Net Circulation, 400 EST. 1975 NEW YORK AND NORTH JERSEY, MARCH 2013 21 PAGES AMC NY-NoJ Celebrates Centennial The AMC’s New York Chapter, later christened the New York-North Jersey Chapter, was founded in 1912. While the Boston chapter had conducted paddling trips since the 1920s, AMC Trip on the Ammonoosuc River, May 31, 1937. Photo by Christine Reid, Courtesy of AMC Archives. it wasn’t until the ‘30s that the New York Chapter began to develop a paddling program of its own. It was Ken Henderson – climber, mountaineer, canoeist – who was approached by several of the New York paddlers to purchase or rent for them enough wood-and-canvas canoes in the Boston area to accommodate the New Yorkers who were interested in participating in a Boston trip on the Housatonic in the Spring of 1934. Ken purchased seven canoes and trucked them to the banks of the Housatonic, where James Dunning, the New York Leader, paid the bill. Some twenty canoeists with perhaps more enthusiasm than skill spent the weekend on what was undoubtedly the first Interchapter Canoe trip. Throughout this issue, we present a retrospective view of paddling history in and out of the AMC. Betty Manning and former Canoe Committee Chair (1956-58) Corny King at Skinners Falls, Delaware River, May, 1949. Photo by Paul Rittenhouse. Courtesy of AMC Archives. Loretta Brady, Editor Marty Plante, Typesetter & Copyboy In This Issue 1 AMC NY-NoJ Chapter Centennial 3 Remember the Ladies PaddleSplashes is published 7 New QW Paddlers by the Canoe and Kayak 8 Meet the Committee Committee of the Appalachian Mountain Club, New York - 8 New Trip Leaders North Jersey Chapter. 9 Early Days of Chapter Paddling 11 In the Beginning Guidelines for Submissions Photos are preferred as high 12 Now and Then resolution color jpeg files 13 Open Secrets about Closed Boating attached to email. Please do not crop, compress or resize 14 Reel Paddling Film Festival them. Contact the editor if you 15 Thanks! need assistance sending large 16 Remembrance of Trips Past files. Current and prior issues of PaddleSplashes are 19 The Mullica available on the Chapter‘s 22 High and Low Points website at http://www.amc-ny.org/ckc/newsletter 23 Do the Math 24 Chronicles of PaddleSplashes Send all submissions to: canoekayak.newsletter[at] amc-ny.org 25 Winter, Fall, in Love with the Adirondacks 31 Heavy Metal Canoeing SUBMISSION DEADLINE 33 Canoeing on the Offside FOR NEXT ISSUE IS APR 15, 2013 Elana Fine Joins a Formidable Feminine NY-NoJ Legacy By Jill Arbuckle and icture this: two women stand on a Loretta Brady marshy shore, the two boats at their feet completely coated in milk chocolatey mud. The pair, new trip leader Elana Fine and lifetime AMC member Jill Arbuckle, raise their muddy manicures to the camera lens, proud of their dripping limbs. As well they should be. After all, they‘d just rescued these vessels from the mucky jaws the Hackensack. ―Launching was okay—an otter entrance across a fairly narrow strip of dirt, but when we returned, alas, the tide had gone out some, the strip was wider, and we had to haul our boats up it,‖ said Jill. It was the Elana on the Mullica. kind of mud that ―fights you for your Photo by Kurt Navratil. shoes,‖ Elana recalled. If John Adams underestimated Abigail and Seems you could also say that behind the ladies, AMC certainly has not. In the many a great AMC woman is a male story of Elana‘s new leadership role, as in paddler encouraging her to take the stern so many stories from our chapter‘s past, seat and steer. For Elana Fine, it was not influential women members fundamentally only Kurt Navratil—coaching and shaped the heart of this chapter. From the recording her Kodak moments like that earliest history to now, NY-NoJ paddling tidal mud wrestling— but also Jeff Gregg, culture carved out its own oasis of gender who recognized her natural talent to blindness. support her along AMC‘s path to higher training. ―I know all those women‘s lib notions were about to come along,‖ says Elizabeth Well-accustomed to wilderness leading, Davis, a chapter paddler back in the late Elana teaches and guides ―suburban 1940s, ―but we really didn‘t see gender on the trips. We didn‘t think, ‗Was it a man or Continued on next page woman?‘ We were all just paddlers.‖ 3 Reme mber the Ladies! Continued from previous page foraging‖ excursions. Not to be mistaken ―They are up-tight, over-controlling, and for the dumpster-diving activities of ―urban scream.