• Happy International Mermaid Day! 🧜🏼‍♀️

Gratitude for Guidebook Authors

G

Guest

Guest
I don’t think any other area of the country has been blessed with as many paddling guidebook authors; Burmeister, Matacia & Cecil, Randy Carter, Roger Corbett, Ed Gertler, Ed White.

I forgot Paul Ferguson’s more recent paddling guides of North and South Carolina, which are well thumbed and annotated from past trips.

About latter day guidebook authors. Folks in the mid-Atlantic owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Corbett. His Virginia Whitewater set a standard.

https://www.amazon.com/Virginia-whi...inia+Whitewater&qid=1551291327&s=books&sr=1-1

A standard for breath of coverage (there is a lot of flatwater in that Virginia book). A standard for the author having actually paddled every mile of every stream or river included, even the dull, flat or urban areas. Which supposedly wasn’t always the case in some river-comprehensive Burmeister books, including some technical parts.

Corbett set another standard for the most user-friendly descriptions and intuitive data points and maps. Having every section of river bullet pointed for Gradient, Difficulty, Distance, Time (haha), Width and Scenery was genius for at-a-glance basics for different pieces of river.

Corbett set those guidebook standards, and other’s picked them up.

The lineage story, as I’ve heard it, is that Corbett and Ed Gertler were working together on a Maryland/Delaware canoe guide and Corbett essentially said, “OK Ed, you got this, run with it”. Which he did, compiling the MD/DE canoeing guide (my multiple-edition Bible, some broken spine and heavily annotated).

https://www.amazon.com/Maryland-Del...oe+Trails&qid=1551292054&s=books&sr=1-1-spell

Some of Corbett’s maps feature notes, roads and river sketches appear very similar to my own sloppy in-boat penmanship. Gertler improved the river and shuttle map presentation to make them more consistent and concise. His clarity of surrounding shuttle roads is too often lacking in a river guide, and having a car at each end has proven very helpful in the past.

Gertler followed same format writing Pennsylvania and NJ guidebooks

https://www.amazon.com/Keystone-Can...anoeing&qid=1551292178&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr

https://www.amazon.com/Garden-State...+state+canoeing&qid=1551292246&s=books&sr=1-1

I don’t know if Gertler worked with Paul Ferguson, or if Ferguson just knew a great design when he saw one, but his paddling guides to North and South Carolina are formatted and arranged identically.

https://www.amazon.com/Paddling-Eas...dling+eastern+,stripbooks,135&sr=1-1-fkmrnull

https://www.amazon.com/Canoe-Kayak-...oe+kayak+south+,stripbooks,137&sr=1-1-catcorr


Between Corbett, Gertler and Ferguson that’s NJ, PA, DE, MD, VA, NC and SC.

Having dang near everything between New York and Georgia covered in exactly the same familiar user-friendly format makes it really guidebook convenient. I’m kinda hoping Paul Ferguson is somewhere down Georgia way, paddling rivers and taking notes.

I don’t mean to leave out Bryan MacKay, we have most his hiking and cycling guides, including his updated revision of the out-of-print and beloved Baltimore Trail Guide

https://www.amazon.com/Baltimore-Tr...ore+Trail+Guide&qid=1551296976&s=books&sr=1-1

Must be something in the waters hereabouts for guidebook authors.
 
My thanks to alsg for causing me to get out and peruse old paddling guidebooks. An unexpected trip down memory lane.

I annotate my river guides with at least a list of who was on which trip, which year. With the paddlers and year listed I can more easily differentiate between past trips and water levels and conditions, or at least go back and find the specific trip report for details.

In the Ferguson books the oft run sections of the Black and South get some additional information. Letter grade ratings for ease of access at the put in and take out, “Rte 41, 100 yard long carry around guard rail, D-“, or cautions to remember “Strainer Fest, 17 major get out and carry arounds through the cypress swamp”.

P2270062 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P2270061 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

There’s a lot of memories in those old guidebooks.
 
I annotate my river guides with at least a list of who was on which trip, which year. With the paddlers and year listed I can more easily differentiate between past trips and water levels and conditions, or at least go back and find the specific trip report for details.

As I recall, you used to launch trips with dozens of paddlers. Some of your notes must need additional pages!

Agree that our area is covered by some good guidebooks. Paddling with Corbett was like having a portable river encyclopedia. He would narrate the features of the river as we paddled, "around this next bend are a set of large boulders runnable on the left..." I was always amazed at his recall, which was as good for rivers in Maryland and WVa as it was for rivers he covered in Virginia White Water. Corbett wrote at least some of that book while on unemployment. Virginia required him to look for jobs, which he did, always applying for jobs for which he knew he was not qualified. He applied for a nuclear physicist job at a DC area company and was mad when they hired him. They offered him a different job, for which he was qualified. The best laid plans of mice, men, and guide-book authors... He somehow finished the book anyway, and IIRC, retired as a VP from that company.

Corbett also used an expression I adopted. He'd sometimes call (remember phone calls? pre-caller-ID?) late at night to set up paddling on some river river where the water had come up. I'd answer the phone and he'd say, "it's the time of night when only perverts or paddlers call, and I ain't no pervert!"
 
Corbett also used an expression I adopted. He'd sometimes call (remember phone calls? pre-caller-ID?) late at night to set up paddling on some river river where the water had come up. I'd answer the phone and he'd say, "it's the time of night when only perverts or paddlers call, and I ain't no pervert!"

Was it Corbett who developed the technique for dealing with “Wait, I need pack a lunch”, “Has anyone seen my watershoes”, “Anyone have a spare PFD” dawdlers by simply carrying his boat and gear down to the launch and paddling away?

If so there were a couple of trips where I channeled my inner Corbett
 
Back
Top