So, you want to paddle the entire James River?  From Iron Gate near Clifton Forge all the way to Fort Monroe where the James River spills it’s water into the Chesapeake Bay?  Well, so do I…and I have done all but the tidal stretch from Richmond to the Bay.  But, in order to complete this adventure there is a bit of an impediment in our way….7 impediments to be exact.  The roughly 25 miles downriver of Snowden on the James River has…wait for it now, SEVEN dams of all shapes and sizes waiting for the, dare I say…adventurous/idiotic paddler that decides tackle this stretch of river.  Depending on the river level when you attempt these portages you will face everything from leg-sucking mud, to poison ivy to Class III whitewater, to soul-crushing slackwater.  For the uninitiated, slackwater refers to the pools that form as a result of a dam, without getting into a physics geek-out, the dam simply steals most, if not all, of the river’s momentum, causing the river to behave way more like a lake, than a river.  In addition to the lake-like lack of current moving the paddler along, a dam requires that for one to move downriver of it, one must portage it.  Portage = Carrying Paddling Vehicle plus Gear, which is, exceedingly contradictory to why paddlers get into paddling in the first place, which is to actually PADDLE.  All this is a long way of saying…there is a definitive reason that more people have not paddled the James River from start to finish, that would be the logistics of getting through and past the 7 dams, oh, and the small matter of the James River’s  348 mile total length.

At present (August 2012) there are no actual portage pathways around these 7 dams.  Since all rivers are held in trust by the states in which they flow, and are intended to be navigable, the Commonwealth of Virginia should hang it’s head in shame.  The fact that there are 7 dams over a 25 mile stretch of river with, in point of fact, no method of navigation around them…that does not involve a vehicle, great danger, or breaking the law…is an absolute travesty.  It should not take severe injury or loss of life, to get corporations and governments to simply do what it right.  Near Richmond there are two significant dams on the James, (Bosher’s and Williams or “Z Dam”) both which have safe and effective portage pathways around them.  This required very little in tax-payer funds and if I am not mistaken were heavily the result of volunteer effort….at least the pathway around Williams Dam was.  I cannot quote any statistics, but I imagine that these paths have saved countless injuries and or possible deaths.

Back to the upper James.  If you were to ask me, as of right now….what is the best methodology of getting past these 7 dams so that you could continue on your entire James River journey, I would simply say….have someone pick you up at the landing at Snowden and have them give you a ride to Lynchburg, then get back on your merry way.  Even though I have done all the portages myself, and plan to give a detailed description of them below, I say…without equivocation…Don’t Do It!  Get A Ride!  Be Safe!  First and foremost, at present….there just are not safe & effective ways to get around them…and secondly, once you are on the pools between them (particularly between Holcomb Rock and Reusen’s Power Plant) there is just not that much to see, unless wall to wall river houses, boat docks and lots and lots of power boats are your thing.

Below is a detailed description of my experience.  If you are still considering paddling this section of the river, please re-read the paragraph above.  If you are then still considering paddling this section of the river….go back to the beginning of this article and re-read everything!  This time try to comprehend!  Don’t Do It!  Get A Ride!  Be Safe!  

River gauges on the day of my portages were 2.7 Feet at Buchanan and 4.0 Feet at Westham.  The river changes dramatically with slight variations.

I was in a 14 ft touring kayak with approximately 30 lbs of gear.

#1 Cushaw – This dam is just downriver from the Appalachian Trail footbridge. Portage on river right….The area where you must pull off the river to complete the portage has knee-deep gumbo mud that likes to steal shoes, and stain your skin…I know this first hand.  There is neither a trail nor walkway to get to the extremely steep climb up to the railroad tracks, nor is there a path to get up and around the dam.  There are no steps of any sort, and the gravel is quite loose and quite dangerous.  Then there is a VERY steep ‘trail’ getting back down to below, and past mid June there will be wall to wall poison ivy the whole way.  Once below the dam, there are a myriad of boulders and strainer logs to cross to get back to the river.  If the river level is high enough and there is a good pour-over in effect, as it was when I ran it, you can expect some nice Class II+ - III whitewater in the dam runoff.  Very technical turns with few eddy possibilities.  Although I did have a blast running the rapids, I REALLY wished I had a sprayskirt as I had to eddy out of the rapids 3 times to bilge-pump out my open cockpit.  In an open canoe having no flotation with 2 people and gear, this would have been a recipe for a lot of wetness, or worse.

