Here at RichmondOutside we’re always pushing to make our site and the service we offer a little better. Whether it’s content, new offerings or partnerships with like-minded RVA businesses and non-profits, we figure if we’re standing still, we sure as heck aren’t moving forward. And if we’re not moving forward, someone is sure to be gaining on us (If you don’t like those clichés, click here, generate your own and email it to us!).

The motorized boat landing at the Henrico Co. park.

To that end, in early 2014 we’ll be adding new featured columnists, including Sports Backers’ bike/ped advocate Max Hepp-Buchanan, as well announcing a couple of exciting new partnerships.

But we’re also still working on the nuts and bolts. Take a look, for instance, at our Destinations page. Ryan and I recently went out to Osborne Landing to take pictures, so we could add the Henrico County park on the tidal James to our list (That brings our compendium of parks to 40 and growing.). On the Osborne page, we’ve got a text description, a Terrain360.com park tour, our sweet map layered with all the park features, and all the other information you could want to know before making a trip there. Or at least we hope we have. That’s where we need you, the RichmondOutside.com readers. If you see something missing at Osborne, or any other Destination, shoot me an email (andy@richmondoutside.com). Or maybe there’s a park near you that we haven’t featured. Send us an email and tell us why we should. We’d like to have some laurels to rest on, but until we do — until we earn them — we plan to keep making this site better.

Nobody knows the tidal James River like Mike Ostrander. The Richmonder started off as a catfishing guide, and in recent years has expanded his guiding business to include bald eagle and Civil War tours on the James, mostly between the Varina-Enon Bridge and Hopewell.

I’ve done all three with Ostrander, and each was a unique experience. So, here’s a thought: You know that relative or friend that is impossible to shop for, the one that you just end up getting a boring gift card for? Why not buy them an experience they can’t get anywhere else.

Credit: DiscovertheJames

Ostrander is offering Eagle Tour Gift Certificates this holiday season. They’re $45 per person, and if you buy one before 9 p.m., Sunday Dec. 22, each certificate holder will receive a free 8×10 glossy photo of one of the James’ resident bald eagles. You can also buy a two-hour eagle cruise for 6 for $250, a $50 discount.

What’s cool about these tours is that you’re guaranteed to see eagles. As Ostrander wrote to me in an email: The James River is the site of the greatest comeback of the bald eagle on the entire continent. Thirty-eight years ago, in 1975, there were no resident bald eagles on the James River. Today, there are over 200 pairs of resident bald eagles on the James River … 200 pairs!  These resident eagles live on the James year round and have territories, which they protect and will live out their lives in. The life span of a bald eagle is 25 to 30 years in the wild, and this means we will have them around for a great long while.

Check out this sweet video by Brandon Montijo and his production company, Tijo Media. We’ve featured Tijo Media videos before, but this is a particularly cool one of the huge community paddle put together by Ben Moore and Hunter Davis. Looking forward to more river-related videos from these guys.

First RichmondOutside.com featured Retro Video Night, tomorrow’s paddlers’ party at The Camel (5 -9 p.m.), where boaters show all their homemade paddle porn from 2013, then Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine made the event its “Weekend Pick.” No matter the weather, it promises to be a big weekend for James River lovers in Central Virginia.

Greg Hawkins

One of those river lovers is Chris Hull, the James River Outdoor Coalition president. After I posted the piece on Retro Video Night, I spoke with Hull about the fundraising efforts he and others have undertaken for the past year in honor of Greg Hawkins, the former VCU Outdoor Adventure Program leader who died of lung cancer this summer. Hull said even before tomorrow’s James River Run 5K (another Hawkins fundraiser) enough money has been raised to buy three water fountains for the James River Park System.

The original goal was for one, a dual human/dog fountain, to be installed at the Reedy Creek entrance to the JRPS. Now another another two fountains will go in, one likely at the Texas Beach parking area and another at Great Shiplock Park. Not only will these fountains serve both humans and dogs, they’ll also have spigots so bikers can fill up their bottles. Anyone who’s done longer mountain bike rides in the hot summer on the downtown trails knows there are precious few places to fill up a bottle. Most people end up wearing Camelbacks because of it. These fountains could obviate that need.

Of course, dogs will also have the nearby James River to drink from.

One city employee I spoke to said the fountains are on order and could be installed as early as the spring.