‖ foragers,‖ Elana saunters through the Rockland woods picking out spring onions, Just like these outfitters, Elana enjoys the crab apples, wild garlic, mustard seeds chance to make trips possible for those and loads of other overlooked treasures. who wouldn‘t risk going it alone. For her, She can find ‗em, and she can tell you it‘s also a great way to increase her own skill set. The biggest challenges have what to do with ‗em. ―Nettles,‖ she says, ―have numerous uses in tinctures and always been weather,‖ she said. ―In Yellowstone, it was the winds; in the San oils.‖ Wild plants morph into ―pestos, soups, apple butter and more.‖ Juan Islands, it was the rip tides. Most of all, I learned you gotta‘ keep paddling,‖ Elana has already formed a list of trips she advised. she has planned – or hopes to offer – with club classics like Monksville Reservoir, How things have changed for women. Merrill Creek, and the Hackensack River. She draws on experience from childhood Early issues of Appalachia contain articles summers in the Catskills, plus training with that try to convince the gentler sex to get out there camping with the men! In her Outward Bound. A lot of what she‘s learned about expedition organizing came 1878 article ―Camplife for Ladies,‖ M.F. from watching the pros: our own Jeff Whitman urged them to overlook ―a tear Gregg, of course, but also commercial in a dress‖ or ―brown shading‖ on their adventure outfitters. She‘s made a mental faces to enjoy the ―indescribable charm of list of guiding ―dos and don‘ts‖ gleaned rock and rill, ravine and ridge…the delicious sleep on fragrant hemlock lulled from kayak vacations she‘s tagged around the globe. Whether it‘s Yellowstone Lake, by the murmur of mountain streams.‖ or the Amazon, Honduras or Mexico‘s Roughing it, she argued, doesn’t mean Baja, the greatest guides, she notes, going without many ―comforts and ―have a self-confidence that relaxes you decencies as is possible and reasonable‖ with their patience, expertise, experience, to still gain an ―intimate acquaintance with and safety.‖ The not-so-great outfitters nature.‖ are the inverse. 4 Remember the Ladies! Continued from previous page Our own girls might‘ve mocked such pampered campers. Like the four New Yorkers who made the first ―manless‖ trip to Ontario‘s remote Timagami Lake (today spelled Temagami). Ruth Teborg writes of that sisterhood adventure in the 1936 issue of Appalachia. Armed with a copy of Woodcraft for Women, they faced a gauntlet of Indian guides, shaking their heads disapprovingly when they heard the ladies planned to go ―guideless.‖ Skirtless female paddling was a bit daring. Outfitters carried essential flannel leggings only in men‘s size 36. When they asked Hudson Bay Outfitters how long the trip to Bear Island usually takes, ―Twelve days,‖ came the reply, ―but we bet you‘ll be back before that. Unless you get lost.‖ But they were determined. They‘d spent sweltering July city nights in their apartment stitching their own tenalite (paraffin cloth) for a tent. One of their number, a food chemist, prepared the meals with meticulous nutrition and caloric calculation. Admittedly, their canoes ―weighed eighty pounds on the ground and two hundred in the air.‖ Nevertheless, their confidence grew throughout the trip, along with their desire to share ―the fullness of grandeur in this he-man‘s country‖ and to teach others the fun of navigating remote lakes, making fires, and rigging tarps in future women-only trips. ―It‘s one of my favorite stories of the AMC,‖ says Jill. ―They managed to keep dry and cheerful despite rain most of the week.‖ Early on in her club career, a member proposed a whitewater women-only trip so they could learn to load the trailer and work the Coleman stoves, Jill recalls, ―at which the other women present stared and said, ‗but we already do that?!‘‘ If you look back, Jill points out, women had a Linda Polstein runs a drop on the Chattooga. Photo by Marty Plante. 5 Remember the Ladies! Continued from previous page full voice in club affairs from the beginning. In 1959, AMC meeting records ―At least 2 of the original NY Chapter congratulate ―Alma and Lore, for Executive Committee members were recognizing the gravity of the encephalitis women.‖ The 1913 NY Executive outbreak and taking quick action to reroute Committee was: Chairman Mr. Charles activities to New York.