"The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too."

-excerpt from Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

As early as 2024, walking the Riverwalk of downtown Saranac Lake is going to become even more decidedly different: locals and visitors, alike, will be treated to a front row seat to the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park.

Designed to allow whitewater paddlers practice and play in an environment specifically manipulated to create an enjoyable feature for all ranges of paddlers, the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park is sure to attract paddlers near and far. The space will be inclusive to paddlers of all abilities who want to work on their skills, meet up with fellow paddlers, and embrace the communal energy the space will provide to all. Have a kayak? Standup paddleboard? Flatwater canoe? Inner tube? If you have a non-motorized personal watercraft, the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park will be a must-add to any future Saranac Lake water adventure bucket list!

So what the heck is a whitewater park? According to AdkAction, “A whitewater park is an area on a river in which the flow and gradient have been altered in order to create river ‘features’ that lend themselves to canoeists, kayakers, or even stand up paddleboards being able to do tricks, race, and perform other recreational activities. These features can be holes, waves, or some combination of the two.” The Tom Boothe Whitewater Park aims to focus solely on one wave feature, where most of the water will rush up and create a wave face before peaking and dropping back down with less recirculating flow than the other main type of feature, a hole.

When running the rapids of an open river, whitewater demands a paddler’s best: their best discipline, their best forethought, their best intention, and their best concentration (with plenty of playtime and opportunities to boof some stouts mixed in). It is not a sport for the faint of heart, but for those who paddle, a truly “great” run through the rapids is poetry in motion. A great run has ebbs and flows, the predictable and unpredictable, requiring a paddler to use their instincts and skill set to respond to all the unknowns that come their way. Like any great river run, the story behind the evolution of the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park has greatness written all over it. 

As it goes with any story, while the names mentioned below are central figures in the planning of the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park, they are not the only individuals involved — far from it. There are countless others who provided their time, efforts, expertise, and support to the project, and many more are sure to come on board in the approaching years. But for now, here is a chapter from one heck of a story about the power of community, the resilience of a dream, and the promise of a future.

Not Saranac Lake’s first whitewater rodeo

The future location of the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park, located under the Rt. 3 bridge along the Saranac Lake Riverwalk, has seen whitewater parks in the past. During the early 90’s, a group of paddling buddies in Saranac Lake came up with the idea of turning the area under the bridge into a whitewater park. Among this group was Jim Sausville (Saranac Lake, NY). 

“The first experience I had with whitewater was paddling in Boy Scouts in aluminum canoes,” Sausville said. “I was thirteen-years old, and I loved it immediately. I went from canoeing in whitewater, to swimming in whitewater, moved west for whitewater rafting, and moved back east for whitewater kayaking.”

Sausville’s respect for the difficulty and technicality of the sport motivated his desire for a space where he could teach others to learn a sport that became central in his own life.

“It struck me as a challenge to initially learn the sport and master it,” he said. “I've since become proficient at it. It made me feel so good that I wanted to teach other people how to do it. That led me to spearheading the original Saranac Lake whitewater project. We really needed a stepping stone where people could get their basics down and get comfortable with the water in order to then go become comfortable in the river.”

By 1995, the Hydro Point Park was born, Saranac Lake’s first ever whitewater park. The park was a treasure to paddlers near and far, including a slalom course where paddlers could both train and compete in whitewater slalom races, a growing sport in the country at the time. The Hydro Point Park and its twenty-four wooden, Olympic-style slalom gates hosted Saranac Lake’s first ever Riverfest — a three-day fundraiser event to benefit the Riverwalk — which attracted paddlers throughout the northeast. 

But, in staying true to the inherent, unexpected nature of any journey involving whitewater, multiple destructive floods swept through the Adirondacks. The aftermath significantly damaged the Hydro Point Park to the point of disrepair. The timing was “the perfect storm” — both literally and figuratively — as these weather cells landed precisely as slalom racing was starting to lose momentum with popularity throughout the country. With funding for repairs now being sparse, the Hydro Point Park was left in disarray by the early 2000s.

However, the park experienced a brief renaissance in 2008, an effort championed by an unexpected source: a sixteen-year old Eagle Scout named Luke Eckert, recently assigned to take on a personally selected project in the community. His choice was a no-brainer: revitalize the beloved whitewater park in his hometown.

If at first your whitewater park gets destroyed by floods, try, try again!

