Ohiopyle State Park is conducting a public meeting on Saturday, Nov 22, 2008, to gather input and feed back on a proposal, under Bureau of State Parks evaluation, which would provide non-commercial private boating access to Ohiopyle Falls. The meeting is an open house public meeting to review the proposal, ask questions of State Park Staff, and to provide comments.
The Park private boater access proposal will not be available until the meeting.
The open house meeting will be conducted between 1pm to 5pm at the Meadow Run House (former park manager’s residence) across form the Meadow Run Natural Water Slides. You don’t have to be there the entire time.
We are requesting that as many boaters as possible show up at the meeting to show support for private boater access. Please contact Barry Adams via email or 412-242-4562 if you can attend the meeting. We can also help arrange car pooling. We need a strong presence to show our support for private boater access. Stop in between 1pm and 5 pm to participate. Pick up the Park Proposal, ask questions and make a statement in support of private boater access. You can also paddle before or after the meeting to make the trip worth while or just take a hike or ride your bike.
Talking Points:
If you have run the Falls try to make it personable. Talk about the first time you ran the falls or another time that you did (legal runs only). Please no runs that you got trashed real bad. You can also talk about your friends and their feelings.
Talk about other water falls in the area or even in the Park.
If you have not run the falls how you are looking forward to the day that you can run the falls like any other rapid without having to wait for one day a year or having to pay someone to run the falls.
If the falls were to be open more you would come to the Park more often which would bring more commerce to area.
Those that can not attend the meeting will have the opportunity to request, review, and provide feedback on the access proposal through the end of the 2008 calendar year. The Park will make the full proposal as well as the pilot commercial use license for running clinics available at the park office or by email request as an attachment. The email request will be handled after the meeting by sending a request to the park email account .
We also hope to have the above documents available at by contacting Barry Adams.
Public comments from this meeting will directly contribute to the Bureau of State Parks’ evaluation of the feasibility of this access proposal and help to frame the access issue on Ohiopyle Falls in general.
After the review process the Bureau of Parks will determine if private boaters can have access and in what form?
In addition to attending the meeting we will request that you submit a letter after the meeting in support of private boater access. More details on this after the meeting. We can assist you and various clubs and organizations with sample letters, etc. Please contact Barry Adams if you intend to write a written response. AW will be making a formal response for the paddling community which we can send you and will also be posted on the AW site and Falls Race Site
It is important to note that even though this is a park proposal that could give us access to the falls they can and will reject their own proposal if they feel the community is not in favor of their proposal. In addition, if they feel there are various other reasons not to let private boater access they will reject their proposal. There will be opposition from various sources to any private boater access so we need to make sure there is overwhelming support for private boater access.
American Whitewater has been working on this issue directly with the Park for over fifteen years and we now need boater participation and comments at this public meeting. If the Bureau of Parks rejects this proposal we may not get another chance for private boater access for a long time.
We want to make this clear. The Bureau of Parks can and will reject the Park proposal for almost any reason.
Please check Falls Race Site for updates regarding this matter. There is no question that now until the end of this year will be the most important time for private boater access over the last fifteen years. Please pass this message on to other paddlers.
We need your help and support more than ever.
Ohiopyle Falls Access Committee
American Whitewater
Mark Singleton
Barry Adams
Kevin Colburn
Charlie Walbridge
Barry Tuscano
John Lichter
Matt Muir
Pat Norton
Ken Gfroerer
We are excited to unveil one of our newest, and most requested, pieces of gear. A full on kid’s drytop! More and more kids are getting after it these days, a lot of them cheered on by their parents who spent their formative years during the plastic kayak revolution of the Mirage and Dancer. These two jackets will be headed down to Chile to Kurt Casey of Rivers of Chile fame. All of these are custom ordered, so please allow a couple of weeks for us to make it.
Makenzie and Kaitlyn Wheatly, two local Confluence soccer phenoms that I coach, were kind enough to stop by the shop and model the jackets for us. This was their first time ever even seeing a drytop, and with a little baby powder and the promise of some sugar worms, they put them on no problem.
