Recreation, education and music come together at River Rocks

Three rivers, one festival –River Rocks takes the imagery to another level.

It starts in the morning with a recreation component – think Saluda River – covering some of the same ground as a water quality education component – think Broad River. Both are important and powerful.

Then everything melds in the late afternoon into something with even more force – think Congaree River. That’s the concert portion of the event, with music during Saturday’s edition of the festival from bands such as The Mantras, Heavy Pets and Blitzen Trapper.

You can do it all within a few hundred yards of the Riverfront Park trail and stage and the Columbia Canal. If you stick around the festival all day, however, you’ll feel as exhausted as kayak paddlers do at the end of a full day on the rivers.

“We want people to hang out around the canal, try the standup paddleboards or a kayak, check out a few things environmental education-wise, go down to the food trucks to get something to eat and then listen to the bands,” said Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler.

The event serves as the make-or-break fundraiser for the local Riverkeeper organization, which works to protect and improve water quality, wildlife habitat and recreation on the Congaree, Saluda and Broad rivers in the Columbia area. The money raised helps pay for equipment use to monitor water quality and come up with scientific data Stangler has used to hold polluters responsible for their acts.

Some of the environmental education exhibits are open to anyone walking in Riverfront Park Saturday, but you have to purchase a festival wrist band ($12 in advance, $15 day of the event) to take advantage of the paddling opportunities on the canal or enter the stage area for the concert.

The highlight for many festival-goers is the chance to try out new paddling equipment on the canal. The festival offers a great opportunity to learn to paddle kayaks, canoes and stand-up paddleboards, which are like broad surfboards which you propel from the standing position using long-handled paddles.

Most of the year, the only place to get on the canal for paddling is its northern end, just north of River Road. Because that’s the only access point, you also have to turn around and paddle back upstream to get out. While the canal looks calm, it often has a swift current, making that return trip tougher than expected.

During the festival, local outfitters get to launch from a special dock closer to the Riverfront Park parking area off the end of Laurel Street. Paddlers can go upstream until they’re tired, then float back downstream at their leisure. Even better, expert paddlers volunteer to monitor the area and help anyone with problems.

“If you want to put kids in a canoe, it’s a great place to do it,” Stangler said. “If you want to tray a standup paddleboard, there’s flat water and there are people around to help.”

Steve Fisher of California Republic, which will be providing standup paddleboards for the event, wishes the canal was more accessible all the time. With maybe 100 people or so on the canal during the last River Rocks, the area seemed to come alive, he said.

“Other than River Rocks, I’ve never seen any watercraft on the canal,” Fisher said.

As the paddling winds down, the music heats up. The grassy area in front of the Riverfront Park stage turns into a picnic area first, even near the stage. As the headliners take the stage, the crowd gets a little thicker. Stangler said about 1,500 came out for last year’s show, and the small venue could hold about another 500.

Joey Holleman

This story was originally published April 8, 2015 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Recreation, education and music come together at River Rocks."