It was at the Hydro Point Park where Eckert learned the ins and outs of whitewater during his early teens, a location practically in his backyard. He had been instructed by Sausville and Jason Smith through their work within both the Lake Placid Outing Club and a summer program run by a group known as the Adirondack Paddlers. The park’s need for some TLC was abundantly clear to Eckert. 

“It was not in the greatest shape,” he said. “We wanted a wave feature to practice on. So we went through all the approvals and the process, something that took a long time. We used it all the time and cared deeply about it, and we wanted to see it come back to its heyday.” 

Family friends — Mike Madden and his son, Sean — and various members of the paddling community donated time, energy, and man power (not to mention Mike’s truck) to help Eckert pull rocks and boulders with the truck and pulley systems. And, for a brief time, the wave feature was in existence. But not even a year later, two major storm cells, including Tropical Storm Irene, swept through the region and all but decimated Eckert’s project, along with countless infrastructures throughout the Adirondacks.

Once again, the future of a whitewater park in the Saranac Lake community was washed away … but not for long.

The third time's the charm

In 2016, the dream of what will ultimately become the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park was born in the same way many great ideas are born: people with a shared interest being in the right place at the right time.

Scott McKim (Gabriels, NY) was offering boat repair services at the time. Tyler Merriam (Saranac Lake, NY), a manager at St. Regis Canoe Outfitters, reached out to McKim for questions regarding a repair job. The two had been on the phone when McKim approached Merriam with the idea of bringing back the whitewater park in Saranac Lake. As luck would have it, Merriam had already been toying with the idea himself.

“I brought the idea up, and it’s been history ever since,” McKim said. 

“After getting together to brainstorm and do some research, we met with Jim Sausville, the creator of the 1995 Hydro Point Park,” Merriam added. “He gave us invaluable information about how to proceed.” And with Sausville’s help, McKim and Merriam found the guidance they needed to take the next steps to make their idea a reality.

Together, McKim and Merriam worked to connect with other individuals and groups in the area to see if there was an interest in bringing the whitewater park back to life. One individual included in this conversation was Tom Boothe, an avid, local whitewater enthusiast on the Board of Directors of AdkAction, who supported the project whole-heartedly. 

“Tom was an amazingly generous person, not only with his energy but with all things,” Sausville said. “He was a Navy man. Everything for him was by the book. It was always, ‘Yes sir,’ but in such a warm and friendly way. With Tom, everything had to be straightforward, organized, and well designed, which is extremely helpful when such a large project is being taken on by a volunteer organization.”

“He's the kind of guy who would walk into a room and brighten everyone's day with a smile, compliment, or limerick,” said Merriam. “He had tremendous vision for what Saranac Lake could be, and through hard work, project expertise, and political savvy was able to inspire and see into fruition a wide array of projects, from large-scale efforts like a new lodge at Dewey Mountain, to small-scale efforts like a disc golf course near his beloved Osgood Pond. I've met few people with such a rich combination of skills, fortitude, positivity, and can-do spirit.”

And with the addition of Boothe to the team, the dreamers of what will become the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park did as paddlers do: venture forth as a collective unit with a willingness to meet whatever comes next head on.

Merriam took over PR efforts while McKim led the charge with grant paperwork and logistics to apply for part of a state-funded grant worth $10 million, the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) — a grant that they ultimately won in 2019, valued at $411,000.

However, there was still a financial gap to close in order to complete a required feasibility study to make this park a reality, a study assessing the practicality of the proposed plan. The Cloudsplitter Foundation provided much of the funding needed for the study, and whatever debt remained was financed personally by Tom Boothe. The study came back with the news everyone had been hoping for: the whitewater park was, indeed, a feasible reality in Saranac Lake.

But the whitewater park’s future would once again be put on hold, this time by the global outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. Work would ultimately resume in 2021, but the original group spearheading the project would feel much more lonely after their beloved friend, Tom Boothe, passed away in October 2020 during a hike with friends in Chesterfield, NY. 

A legend passes away; a legacy is born

While Boothe would not live to see the project reach completion, it is clear to those involved that the project would not exist in the first place without him. “Without Tom, the whitewater park would likely not have come to fruition, or at the very least have taken many more years to get to where it is so far,” Merriam said. “Tom has never asked to have something named after him. He's simply tackled a project and saw it into reality.” To others who knew him well, having the whitewater park named in Boothe’s memory is the perfect way to honor their late friend and carry his name forward.

