Shawn Hash, owner of Tangent Outfitters, and Jimmy Alley of River Song Cabins in Grayson County stop at some rocks in the middle of the New River at Double Shoals.

Photos by MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Tangent Outfitters river guides Trent Russell (left) of Rocky Mount and Andy Jensen of Pembroke navigate a narrow channel over a tree trunk at the Buck Reservoir on the New River on Thursday. The channel is a designated portage path for boaters to get around the dam while navigating the river.

Shalene Bryson (left) and Jerry Shaffer, both of Galax, pet Shalene's dog Gizmo next to a swimming hole at the base of Buck Dam along the New River. The dam was the Thursday takeout point for a float trip down the New River to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the New becoming an American Heritage River.

BYLLESBY -- If you've ever seen "The African Queen," you have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. Think of the part where Humphrey Bogart is wading among weeds and grasses, towing Katharine Hepburn in his little steam-powered launch while they look for a German ship so they can sink it.

World War I had just broken out, after all.

But this isn't about fighting the Kaiser. For people taking a two-week float trip down the New River to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the New becoming an American Heritage River, it's about portage.

Now, portage may be a word you last encountered in connection with French explorers and fur traders around the Great Lakes, perhaps in a section of a middle-school history book dealing with life on the North American frontier before the French and Indian War. In this context, it means pulling a canoe or kayak out of a river and carrying it around some obstacle. In this case, Byllesby Dam in Carroll County.

Byllesby Dam is the first of three Appalachian Power impoundments on Virginia's section of the New River. Byllesby is followed pretty quickly by Buck Dam, which is followed much less quickly by Claytor Dam.

At Byllesby, a series of signs guides paddlers to the portage path, which is where the Bogart scene begins. Grasses loom over the watery pathway, which is roughly one canoe and half a paddle blade wide. Except for the downed tree that made it necessary to hop out into 3 feet of mucky brown water and lift boats across before resuming the way toward the shore, it wasn't too bad on Thursday. Except for that and the beaver-gnawed tree that hung perilously across the path. And the sandal-sucking silt at the takeout point itself.

It's only a 1,500-foot walk -- toting a boat -- until you can be back on the water and on your way again. That's only the distance from goal line to goal line on an American football field. And then back. And back again. And again. And one more time.

There's more to paddling than paddling, clearly.

There's also portaging. And staging -- having a vehicle at the end of the trip you can get back to the beginning and pick up the vehicle you left there, since it wouldn't fit in the canoe.

Balance and vision and quick reflexes could be useful, too.

And a good map.

After years of talking about it -- it was one of the first projects the New River Community Partners came up with in their meetings soon after the New River became an American Heritage River a decade ago -- there is a genuine New River Blueway map. Produced by the National Geographic Society, it's waterproof, tear resistant and chock-full of information about the New River from one end to the other and all along the sides.

It gives background and contact information about parks along the river and tells where the rapids are and how difficult they are to run. It even tells you where the portages are. But it won't tell you that the one at Byllesby Dam is five football fields long.

This morning, the float trip organized by New River Community Partners and Tangent Outfitters was expected to paddle the Radford stretch of the river, from Ingels Farm to Bisset Park, and meeting up with Radford Heritage Days festival.