Been There/Done That

Manayunk Kayak Tour

by Carolyn Wyman

Next tour Sat., Oct. 4, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. or 1-4 p.m., $50 (includes lunch), reservations required, leaves and departs from Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main St., 215-482-9565, ext. 204, manayunk.com

A Manayunk kayak tour? Seeing the algae-choked, trash-strewn waterway behind Main Street from the bike path, it hardly seemed possible. Would participants need to wear hazmat suits, and portage their boats over the silt-clogged dry spots?

That toxic-waste-filled ditch is the Schuylkill Canal. The kayak tours actually take place on the Schuylkill River hidden behind it, I found out when I showed up last weekend. (The word Schuylkill, after all, means "hidden river" in Dutch.) The two-year-old tours are one way the nonprofit Schuylkill Project is trying to fulfill its mission of raising awareness and interest in the upper Schuylkill. Kayak tour operator Hidden River Outfitters also leads trips on the lower Schuylkill from Walnut Street, which, in my experience and Hidden River owner/guide Ted Danforth's admission, are physically harder and not as tranquil and "naturally" attractive as this one.

The three-hour Manayunk tour starts with an hour of instruction and outfitting, so no experience is necessary. Danforth's imaginative potential disaster scenarios are lightened by bad jokes (like his instruction to be sure to save the water bottles everyone is given "because we need to refill them for the next group"). First, the 10 of us paddled 15 minutes upriver to Roxborough. This is to be sure everyone can make it against the current and to allow anyone who can't the chance to bail out as we go back past the Manayunk Brewery launch point (nobody did) and down river three-quarters of a mile to the Philadelphia Canoe Club. Though the river isn't teeming with wildlife — the most interesting natural sighting was a cormorant — it's also not full of trash. (The one car we saw submerged by the bank looked to have been there since shortly after its '70s manufacture.)

The tour ends with lunch and beer at the Manayunk Brewery (which is why lunch always follows, even for the 1 p.m. tours) and the chance to swap kayaking war stories — although the greatest danger that afternoon was falling for one of Danforth's jokes.