As I recall there are a couple of miles of slackwater between Cushaw and Bedford Power.

#2 Bedford Power – Portage on River Right…..Probably the least difficult portage in the set of 7 but it still is not easy.  I paddled up into the right corner.  Dragged my boat up onto the ledge of the dam.  Then I had to carefully lower the boat down to the algae covered rocks below.  Carry the boat about 40 feet along this ledge until I could get to water deep enough to float my kayak.  Then…there are several remarkable Class II rapids that made getting out of the spillway somewhat interesting.  Not as pounding as below Cushaw, but the channels were tighter with far less margin for error.  I was able to keep my streak of not swimming any rapids alive (Including Balcony Falls and Little Balcony) but there were a couple of dicey moments.  Extensive whitewater paddling experience was essential for both the Cushaw and Bedford Power spillways.  With a 1 foot increase in river level, both these spillways would have been extremely challenging.

As I recall there are a couple of miles of slackwater between Bedford Power and Big Island.

#3 Big Island (GA Pacific) – I brought rope and as little gear as possible and had every intention of just paddling to the left corner and pulling my boat up and over the extremely steep rocks, then lowering it down with the rope, since there is a paper plant that takes up about a mile of the right bank of the river, but once I got over there to the left and saw what I had ahead of me, I completely chickened out.  There is a rock face with very little margin for error.  When I was in my 20’s I would have done it, without giving it a second thought, however…my tolerance for risk has diminished greatly in my 40’s.  I paddled back to the Hunting Creek take-out just upriver from the dam on river right, sat there in the grass for about 15 minutes contemplating, when someone happened to drive into the parking lot.  I told this person my situation, who happened to drive a pickup truck.  He offered me a ride down to the downriver put-in off of 501.  I accepted, we loaded up my boat, and he drove me the 1 mile downriver.  I gave him some cash for his trouble and then went on my way.  I was definitely the recipient of some “Trail Magic” ….I never counted on this…I was extremely lucky this day.  The 6 other days that week I probably would have sat there for hours, and hours.  Several people have done the portage on river left down the rocks, I myself do not and would not recommend this to anyone, ever.  

As I recall there are a couple of miles of slackwater between Big Island and Coleman Falls…..they all blur together as they were not interesting sections.

#4 Coleman Falls – I had to portage river right do to the steep cliff on the left.   I paddled to the right corner as was the only option with a treacherous cliff on river left , and mid-summer everything was CRAZY overgrown, poison ivy and sumac everywhere!  The only possibility was an opening in the chain-link fence up a very steep bank where I could pull my kayak up …..but, this put me within the confines of the fenced area of the Hydro Electric Plant.  Fortunately, there was a caretaker inside the building, so I asked if I could just drag through their field out their gate and down the road.  He said sure, so I broke out my wheels (the best 6 lbs of gear I brought for the whole trip) and rolled through the field, down the road, and put back in below the dam, around 300 yards.  Had the caretaker not been there (he left for the day as I was rolling my boat down the gravel road) my only option would have been to skirt the perimeter of the fence where I would have had to bushwhack through shoulder high poison ivy for around 100 yards.

As I recall there is about a mile and a half of slackwater between Coleman Falls and Holcomb Rock.