“When Tyler and crew approached the powers-to-be to make this happen, Tom was already involved in philanthropic operations,” Sausville said. "When he saw that people were getting involved with all of this, he jumped on the bandwagon bigtime. It was his personal impetus that prompted the ‘okay’ from ADKAction so the grant was received. Knowing him as well as I did, it is a wonderful dedication.”

McKim agreed. “It’s an excellent tribute to the passionate effort he put into getting the park to where it is today,” he said. “Future generations will associate his name with outdoor recreation and community vitality, which is the type of legacy I believe Tom would have wanted.”

“The greatest honor, to me, is for someone around you to name something after you — not asking for naming rights or puffing up your own ego at what you've accomplished,” Merriam added. “By posthumously naming the whitewater park after Tom, I hope we honor every aspect of his character mentioned in the words above. His spirit and accomplishments will hopefully inspire for years to come by this namesake whitewater park.”

Community begets community

As the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park inches closer to becoming a reality, more individuals have become central in the efforts of the park, including Adk Action Board Chair, Steve Maikowski, who took over the project after Boothe passed away. 

A “Friends Of” nonprofit group has formed in 2022, each board position voluntarily filled by a member of the community, such as Board Vice President Maeghan Farnham. Sydney Aveson (Lake Placid, NY), the Board’s secretary, looks forward to seeing relationships continue to form and blossom amongst members of the paddling community both near and far as a result of the Tom Boothe Whitewater Park, a sentiment shared by all involved in the project. “Whitewater kayaking is not a solo sport,” she said. “It’s meant to be done with good company. I’ve had the opportunity to paddle in some amazing places, including the Tatshenshini River in British Columbia, the Alsek River in Yukon, and the infamous Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The one constant that connects all the amazing landscapes I have traveled to is the friendships I have made as a result. The Tom Boothe Whitewater Park will create an opportunity to play on the water with friends, only closer to home.”

Not only will the park build community amongst those involved, but it will also give back to the community of Saranac Lake as a whole. “Whitewater parks currently in operation act like magnets for the small towns that are lucky enough to have them,” McKim said. “In addition to paddlers, they attract all manner of visitors to their shores who enjoy the riparian area. As much as I’m a paddler, I’m most excited about the whitewater park enhancing our village’s downtown area, and thus enhancing the local quality of life. I picture myself sitting on the deck of a local establishment, sipping a cold beer with friends on a hot summer evening, watching some paddlers playing around, or wandering with my family from the river to Main Street and checking out artisans selling their fares and grabbing some local eats.”

Merriam also looks forward to what he believes will be a “tremendously positive” impact on the Saranac Lake community, both human and wild. “It will create enhanced educational opportunities for outfitters courses, college classes, and a variety of people interested in learning and improving whitewater paddling skills,” he said. “It will create new recreational possibilities for paddlers, surfers, tubers, boogie boarders, anglers, and other outdoor recreationists.”

Sausville is eager to soak in the energy and excitement the park will provide to all who get to witness the magic of the park. “Having a visible play spot with something as colorful as kayaking — the bright boats, the bright clothing, the suspense — having that in the middle of our village is the icing on the cake for saying Saranac Lake is a unique place. It's just so cool.”

As for the two “founding fathers” of the whitewater park, Sausville and Eckert look forward to what the park will mean for young people in the area.

“I want to see a kids program utilize this space again, because it was used before and served as an outstanding practice and teaching area for kids,” Sausville said. “Jason Smith and I taught together there for years. This has the potential to attract young kids into the sport. It’s good to have young people involved for the community, but it is good for the kids because they learn about themselves.”

“The park gave me something to do as a teenager, something to be a part of, and a way to be healthy and stay out of trouble,” Eckert added. “It teaches you a lot of lessons — things like safety, rescue, forethought, and responsibility. You can’t shut the river off, so you need to be disciplined when you’re on it. That’s something other sports can’t teach. I’m super excited that this new group of fired-up people are taking on this project again.”

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As you enjoy a stroll along Saranac Lake’s Riverwalk this summer, perhaps you will feel the buzz of excitement in the air. Perhaps you will sense the fellowship of a community ready to share the joy of their sport with others. But whatever you do, take a moment to remember a man whose quiet efforts, selfless generosity, and philanthropic actions will continue to give to those who gaze upon the waters from above or play in the rapids below.