The Global Paddling Community

What's it like

This is a moderately fast hole (not as fast as Rock Island, but faster than a slow pour-over), 9 feet across with a 2 feet foam pile. There's also a wave on the hole right side which you can blunt if you're good. You can throw right handed cartwheels till the river drops, and a split to the left for a few points is very doable, but come back right or you'll wash out. A picture of the spot is available from the potomac.pair.com web site.

The huge eddy is really a few different eddies with funky boils coming up all over the place, which makes for hard attainment (sometimes while trying to get to the top eddy, you may get into a spontaneous mystery move).

A swim would take you a while to get to shore, but shouldn't be too dangerous otherwise.

The spot runs between 3.6 and 3.9 on the little falls gauge, and is best between 3.7 and 3.9.

How to get there

Go to Washington DC, and get on the Beltway 495. Go to exit #13, or Georgetown Turnpike, on the south side of the river and take this west. Turn right into Great Falls National Park at the traffic light and pay $4 per car. Go to the lower lot, on the right and park there.

Now walk on a dirt road (no cars allowed) and then across a field to an overlook, and see Great Falls, well upstream (big water falls), but don't run them, they're hard. Go upstream along the path 10 yards further, and follow a steep trail towards the river. Put in and paddle down 1/4 of a mile to where the fish ladder (a big slide) comes in, and look for the hole on river right at a very narrow place in the river.

To help find the spot, there is an excellent map available on the Potomac WW Festival web site.

To take out, paddle down to the next wave train, and hike out on a steep trail/creek bed to a maintained trail. It's a short and flat 1/2 mile hike back to the car.

More info

The water level can be found at www.usgs.gov.: click on water resources and then go to MD real-time stream flow data. Look for the Little Falls gauge.

Events

Potomac WW Festival in June.

Info sources

[mail address protected from spambots with javascript]