Here’s the upside to all the rain we’ve had this summer. Sweet!

Z-Dam from Tijo Media on Vimeo.

Local boater and filmmaker Hunter Davis recently put together this short clip of his friend, Kyle Irby, getting after it in the surf below Z-Dam near Pony Pasture. Good stuff.

State of the James: ‘Z Spot’

Lake Jocassee

Richmond native and filmmaker Hunter Davis has moved back to Richmond from Asheville (who’s trendy now?!) and area paddlers and paddle porn lovers are the better for it. His latest film premieres tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at The Camel. It’s just $5 to get in and, based on this trailer, it’s worth every penny. The movie is called “Escarpment: The Jocassee Experience.” Lake Jocassee is found in the northwest corner of South Carolina where a number of creeks drain the Blue Ridge Mountains. According to Davis, those creeks offer “the biggest and baddest whitewater to be found on the East Coast.”

The Thompson River, one of a few creeks that feed the Jocassee.

If you can’t make the premiere, go to Amongstit.tv to stream the video.

There’s some great Riverrock coverage in today’s Times-Dispatch. If you plan on heading down sometime this weekend, here’s your schedule of events. This is Riverrock’s fifth year and every year they add something new. Last year, they moved from two to three days and from just Brown’s Island to Brown’s Island and Historic Tredegar. Here’s a look at my Riverrock preview on today’s Sports front and click “Continue Reading” below for a list of what’s new.  

Also, if you ran last year’s Filthy 5K mud run, you may have noticed a lot of emergency services personnel running around on Tredegar Street and the Belle Isle footbridge toward the end of the race. Two runners, one 12 years old, went into cardiac arrest within 2 minutes of each other. Click here for my story from A1.

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Dominion Riverrock, Richmond’s riverlife celebration starts this Friday and runs through Sunday. Last year over 65,000 people attended the event over the three days. And the weather looks to be just as good this year, with highs in the 80s and chances for scattered thunderstorms. Registrations for the sporting events on May 17-19 will be accepted online until tonight (Tuesday, May 14) at 11:59 p.m. Admission is free, but anyone wishing to compete in a Dominion Riverrock event must pay to enter. Walk-up registration for all events will be accepted on site unless the event has reached its capacity.

Dominion Riverrock also features live concerts throughout the weekend, an interactive village, and sporting events including the Miller Lite Filthy 5k, James River Scramble 10k Trail Run, Urban Assault mountain bike race, Boulder Bash, Slacklining, and more.  For event registration and further information about Dominion Riverrock 2013, go to www.dominionriverrock.com.

Schedule of Events:

Thursday, May 16

 Friday, May 17

 Saturday, May 18

 Sunday, May 19

Check out the Westham Gauge on the James River. It’s predicting the river to crest at 15.7 feet — that’s well into “Moderate Flood” stage — by tomorrow. This is a great opportunity to see the river at a level it reaches maybe two or three times a year. It’ll probably be up over Riverside Drive near Pony Pasture and over the trail by the 42nd Street stairs. The Pipeline should be partially submerged as well. Good time to get down to the river and take in its power.

The singletrack through the woods is taking shape.

I took a stroll on Chapel Island yesterday, checking out the progress the city’s trails crew has made since beginning work a few weeks back on a trail system and non-motorized boat put-in. I wrote about the changes coming to Chapel Island in a recent Times-Dispatch column. Changes are also in the works for Great Shiplock Park, just across the canal from Chapel Island. A fancy new trailhead for the Virginia Capital Trail is to be installed there. VCT Executive Director Beth Weisbrod said they should get the final permits from the city this week and that construction will begin around March 1. She also said that an anonymous $100,000 donation came in recently that helped get them across the goalline on the project. Cool stuff in the works.

Click Continue Reading below for more pictures.

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Credit: Rich Young

Former local paddler Hunter Davis works for an online distribution platform called AMONGSTiT.tv. He’ll be bringing their Dirty South Film Tour to The Camel tomorrow. Here’s how Davis describes it:

Over the course of 2012, I worked on producing a series of films with AMONGSTiT about paddling the Southeast along with the help of dozens of other Richmond kayakers. Richmond has produced some of the best paddlers in nation due to its central eastern local and year round whitewater access. Its going to be at the Camel this Saturday.  We are also going to be donating 10% of all food sales to JROC during the event.

Here’s a website with more information: http://dirtysouth.amongstit.com

One of my favorite things about being an outdoors lover in Central Virginia is discovering the communities of enthusiasts that exist because of their particular outdoors passion. I’ve done plenty of canoeing and even some standup paddleboarding on the James River, but I’ve never really been plugged in to the whitewater paddling community here in Richmond. This week I found out just how close knit paddlers in RVA are while working on a story for tomorrow’s Times-Dispatch column.

For five years, whitewater enthusiasts have gathered every first Saturday in December to celebrate the past year of boating — on the James and elsewhere. It started as “Retro Movie Night” — where participants would show the home movies they made of the water they ran that year at The Camel — and quickly became a day of paddling, grilling out at the 14th St. takeout and movies.

14th St. takeout. Credit: Phil Riggan.

According to event founders Hunter Davis and Ben Moore, usually about 75 or so whitewater lovers would show up and have a great time catching up on what everyone was up to. This year, Retro Movie Night has morphed into the “James River Hustle.” Saturday will still be a day to celebrate all things paddling in Richmond, but there will also be a 5k, a silent auction and gear sales – all to benefit a longtime member of the community.

Greg Hawkins was the head of the VCU Outdoor Adventure Program for 13 years. He left two years ago to take the same job at Boise State. This past September, despite never being a smoker, he found out he has lung cancer. Hawkins will have to take a leave of absence from his job to fly to Houston for treatment. The bills will mount and his friends in the Richmond whitewater community wanted to do something for him. The proceeds from the 5K and the silent auction will go toward helping defray Hawkins’ medical expenses. It’s the least guys like Moore, Davis and others say they can do to help a friend who helped so many discover Richmond’s outdoor opportunities.

Click here to learn more.

Local paddler Ben Moore and friends decided they were going to make the most of Frankenstorm Sandy. Here’s his report:

By Ben Moore

Every summer a group of RVA paddlers gets together to clean the wood out of Reedy Creek in Forest Hill Park before the coming rainy season. When that is accomplished, we get to reap the rewards. Hopefully this explains why we volunteer to cover ourselves in poison ivy during the August humidity to remove logs and debris from a stream that only gets enough water in it to paddle a handful of times a year.

Pumpkinhead battleboards Reedy Creek.

Reedy Creek really is a hidden gem in Richmond. We in the paddling community are grateful for the stoke it provides. As a new paddler, before you ever run Reedy, you hear stories about it. About how to even approach it you have to commit to heading out in the nastiest of weather. About how you have to climb through poison ivy and briers to scout it. And the smell of the water, more than anything else, you hear stories about how gross the water is draining off Midlothian Turnpike during a heavy downpour. You have to come to terms with all of that before you get to paddle the steepest rapids in RVA. The conditions alone you have to put yourself in to get to the paddling part lend it a sort of coming-of-age quality as a paddler in RVA.

The author with some light reading.

Recently I have taken up a new paddling discipline, battleboarding. It is letting me feel all those new creepy crawlies while paddling old favorites just like I did when I was first learning how to surf or kayak. The stoke is high.