For six years now, a growing group of whitewater paddlers in Richmond has gotten together the first Saturday in December to celebrate the past year’s adventures on the James River and often all over the world. It started as “Retro Movie Night” at The Camel, said Hunter Davis, one of the event’s driving forces, where paddlers would watch the videos they had all shot of whitewater exploits from the past season.

Credit: Rich Young

Davis moved back to Richmond from Asheville this past year. In Asheville, he said, “video producers were throwing these movie nights where everybody would get together from the local (paddling) community and watch movies together. There was nothing like that in Richmond, and I thought it would be cool to start something.”

About a month ago, Mike Martz of the Times-Dispatch reported that the developers of the parcel east of Great Shiplock Park and below Libby Hill were proposing a new office project for the site. It was to be smaller than former proposals, which drew the ire of preservationists worried about spoiling the “View that named Richmond” from Libby Hill.

The view from Libby Hill. Credit: Church Hill Peoples’ News

Two weeks later, Leighton Powell, Executive Director of Scenic Virginia, and Robert Mills, a principal for Commonwealth Architects, a Richmond firm that is in charge of the Plan of Development for the proposed development, wrote pieces against and for, respectively, the proposed three-story office building project. I’m not here to give my opinion. What caught my eye was Mills’ mention that the plan called for including right-of-way for the Virginia Capital Trail, which must either go through or around the property after leaving the trailhead at Great Shiplock Park.

I called Virginia Capital Trail Foundation Executive Director Beth Weisbrod yesterday to get her thoughts on the proposal. She said that while her group takes no official position on the larger-development-vs.-preserving-the-view argument, “it sounds like it’s in keeping with the Riverfront Plan, and it’s incorporating the trail in a really great alignment. We support the trail’s alignment through the project, but as far as everything else goes, we can’t wade into that.””

The proposed project has the trail go along the river before joining with the yet-to-be-started section where the Lehigh Cement silos now reside. What’s more, Weisbrod said, is that the developer has “offered what we need for the temporary alignment along Dock Street. There’s an easement that goes pretty much the whole length of their property that allows for a temporary trail to go in while this construction is going on. That also is a very important piece that needed to happen and we’re thrilled about that.”

The upshot is that should this project go through, but not be completed by September of 2015,”we won’t have a hole in the trail when the bike race comes through.”

The James River Advisory Council bills itself  “a forum for the diverse interests along the James River in Central Virginia.” For years part of its mission has been to communicate “with public officials about issues and challenges facing the river and its resources. JRAC’s vision is to unite the community by supporting and promoting the James River as a common resource and preserving its health, beauty, heritage, economic vitality and recreational value.”

Credit: Richmond.com

To those ends, the JRAC does three things every year three that I think have a huge impact on those of us that love the James River (more, actually, but these three I think are the most effective): 1) It prints and distributes the James River Days brochure, with dozens of listings of river-related events and things to do. 2) It organizes a huge June River cleanup. 3) It puts on the James River Parade of Lights.

This year the 21^st annual Parade of Lights will be held on Saturday, Dec. 14^th, starting at 6 p.m. The parade, open to any motor boat owner provider they register in advance, will cruise from above Rockett’s Landing in Richmond through Henrico to Henricus Historical Park in Chesterfield Co. There will be entertainment, food and activities at the viewing sites in Richmond, Henrico and Chesterfield. The event is free and open to the public.

Back in October, the Friends of the James River Park launched a cool initiative called Science in the Park. The effort is a collaboration between VCU’s Rice Center Environmental Outreach Education, the VCU Biology Department, Ralph White, the Friends of the James River Park, the James River Park System and others.

The bridge from Pony Pasture to the Wetlands.

The idea, according to the Friends, is to provide “science-focused educational materials about the geology, habitats, and flora and fauna of the James River Park System in Richmond, VA. We hope to enrich the Park experience for local and regional school systems, communities, visitors and regular users of the park through web-based, self-directed explorations, guides, videos, and lesson plans.”

When you go to the main “Science in the Park” page, you can click on Geology, Flora and Fauna and Rock Pools. Each has a wealth of information about these areas that so many of us spend time in but might not know much about. Recently, the Friends have begun releasing videos that accompany the science tours and highlight a particularly interesting plant, animal, feature, etc. Check out the video at the top of the page by local filmmaker Melissa Lesh on the elusive fairy shrimp of Pony Pasture Park. Go to the Friends of the James River Park Facebook page to see more videos.

