John R. Sweet,   8562 Jackson River Road,   Mustoe, VA   24468-2150   USA

Last Update: 29 October 2011

Books are normally shipped by Priority Mail. Postage is $5 for the first book and $2 for each additional book mailed to any address in the US. Foreign postage will be determined for each order. Orders must be prepaid. We no longer accept credit cards.

Carter River Guide

We turned up a cache of Randy Carter’s famous book Canoeing White Water River Guide, eighth edition, 1974. This guide to running whitewater in an open canoe in Virginia, eastern West Virginia, and western North Carolina is a classic of canoeing literature, which should be in every serious paddler’s library.   $6 paperback. The hard-cover edition is now out of print.   Details here.

Burmeister River Guides

We have also turned up a supply of Appalachian Waters, Walter F. Burmeister’s series of guides to eastern US whitewater streams. These were originally published by the Canoe Cruisers Association in 1962 in two volumes in 8½" x 11" format. They were republished by Appalachian Books as an expanded and updated five-volume set in the mid-1970s. They appeared in both paperback and hard-cover editions. We have Vol 1 in hard cover and the others in paperback except for Vol 2, which remains out of print. These are plain-text books without any photos or drawings or any color. Each stream is divided into short sections, usually bridge to bridge, with distance and difficulty rating for each section and accompanying descriptive text. The descriptions are obviously dated since they contain no information on changes that may have occurred over the past 25 years. The maps referred to below are very generalized location maps.

These books are primarily of historical interest. Most of the statistical data are accurate and remain useful to paddlers; however, readers should be aware that Burmeister ran many of these streams from his living room via topo maps, hence significant features are occasionally omitted from the descriptions.

• Appalachian Waters 1: The Delaware and its Tributaries, hardback, 6" x 9", 274+vii pages and a pull-out map, 1974.   $12.00
• Appalachian Waters 2: The Hudson River and Its Tributaries, 6" x 9", 488+viii pages and a pull-out map, 1974.   Unavailable, listed here for completeness.
• Appalachian Waters 3: The Susquehanna River and Its Tributaries, 5½" x 8½", paperback, 600+viii pages and 3 pull-out maps, 1975.   $8.00
• Appalachian Waters 4: The Southeastern Rivers, 5½" x 8½", paperback, 850+viii pages and a pull-out map, 1976. This extends from VA to FL.   $9.00
• Appalachian Waters 5: The Upper Ohio & Its Tributaries, 5½" x 8½", paperback, 948+xi pages and a pull-out map, 1978. This includes streams entering the Ohio above Cincinnati, which includes western PA, most of WV, and southeastern OH.   $9.00
• It seems that the Potomac and Rappahannock basins have fallen into a black hole amid the Susquehanna, James, and Ohio basins. I have wondered if volume 6 was in the works but was never completed. Many Potomac basin streams were covered in Burmeister’s 1962 edition and the Rappahannock is covered by Randy Carter.

You may contact me if you have questions, comments, or want to order a book.

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