Apparently just having the four standard seasons, with well known start dates for each, isn't good enough anymore. There is now a thing called meteorological winter which ends on March 1 vs. March 22 for the plain old boring astronomical winter we all grew up with. Luckily WSSC believes in the former, and the Triadelphia and Rocky Gorge reservoirs were opened to boating on 1 March. They've been closed since December 1st and since the water level in Rocky Gorge has been so low this winter(s) I haven't been able to even sneak on to the water from the Patuxent River near my house - so it was good to get back out on local waters.
The hawk was out, my friends. The official trip summary says 20 mph average winds with a gust of 28.8 but on the wider portions of Rocky Gorge there were actually one foot waves and even whitecaps. The winds were generally out of the northwest, which meant for most of the trip out of Scott's Cove I was paddling directly into the wind - a gust would hit and my speed would drop from 4.5 mph to 3, making the water feel like cookie dough. I did about 4.2 miles out, essentially past the point where last year you would run out of water. I think I could have gone all the way almost to Brown Bridge, but the wind was pretty fierce there were the reservoir widens out. A few wind gusts just bout ripped the paddle from my hands. It made me realize how little experience I have in serious wind/wave conditions but it was actually a lot of fun to deal with on the sheltered reservoir. Going into the wind you could see the gusts move across the water's surface and prepare, but on the return the wind was at my back. Made for much less paddling effort but I could no longer anticipate the gusts and did a lot more steering corrections.
The water is definitely much higher in Rocky Gorge but not quite high enough for them to reopen the Brown Bridge put-in (picture at left.) Looks like about foot or foot and a half higher and Brown Bridge will be usable again and you might even be able to head upstream towards Snell's Bridge. With daylight savings time hitting next weekend, I'm looking forward to being able to sneak in some after work reservoir paddling. Over the weekend I took at look at the Greenbridge put-in on Triadelphia Reservoir - looks the water level is just about where it was towards the end of last season, very usable.
It will also be nice for the water temperatures and the air temperatures to come up another 15 degrees each and say goodbye to drysuit weather. I'm actually not that uncomfortable in cold weather gear anymore but my god - it takes forever to get dressed and undressed. It's like when your kids are little and just getting them ready to go outside to play in the snow was exhausting. But when you read stories like this you realize it makes sense to play it safe.
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