Fully Immersed in the Rush of a Monster Surge
Veteran Canoeist Can't Resist Magnetic Pull

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 22, 2003; Page B01

Tom Smith, left, of Bethesda, Martin Lackovic of the District and David Hearn of Bethesda

paddle on the swollen, churning Potomac River.

(Sarah L. Voisin - The Washington Post)

David Hearn stood on the swollen banks of Rocky Island just south of Great Falls yesterday, yellow racing canoe propped easily on his right shoulder, scouting the muddy boil and surge of the Potomac River at flood stage. "There's the monster," he said, smiling. There was a hissing sound to the river, like static, that he'd never heard before, not in the nearly 30 years he has been paddling the Potomac. All around, trees normally far back on the banks were flooded up to their canopies. Parts of the C&O Canal towpath and access to the Billy Goat Trail were cordoned off with yellow U.S. Park Police tape.

The rocks and flow of the river he knew so well were submerged as all the rain that Hurricane Isabel dumped into West Virginia creeks, tributaries and rivers Thursday collected into one huge pulse of water and raced through the Washington area about noon yesterday.

The storm surge -- the "slug" -- was 11 feet high, coursing dizzyingly past Hearn, a three-time Olympic white-water canoeist and one in an avid community of expert paddlers who live in the Brookmont neighborhood near the river just south of Cabin John.

He contemplated the "line" he'd cut with his paddle.

This is some serious water, he thought. It hadn't been this high since January 1996, when the river flooded to 18 feet and Park Police arrested him. The case, thrown out in federal court, established the precedent he relied on yesterday: Expert kayakers alone may enter the river when the water runs so high.

He kicked off his flip-flops. Strapped himself in a kneeling position into his 22-pound, 13.2-foot-long C-1 closed-deckcanoe. Snapped down his blue spray skirt. Settled his white crash helmet. And pushed off.

When -- at five feet -- the Potomac's flow is about 20,000 cubic feet a second, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources warns novice and recreational boaters not to risk their lives on the river. Yesterday, it was pounding downstream at close to 200,000 cubic feet a second -- faster and with greater volume than the water in the gorge below Niagara Falls.

At 11 feet, Mather Gorge becomes a chaos of crosscurrents and boils, deadly whirlpools that appear and disappear and can suck a boat under. It's also a rush, with a 20-foot-high wall of water crashing and swirling into what experts call "the jumps," a roller-coaster ride that appears only when the river runs high. Hearn did not make the decision lightly to take a ride on the river where, since the mid-1970s, 29 people have drowned, including one expert kayaker. In 1977, when Hearn was 17 and paddled his first storm surge with the river raging at about 14 feet, the decision was easier. He was training for international competition.

The fledgling U.S. team was daring -- members were known as the "speed freaks" who would try just about any big, juicy water to break into the big leagues. But at 44, retired from competition with more World Championship medals than he can count and with a wife, Jennifer, responsibilities as a coach and a 41/2-year-old son, Jesse, he couldn't take any risks.

"I'm a parent now, and I recognize the fact that I'm an example. I'm a coach. I want to be teaching my students respect for each other and respect for the river," he said earlier. "With the river at these levels, you really can't count on someone rescuing you. You don't want to be risking other people's lives."

That's exactly what happened later in the day, when a young man in a swimsuit and puka shell necklace but no life vest or helmet jumped into the water.

Frank Jackson, a 19-year-old kayaker from Bethesda, raced across the churning water and hauled the unidentified swimmer onto his small Pyranha Storm rodeo boat, said two kayakers on the water with him.

"It was crazy," Chris Skelton, 20, said. The two had come from Duke University to ride Sunday's wild flood pulse.

Jackson, nicknamed "Action," wound up crashing his boat against rocks near the end of the Maryland chute. He bailed out and grabbed onto a tree.

His friends threw him a rope and towed him to safety at Bear Island, where Montgomery County's Swift Water Rescue Team maneuvered through the river and brought Jackson and the swimmer safely to shore. "It was a little scary," said rescuer Jim Gross, who piloted one of the pontoon boats. "The water at this level is very powerful and can change at any moment." The swimmer was later cited by Park Police for swimming in the Potomac.

Living with risk, understanding the draw of the water is something Hearn's wife, herself a coach and onetime competitor, knows. She has never been afraid for him. "I've probably been more nervous before a race than when he's out on big water like this," Jennifer Hearn said as she waited downstream.

Waiting with her on the banks was a clutch of five expert paddlers who had just run the exhilarating one-mile churn from Mather Gorge through Difficult Run to the takeout area at Old Angler's Inn.

"You feel really, really, really alive out there," said Doug Jacoby, 50, who has had three heart surgeries and was wearing a faded "Life is Good" T-shirt. "Every sense is popping. You are paying attention the whole time. It's a ride not to tell your cardiologist about," Jacoby said.

Hearn came pounding through Echo Canyon, past the raging S-Turn, past Dead Cow Hole and past Skull Island before catching an eddy and slicing effortlessly to shore.

Hearn pushed back into the frothing water to ride 40 more minutes downstream to Brookmont Dam. He walked barefoot down the pebble-strewn path, put in below the dam and cut vigorously out to a standing wave that the floodwaters created.

After a roller-coaster ride, David Hearn carries his canoe

above the dam upstream of Lock 6. 

Hearn is a three-time Olympic white-water canoeist.

(Sarah L. Voisin - The Washington Post)

And in the warm, late afternoon sun, Hearn slid effortlessly along the crest of the wave.

He pulled himself out of his boat. "There is just nothing like feeling the awesome power of the river beneath your boat," he said, his feet firmly on land and his mind clearly somewhere out in the middle of the Big River that comes only once in a blue moon.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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