Subject: Safety on the River; New Paddle Trip Offer!

Welcome to the premiere of our Middle River Safety Story Map! We include a place for you to report hazards you encounter on Middle River which will build a crowd-sourced map of hazards for all paddlers! Safety is essential to enjoying the river through our River Access Program. We hope you will enjoy the content, photographs, rhymes, and even the difficult quiz question. We think it is a lot of fun; we enjoyed creating it for you! Please feel free to give us feedback at the end of the story map. Click HERE!

~John Bauman and the Safety Story Map Team

Fishing Paddle Trip Opportunity

Date: Saturday, June 5, 2021
Time: Put-in anytime between 8:00am to 9:30am
Approximate length of trip: 4 miles, 3-4 hours
River: Middle River, approximately river mile 26.1 to river mile 22.1
Cost: free
(Backup Raindate: Sunday, June 6 )

June 4th-6th are FREE Fishing Days statewide in Virginia where one can fish without a permit!!!

This short-in-length trip allows lots of time for fishing. You'll pass through a number of sections of farmland. It is a quiet stretch of river until you get to the Laurel Hill Bluff area where there are a couple of challenges. This is not a particularly dangerous trip, but beginner paddlers could scrape bottom or get stuck at times. It is good fishing.

Local Public Flat Water and

Beginner Paddling Opportunities

If you are new to canoeing or kayaking, we highly recommend you begin learning how to manage your craft on flat water, which more often than not is a lake. Once you feel comfortable and master some skills dealing with wind and waves, and you can confidently steer and stop your boat, you may want to graduate to the increased challenge of paddling rivers. See our list of flatwater places to paddle in our region HERE !

Churchville Water Level Gage Decommissioned

You may have recently noticed that the USGS Churchville gage has been decommissioned. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/va/nwis/uv/?site_no=01622464

Going forward, we will only have one gage on Middle River and that is the Grottoes gage at https://waterdata.usgs.gov/va/nwis/uv?site_no=01625000

According to Brendan Foster, hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey:

“We do not have any plans to redeploy that [Churchville] station. This station, along with 13 others, constituted a monitoring network that was designed to measure potential impacts from the construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Since the ACP is no longer being built, the funding to support this monitoring effort is gone."

Loss of Access Site in Verona

In recent years FOMR has had the privilege of leasing the area just upstream of the Route 11 bridge in Verona on Bald Rock Road which was one of the properties in our River Access Program.

Effective immediately, the property has been sold, which terminates our lease.

Please do not use the property at river mile 29.5 at the Verona Bridge for any reason.

Earth Day Litter Cleanup

In April, the Staunton-Augusta Family YMCA Youth Volunteer Corps joined with FOMR and Earth Day Staunton to do three separate litter cleanups along portions of Lewis Creek. We have a short video from Lewis Creek at the Stuart Hall soccer field area near the stockyard HERE. You’ll hear the cows in the background!

Thank you, Buzz Easterling, Stephanie Mason, Chris Lassiter and the entire Youth Volunteer Corp team! And congratulations to 9th-grader Zander who was named the Volunteer of the Month by participating in all three sessions of litter cleanup, as well as other Youth Volunteer Corps projects in April!

Paddling Risks for Middle River

Using the American Whitewater Accident Database of reported injuries and deaths in paddling sports, we analyzed the data for rivers similar to Middle River for levels of difficulty and water flow.

You often hear us say that Middle River is a great beginner river paddler’s river because Middle River has only Class I and II rapids. And it IS a good beginner river paddler’s river. But, it is not risk-free.

Paddlers have, do and will be injured on rivers just like Middle River. We ran the data for all accidents reported that occurred in the U.S. for class I and class II rivers at low or medium water flow. READ MORE...

For River Access Program Members, only

River Access Program members: Going forward, we will list the current RAP Booklet you should be using at the bottom of every newsletter right after the calendar. This way, you will be able to check that the booklet you have in hand is the correct version. Access sites can change over time and it is important not to contact landowners who have left our program. When we have changes to the booklet, we email you a new booklet, but these could potentially go into your spam folder and be missed. If you find you do not have the current booklet, you can request a new one anytime. Email Kate at info@friendsofthemiddleriver.org.

Coming Up

May

17 E. coli monitoring

25 FOMR Board Meeting, 6:30pm, IN PERSON! Open to members

Email us if you want to attend

June

2-4 FOMR office closed for vacation

5 Fishing Paddle Trip

21 E. coli monitoring

22 FOMR Board Meeting, 6:30pm

Current RAP Booklet: Version 4/22/21.

Friends of the Middle River

P.O. Box 131,

Verona, VA 24482

540-609-8267

Web: www.friendsofthemiddleriver.org

Email: info@friendsofthemiddleriver.org

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Subject: Safety on the River; New Paddle Trip Offer!

Paddling Risks for Middle River