Dickerson Whitewater Course

In the summer months, when water temperature in the channel exceeds 100 °F (38 °C), the course is closed for health reasons.

[3] It is also closed when the Potomac River rises above 5 feet (1.5 m) on the Little Falls gauge[4] 20,000 cu ft/s (570 m3/s), flooding the lower section of the course.

[3] In the 1960s, local canoe and kayak paddlers began conducting winter practice in the heated Potomac River water immediately below the discharge channel.

In 1991, he sold his idea to two of the power plant managers, and, in support of the 1992 Olympics team, the Potomac Electric Power Company, Pepco, which owned the plant at the time, approved the insertion of approximately 75 artificial concrete boulders and two wing dams into the channel.

Construction companies building combustion turbine units on (and for) the Pepco Site, donated time and equipment, and the course was opened in December 1991.

In certain conditions of high course flow and low river level, a stream-wide retentive hydraulic, or "sticky hole," posed a hazard to paddlers who failed to correctly "boof stroke" across the drop.

It was a worse problem for paddlers who had made a wet exit from an upside-down boat and were swimming the course.

The Dickerson Power Plant operates at a fraction of what it did 10 years ago, so the heated water is decreased accordingly.

They both feature circular water channels with conveyor belt lifts from the course end to the beginning, plus bigger drops, wider eddies, mid-course pools, and guided raft trips for tourists.