Water Week / Paddling Film Festival

A huge thank you to all of the folks at the Lancaster Conservancy for an awesome Water Week this year. Sure, the event was nearly a month ago, but there’s no harm in a retrospective look back in time, right?

In addition to collecting a few trees and shrubs from the Conservancy, I was able to attend a session on riparian zones (yay, Kestrels!), a tour of the meadowing efforts at Clark Nature Preserve and a walk in the proposed nature preserve and center on Sunnyside Peninsula which is a joint project between the City of Lancaster and the High Foundation. I also spent a morning with the Conestoga River Club cleaning up the river along Sunnyside. 

Part of the week was the Conestogia-sponsored Paddling Film Festival which featured a curated selection of the world’s best paddling films. The second year the festival has been a part of Water Week, this year’s films focused on adventure, the love of water, the environment and the way that our waterways bring people together. 

It was clear from the week that our rivers and streams have strong allies and tons of enthusiasts. So… what about a Lancaster County film for the Paddling Film Festival? If you were its producer, what would be the focus of your film? Recreation? Clean-up efforts? History? 

Leave a comment below about how you participated in Water Week and give us the title of your film!

High Water June

Been a big month on the water and as we enter July, let’s just take a moment to give a water level shout out. Anecdotally, if you spent time on the river last year and were out some this June, you know that the water was higher. Stands to reason with all of the rain we had. But, thanks to the USGS, we have data for that.  I’m not going to go wild looking at the data, but no harm having some info on the topic. 

Here’s a link for the June 2024 water levels as found on the USGS Water Data website. Aside from a 24 hour spike to 4.3 feet as measured at the Lancaster NOAA water gauge (Pleasure Road and 23), the river pretty much sat around 3.4 feet or so. It even approached the 3 foot mark later in the month before a slight rebound. Low and slow. Lower water levels invariably mean the lack of precipitation and because the river is not full of runoff silt, the water is usually clear. 

Heavy rain, however, doesn’t necessarily translate to higher river levels. We have had prolonged torrential rainfall here at the house and only realized a slight rise in the river. On the other hand, heavy rains upstream that don’t touch Lancaster City can yield a change in levels. 

Without doubt, we had a lot of rain in June and the river reflected that. According to the USGS we spent most of June with levels above 4 feet and there were five spikes above 5 feet. And that is saying nothing about the water event that occurred during the first days of July where the river hit the “minor” flood stage. (See later post.)

While rain and higher levels mean that the river is far from clear, the one thing it is is fast. It’s awesome going out when the levels are high not only for the different perspective one gets sitting higher in the channel, but for those who like to speed things up, it’s just fun to be on a faster river. 

While I love to take my time down the river, a 1.3 mile rip in 12 minutes is something I can get into. And have.

June 19, 2025 - 6.9 feet of river

The Devil Tree and the Chair

Ok. So there has been some mention of the Devil Tree, but if you missed it, the Devil Tree once stood just downstream from the Haunted House (first mention - I’ll write about the Haunted House sometime in the future) and this dead, pretty large tree, was absolutely covered in ivy. The tree had a face, a hood, a robe - all of it ivy. From each side of the otherwise singular tree, there were two scraggly branch-arms that rose above the tree’s head. It actually looked a lot like the Abominable Snowmonster, but it also looked like a demon - thus, its name.

Having broken about half of the way up a few months ago, the Devil Tree took some high water down the river and it now blocks what was previously the smoothest route down the rocky bit at the end. 

The Devil Tree will appear again later. But, now the chair. 

Part 1

More than a year ago I was going down the river and I saw a chair up on the bank a little bit. This was just after a pretty heavy rain and the water picked up and then dropped off this chair. This same water event took a couple of our chairs, too. 

The chair on the bank was the same color and make of a chair we were missing. And I’m thinking, “There’s our chair!” I get out of the boat and tell myself that I’m grabbing it. I figure I’ll just put it on top of the boat and drag it back the last ¾ mile or so. 

I was up the bank a bit and I hear a voice, “Hey, man, what are doing with my chair?” I say, “Yo, wait a minute, this is MY chair.” And he goes, “That’s my chair.” (seriously!). I stop for a second, think things through and am, like, oh, yeah, this is probably one of those blue chairs I always see up there by the AirBnBs.  It was clearly his chair. So I just left the chair where it was and he got it. 

As I was over-explaining why I thought it was our chair, we both noticed a blue thing down the river and it looked like ANOTHER chair. Went together to check it out; he walked along the bank while I paddled.  We talked and everything was cool. Except the blue thing turned out to be a tarp, not his chair. 

Part 2

About a month ago, I was passing the AirBnBs and there were two blue chairs in the water that were taken by some heavy winds and high water. No mistake, those were HIS chairs.

One was down the bank in the shallows and that one was going to be a bear to get, so I just left it. The other was downstream a bit and stuck on a fallen tree in the water. I grabbed it and threw it a bit further towards the bank so somebody could come down and get it. I didn’t feel like getting out of my boat on some tree snag thing and dealing with the chair. I’d probably slip and fall or something. I threw it up a bit from the boat and that was fine. 

Part 3

After another heavy rain and high river levels two weeks ago, I paddled by the AirBnBs and one of the chairs was missing. The chair I threw towards the bank was still tangled in a tree, but the other chair was gone. 

But not like gone, gone. 

There it was, down by the rapids (really just rocks), stuck on the Devil Tree. 

So, the blue chair is on the Devil Tree, having tumbled down the river three-fourths of a mile downstream.

I’m going to get that chair.

I’ll wait a bit until the water warms a bit, since I’ll undoubtedly get wet during the retrieval process. I’ll also give up the chair to its rightful owner if he comes calling, but until then, the Devil Chair has a good spot waiting for it.

The Devil Tree and Its Chair