For reference, Makenzie (in the blue) is 10, 4’6” tall and weighs 58 pounds. Kaitlyn (purple) is 6, about 4 feet tall and 63 pounds. You can see that they both have some room to grow into them, so your young-uns will be able to use it for a couple seasons.
Some of the features: all of the same great features of our Comp LX Jacket, and the jacket can be made with a latex neck or our competition style neck.
The latex wrist and neck gaskets are specially designed with smaller people in mind as they are actually closed cones that can be trimmed to fit even the smallest wrists and necks.
Please contact us our your local retailer for ordering information.
Here at IR we take Halloween pretty seriously. Being that we have all of the sewing machines, creativity, know how and fabrics, we have come up with some awesome costumes over the years. Here is my 2009 installment, unveiled this past weekend at my girlfriend’s family’s awesome Halloween bash. About 200 people showed up this year throughout the course of the evening, with the last revelers lasting until dawn. You have some time still to make yours.
-Roger
I RECEIVED MY [REPAIRED] DRYTOP IN AN LL BEAN BOX WITH NO EXTRA CRAP, NO CATALOG, NO RECEIPT. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. FINALLY A COMPANY TRULY KEEPING IT GREEN, RECYCLING AND PROBABLY SAVING LUTE IN THE MEANTIME. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, KUDOS TO YOU, I’M VERY IMPRESSED AND AM TELLING ALL MY BOATER FRIENDS.
This years Moose Fest was a bit different than the previous years I have attended…..it did not snow. In fact it was actually pretty damn nice weather. Im talking it was even sunny, both days. If you have not been to the Moose, yea, its a long drive, yea it will probably snow, yea you might get drunk and forget to hang up your gear only to find it in a frozen ball in the back of your car, but the river is a real nice time. Here is a vid from this years Moose Fest. I know some of you will really enjoy………………… DEMSHITZ!
My name is Ted and I don’t kayak…well, I do, but for fishing not the white water stuff you guys do. I am part of a growing number of guys that swim to submerged rocks off of Montauk, NY beaches at night to catch Striped Bass. It’s pretty cool! Anyway, my point is we wear wetsuits, studded boots, head lamps etc and swim out between 20-100 yards off the beach, find our rock (in the dark) crawl up and stand and then begin to cast all niight in pursuit of that pig of a lifetime. This time of the year we need to wear either a waterproof jacket or splash top over the wetsuit to keep our body warm above the water. I recently bought one of your Comp semi dry tops second hand and it is the sh!t! Everyone asks me who made it and how much etc etc. You will be having a few more surfcasters narrow down your inventory soon. Anyways, I was on your website and I saw the snow camo top and absolutely need to have it. Can you please tell me what I need to do to get one?
Please advise… and keep building the creme de la tops!
We have been working on a way to make our closeouts page a less cumbersome experience for you, and easier for us to update with new products and deals as well. We are happy to unveil our new format, using a blog style method of entering products that are either discontinued colors or blemished items. The payment service will be handled through Paypal, so you have the option of either using your Paypal account or a credit card if you don’t have a Paypal account.
To visit the new site click here or the URL is closeouts.immersionresearch.com .
You can search for products by choosing a category on the left hand side of the page, such as Sprayskirts or Men’s Jackets, or by simply scrolling through the page.
We are currently adding to the page, so be sure to come back often as we upload all of the great deals for you. Among the items listed right now are some W’s Flash Flood Capri Pants, 2007 M’s L/S Zephyr Jackets, 2008 L/S Competition Jackets Limited Edition Snow Camo print, 2007 W’s L/S Session Jackets, and a bunch of different styles of sprayskirts.
This is a great time to stock up on some colder weather paddling gear or to replace some things that were either lost, broken or retired in the last few months.
Dealers, if you would like some information on stocking these products in your store, please let us know.
