boat: it looks like a little "equals" sign below where it says "Harbor Town."  The marina is about a mile up the harbor from where Adam put in and took out, and so my total distance was about 12.5 miles.

Paddling around the Bar is a good distance session, and it's a beefy one, too.  You've got a five-mile upstream climb with a hard ferry across the main channel thrown in.  And more often than not this time of year you've got a south wind to deal with on the paddle back down.  Things can get particularly turbulent between the south end of the Bar and the entrance to the harbor.

My favorite stretch of this paddle is the Loosahatchie Chute.  Between the 5-mile and 7-mile marks, all signs of civilization are out of view and you feel like you're in a remote wilderness even though downtown Memphis isn't far away.

I mostly do this paddle in the spring, and that's because you need a certain amount of water.  Many tons of sand have been deposited in the Loosahatchie Chute, and if the level isn't at least 16 or 17 feet on the Memphis gauge, it's hard to find a navigable channel of water through there.  As I mentioned yesterday, I encountered some shallow water at the north end of the Bar with a level of 19.8 feet.  The course is at its best in the mid 20s and higher.

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