#5 Holcomb Rock – I consider this without a doubt the hardest of the 7 portages, by a massive margin.  Unless you are in an extremely light boat with no gear, this effort will take you at minimum an hour or so.  Portage on River left…I paddled up to the edge of the horse pasture to find 2 horses waiting there for me.  I pulled out my trusty wheels again, strapped them to the boat and rolled my boat and gear, about 200 yards down an overgrown trail to the edge of an electric fence. Once at the electric fence, I had a quick lunch and began the chore of taking all the gear out of my boat, then sliding my boat under the fence, along the steep rock face, over the boulders, ultimately down to the area below the dam where there was actually some water…about another 150 yards.  Then repeating the process with gear.  This area was the exact opposite of below Cushaw and Bedford the day of my portage…plenty of rocks, with NO water flowing over them and barely a trickle over the dam.  At the time, all water was diverting into the sluice on river right.  I then had to fashion a leash for my kayak and walk it through 2-3 inches of water over slippery algae coated rocks about a quarter mile until I got to a place with more than 6 inches of James where I could actually start paddling again.  This was adding insult to injury to an already especially excruciating portage.

Thus I began a 9 mile paddle through the dam pool below Holcomb Rock and above Reusen’s…this was agonizingly slack and not much to look at.  Almost the entire 9 miles I experienced 15-20 mph headwinds that were making an already tough and still section that much more challenging.  It was everything I could do to maintain 2 mph on this section, and if I stopped paddling for more than 10-15 seconds the headwind would literally blow me back upriver at 3 mph.  I tested this with my GPS to alleviate the boredom.  Once I got closer to Monacan Park (public boat landing) my boredom was then alleviated by the dozens of power boats and wake boarders that seemed very intent on swamping a kayak that day.  2 foot chop on a non-tidal body of water is not something I am used to or care for.  This dam pool is an extremely taxing 4+ hours on the river where I had Railroad tracks on my right and boat docks and river houses on my left, the entire way.  yay.

#6 Reusen’s Hydro Plant – Portage on River Right as the only option.  Since there is a thick steel cable between all the buoys that notify that there is a dam downstream, this required me to hop out of the boat, and combat swim under it, with my kayak along side.  Fortunately it was fairly shallow where I had to jump out and the mud was not nearly as bad as near Cushaw, so this was not too arduous.  Just to the right of the Hydro Electric Plant there is a gravel slope, and once I dragged my boat up the bank, it was another round of pulling out my wheels, strapping them to the boat and walking the 300 yards down a gravel road to below the Hydro plant.  If I were not forced out of my boat due to the cable between the buoys, this would have been a somewhat easy portage, but there is no way around that.  The cable is too heavy to manipulate, and is just out of the water enough to not allow a boat and paddler through….this is by design.

Fortunately the river actually flowed a little below Reusen’s…and I had no headwind for the first time in several hours for the 3 miles to Scott’s Mill

#7 Scott’s Mill - Portage on river left, along River Rd. There are fisherman’s trails along River Rd about 30 yards upriver of the dam.  I pulled up to the bank, and up the very steep and slippery hill to the road.  I scouted the distance, and since there were only around 40 yards and grass along the shoulder of the road, I did not use my wheels this time, I just dragged the kayak and gear down the shoulder of the road to where there were No-Trespassing signs beside the dam, which I completely ignored.  I just slid the boat under the guard-rail back down on the side of the dam, over the boulders and back into the very littered James.  More litter in this one spot than I had seen in the 4 previous days combined.  Once my kayak was back in the water, I sat there for a second and basked in the sense of accomplishment that washed over me.  

After that magical moment was over, at this time the sun was about to set, I realized that I was ahead of some thunderstorms so I had to get moving.  

This whole section of river took over 14 hours to complete.  7 dam portages, 25 miles of river/ground covered…..and I do not recommend this to anyone.  Until some day in the future when enough people have complained to the folks that can actually change this and some manner of legitimate portages are created, I would avoid paddling this section of the James River.  If you know anyone in the area, have them come and meet you...give you a lift downriver...enjoy their company, go to lunch...take in a movie.  Do ANYTHING but paddle and portage this stretch of the river.  

In my humble opinion, the risks far outweigh the reward at present!