CCA Home Page: Your Friend for Whipping Up a Trip

By Alf Cooley

Suppose there's lots of rain and you want to try a new creek, but don't know how to get that to happen? If you don't want to ask around—or lack the time as a fast-breaking storm bears down—then fire up the CCA website to answer your questions: Which streams? What levels are needed (canoe zero)? What are the current and predicted levels? How many hours to budget on-river and for getting there?

A good place to start is the CCA Home Page, where you'll see:

     Weather Forecast     River Level Forecast     USGS Little Falls

Potomac Paddlers     AW River Database     C&O Canal Conditions

Plus two CCA-made resources for particularly targeted help: StreamFinder and 50 Trip Coordinator Sheets (a.k.a. Cheat Sheets). Over in the Olive Green Column  on the left, hover over Trip Planning / Handbook and then in the flyout menu click on StreamFinder. This compilation has been posted since 2014 (with some updates), but new members may not have found it yet. At the top of each table, click on one of the four state names to obtain the colorful "polka-dot maps" of stream gages, which are colored black, blue, orange, and yellow, according to the amount of water passing each. Click on the dot to get the gage chart, and click once again on the blue USGS gage number to link to the seven-day table of stream level progression there. 

Right below StreamFinder in this flyout menu, click on Trip Coordinator Stream Sheets for the 50 cheat sheets. These are more recent, and offer a thumbnail description, put-ins, takeouts, hazards, canoe zero, toilets (if any), maps, and nearby watering holes, and incorporate links to gages and American Whitewater gage status and river description pages. Both the StreamFinder and Cheat Sheets have must-read introductions. 

And at the bottom of the flyout menu, click on Maps of Local Streams for some great printable maps. 

For still more guidance, in the left pane hovering over Trip Schedule & Reports, click on Trip Reports. Then, on the Trip Reports page in the upper right corner in the "Search this Forum" field, type in the stream to read the prior trip reports.