‖ Newspapers Bullard, Secretary Miss Abby Barstow reported people ―dropping dead on the Bates, Treasurer Mr. R.R. Miller, plus Atlantic Boardwalk,‖ with numerous deaths members Dr. Mary Potter, Dr. Francis just 2-5 days after being bitten by New McCrudden, Miss Katherine Van Allen. Jersey‘s swampland mosquitoes. Assuming Francis is male, that‘s half female!‖ observes Jill. ―And if Dr. Mary “There were always at least a third Potter was a medical doctor, she was a women on our canoe trips,‖ reports Louise peer of the first women physicians in the Davis, now 98, Executive Canoe country, along with Elizabeth Blackwell.‖ Committee Chair from 1960 to 1962, and paddler Dave Rosenfeld‘s great aunt. She was a participant on one of the first commercial descents down the Salmon River, Idaho. She and other AMC members enlisted the famous Hatch expedition group to support them with rafts for the 12 days. ―When we were first at the Salmon, there was nobody. It was total remote wilderness. Just beautiful. We went back years later, after the Yampa, the Green, and I don‘t remember how many other rivers, when we‘d see so many more people there now,‖ she said. Louise was one of few participants who waived the portages, doing the whole run via solo canoe, from the Little Fork to Riggins. Former Canoe Committee Chair (1960-62) Louise Davis on the West Fork of the ―She was an engineer, so she‘d figured Salmon River, 1955. out a way to build a partial deck on her canoe to get through the really big water,‖ Considering the trends in society outside says fellow tripper Elizabeth Davis. In AMC culture, these are facts a girl can be fact, she had designed all kinds of gear proud of! Read through the paddling club herself. Like a portage bag sewed exactly minutes, and see how often women of the the length of her tent poles. ―She took me Executive Canoe Committee hosted under her wing when I was 16 and taught dinner and typed up the chapter notes. me how to handle white water. She did You start to wonder if, like Ginger Rogers that for so many,‖ Elizabeth said. with Fred Astaire, the women had to do everything the men do, and backwards 6 Remember the Ladies! Continued from previous page partnerships of male and female. Avid ―Some of the most beautiful things in the world I saw paddling,‖ Louise reminisced, husbands, brothers, or in Louise‘s case, ―the Rainbow Bridge on the Colorado fathers lure women to the sport to share River.‖ the incredible experience. Logically, the most active paddlers then and now are Why is it the most beautiful thing in the single—either independent all their lives, world? like Louise, or newly-so after the loss of (or emancipation from?!) a spouse. ―It ―Hah,‖ she answers, with a spicy tone you was my husband who got me interested in earn in your 90s. ―Now if you‘d have seen paddling,‖ says trip leader Elinor Hoffman, it, you wouldn‘t be asking me that.‖ In her ―but once he was gone, it was either I go case, it‘s easy to imagine her current follow him, or I best get myself active. So I feistiness flourished throughout her years. volunteered with AMC.‖ Maybe camplife even fueled it. Common to all is a true grit, passion and What makes the big picture story even outspokenness that guided and continues greater is that it‘s not women alone, but to shape the club today. If Darwin were numerous club couples and equal around, perhaps he‘d say it‘s the natural selection of this AMC species. The Ratings Committee is pleased to award a Quietwater rating to the following paddlers. Congratulations to all. Kiran Adhikary Miriam Jochnowitz Alexander Morris Prabhat Adhikary Katherine Johnson Bob Muster Anthony Buysse Jeffrey Kaplan Colleen O'Neill Mario Castro Sean Kelly Priscilla Petitti Flores Thad Demos Charli Kerns Konstatine Popdimitrov Liz Donathan Bob Krisak Igor Shkapenyuk Chris Dubetsky Tim Kundro Vladislaw Shkapenyuk Meredith Fabian William Leavitt Caroline Shoesmith Jerome Faitrop Geesun Lee Suzanne Villegas Katie Frusti Sheldon Luberoff Rachel Wile Thomas George Thomas McArdle Peter Gotlieb Vincent Meyer 7 Meet the Committee Get a seat next to Sozanne around the next campfire. She’s the kind of girl you can talk to about anything… anything. She can tell you how Southern Rivers compare to those back home in Germany, or how many protease inhibitors are in that serving of your lasagna. Never making you feel stupid. Since she’s as expert at Turkish- Sozanne Solmatz infused cooking as she is at Equipment Coordinator running rivers, she’s a great choice to have in charge of boating and Don’t hesitate to reach out to Sozanne to enjoy any of galley equipment. Back in the our