By now the Atlantic sturgeon that made their way up the James River for their fall spawning run have turned around and headed back out toward the ocean. In the past, this is where our knowledge of their whereabouts would end. Researchers knew they went north, generally, but where, exactly? And how quickly? At what depth? Where did they stop along the way?

For the first time, however, some of those questions could be answered.

Matt Balazik returning a sturgeon to the James near Hopewell in October.

Back in September, VCU researcher Matt Balazik chose three male sturgeons that he netted in the tidal James and inserted satellite “B-WET” tags under their dorsal scutes. (B-WET stands for NOAA’s Bay Watershed Education and Training program. That’s where these tiny, titanium tags came from.)

“This is kind of a first…in 2003 they did a couple in the Hudson River,” he said. “But no one has done it since then (with adult fish) and with the more recent technology. They did some juveniles up in Canada…and they were only designed to stay on for a couple months.”

Balazik explained that the tags are programmed to pop off at a certain date (Aug. 11) or if certain conditions occur: “If the fish stays at a certain depth for a week straight, it’ll think that the fish is dead. It’ll corrode and release. If it goes over a depth of 3,000 meters, it’ll ping off and release.”

Sadly, for one five-foot-long male, that’s exactly what happened recently. Balazik was hoping not to have to retrieve a tag so soon, but on November 13 he and VCU professor Anne Wright found one on the beach next to the Lynnhaven Pier. It had been on the fish for about a month. The tag popped off automatically when the fish stayed at the same depth (give or take, considering tidal variations) for over a week.

“We have beautiful data in the river, then it’s out in the ocean and everything is going well,” Balazik said. “It goes from moving all over the place to doing a slow up and down… I fear it was a ship strike.”

So, now two males are left with tags in them. Every 10 minutes or so, the tag collects data on depth, water temperature and location, and stores it in a tiny memory card. But Balazik can’t collect that data until the tag surfaces and can transmit to the satellite — hopefully when it’s scheduled to on Aug. 11.

Credit: VCU

“That’s why it’s so nerve wracking,” he said. “You just have to sit here and wait either until something bad happens and the tag pops off prematurely, or you wait until you get some emails from the satellite on Aug. 11.”

In the meantime, Balazik imagines the kind of answers these tags will provide researchers for the first time.

“I want to know where it goes over winter…I want to know, (when) it comes back to the (James), it if all of a sudden, if its way up in Maine, is it like, ‘Oh crap, it’s time for me to go spawn,’ and makes a huge bolt down in like a week or so. Or does it meander down and just turn in.”

Matt Perry and Riverside Outfitters are doubling down on downtown.

The river rafting company, which also rents bikes, boats, and offers camps has long been based near the Stratford Hills Shopping Center off Forest Hill Avenue. Two years ago the outfit opened an outpost on Brown’s Island, renting mountain bikes, kayaks and standup paddleboards for people to use on the nearby sections of trail and in Tredegar Pool between Brown’s Island and Belle Isle.

RO outpost on Brown’s Island.

But the Brown’s Island shop was only open Friday-Sunday from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This coming spring, says Perry, Riverside’s co-owner, he’ll staff the outpost seven days a week — 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. — during the same traditional summer season (Memorial Day weekend  to Labor Day weekend).

“You don’t want people to stop and think, ‘Hmmm, it’s Wednesday, are they open down there?'” he said. “You lose a fair percentage of people that way.”

Downtown, Perry added, “you aren’t really dealing with a captive audience.” People have options for how to use their time. The goal is “to become a more certain entertain option down there.”

Riverside Outfitters first worked out the deal with Venture Richmond (which operates Browns Island) to open the outpost in the spring of 2011. Perry said the idea was to give it two seasons and see what the demand was. This past summer the high water forced them to shut down for six weeks — June through mid-July.

But when they opened back up after the water went down, “we were kind of getting some momentum, awareness was building back up again,” Perry said. “The last three weekends in August were the best we’d ever seen by a long shot. We had multiple hours where all the boats were out.”

SUPs and kayaks are $15 an hour, and mountain bikes are $10. Those numbers won’t change this year, he said.

“It was a two-summer long test, and we were ready to make the decision of do we pack up or roll out and we decided to roll out.”

Perry added: “If you’re going to be the best river city in the country, you have to have something like this.”