well-kept, burgeoning supply of canoes and chapter’s early days, trips were kayaks for calm, white, and sea water. There are also often capped due to the limited PFDs, paddles, spray skirts, and helmets in all shapes number of plates and forks, not a and sizes. And full kitchen kits ready for any size lack of vessels. That’ll never group leaders may attract. “I want everyone to see happen under Sozanne’s watch. how easy it is to borrow boats and equipment,” And there’s always her husband’s Sozanne says. “Borrow something you’re not usually Quartermasterly skills in Charles paddling—maybe a sea kayak, or tandem canoe!” Michener to lend supportive She should know. She’s paddled them all. advice. Do n’t hesitate to reach out to Congratulations to our newest trip leaders: “ Kafi Adams may attract. “I want everyone to see Matt Theisz equipment,” Sozanne says. “Bo something you’re not usually — tandem canoe!” She should know. She’s paddled them all. 8 Early Days of Chapter Canoeing By Palmer Langdon Reprinted from the May 1996 issue of PaddleSplashes --------------------------------------------- On a midsummer evening in 1936, I went aboard a train at Grand Central heading off to Maine for a canoe trip starting at Moosehead Lake. Going immediately to the dining car, I was seated with one other person who by fortunate chance was a very friendly man, Johnston Mali, a member of AMC. When I told him I had joined the club, he explained in detail the plans for the canoe program to commence with regular scheduled trips in 1937. A number of wood canvas-covered canoes had been acquired and Mali was storing them at his weekend place Carolcliff, locally known as The Castle, on top of the hill in Tarrytown, still prominently visible from the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was here that we met to repair and paint the well used second hand canoes and eat lunch. Another meeting place was his city residence, 11 East 86 Street. At that time, nearly all the canoe th group lived in Manhattan and a custom started of having the leaders of trips invite all those registered to his or her home for a cocktail party at which time bow and stern paddlers were matched and the plans for the trip explained in detail. Some of the rivers we did are not often seen on today’s schedule, such as the Moodna, Neversink, Wallkill, Schawangunk, Wappinger, Ten Mile and Beaverkill, but we also did the Delaware, Housatonic, Farminton and Ramapo. All of these were done in the high water season of April and May. In the Fall, we had trips in the Hudson, Connecticut and the ‚brown waters‛ of south Jersey. (continued on next page) 9 NY-NoJ Canoe/Kayak Committee Chairs (continued from previous page) Pre-1939 James Dunning 1939 Lawrence C. Moore Little attention was paid to safety. Life 1941-43 Arnold Knauth preservers were never worn and many 1943-46 Paul Rittenhouse canoes were smashed and abandoned. A 1946-49 Chapin Jackson charge of $15 was made for a wrecked club 1949-52 Helen Fair 1953-54 Henry Francis canoe, just a little less than the cost of 1955-56 Walter Meseck replacement. Aluminum and fiberglass had 1956-58 Corny King not yet appeared, but in the private fleet 1958-60 Bob Bliss there were a few foldboats then new from 1960-62 Louise Davis Germany. 1962-63 Woody Hedden 1963-64 Ark Tillson 1964-65 Ruth Walker On one occasion, we used the swimming 1965-67 John Nankivell pool on the twelfth floor of the Downtown 1968-69 George & Claire Barth Athletic Club for an instructional 1970-71 George Thomas demonstration and party. 1972-73 John Meirs 1974-75 Helen Marie Chapman 1976-77 Emilie Pentz Mali, whose normal job was being the 1978-79 Jim & Mary Lou Rideout Belgian Consul General in New York, 1980-81 Drew & Bobbie Reynolds designed and built a trailer that carried 9 1982-83 Tom & Joan Sanders sixteen footers. Sometimes this was stored 1984-85 Fran & Al Braley 1986-87 David & Liz Pratt at a gas station or a member friend’s house 1988-89 Brenda Steele & if the next trip was in the same area. Mali Bruce Lichtenberg allowed privately owned canoes to be kept 1990-91 Don Getzin without charge at Carrolcliff. 1992-93 Henry Schreiber 1994 Dave Schneider 1995 Dick Bailey 1996-98 Walter Bonilla 1999-00 Bob Zazzera 2001-02 Ken & Gretchen Tardell 2003-04 Lenny Grefig 2005 Herb Stermer 2006-07 Martin Plante 2008-09 Victoria Butler 2010-11 Ara Jingirian 2012-13 Carin Tinney Murray DeCamp Spear Running Lover’s Leap, Housatonic River, 1942. Photo by Paul Rittenhouse.