John Beale, Post-Gazette
	While spectators try to keep dry, Jeremy Dicasolo paddles over the 18-foot waterfall during the Ohiopyle Over the Falls Festival at Ohiopyle State Park. About 200 participants took the once-a-year opportunity to go over the falls. The festival continues today.

OHIOPYLE, Pa. -- Participants say it isn't all that difficult to run the 18-foot-high waterfall in this Fayette County town.

"The water does all the work," said Jody Biesenkamp of Hopewell. "All you have to do is get there."

Biesenkamp, a 27-year-old technical education teacher in the Hopewell Area School District, was referring to the top of the falls where the Youghiogheny River forms a "hump" that kayakers and canoeists aim for.

It lifts them up and pushes them out before the rapid descent into the bubbling white water below. The water and rain-cooled air temperatures yesterday were 63 and 67 degrees, respectively, but none of the 200 participants seemed to mind.

Biesenkamp was one of 65 competitors who raced in the first event of the Seventh Annual American Whitewater Ohiopyle Over the Falls Festival that concludes late this afternoon.

The freestyle event that followed featured about 15 kayakers who did cartwheels and spins over the falls. The other 120 participants just enjoyed the opportunity to make the drop, the only time all year they can do it legally.

Barry Adams of Swissvale, a veteran kayaker and organizer of the festival, said he is working with officials from Ohiopyle State Park and the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to allow experienced paddlers to run the falls at other times of the year.

Biesenkamp's first run of four yesterday was his most memorable. He went over the falls backward but stayed in his kayak.

That earned him "two thumbs up" from announcer Gary McCormick of Baldwin Borough, who identified the paddlers as they started toward the falls.

"Don't try this at home, unless you have a really big tub," he advised.

The 200-yard course included drops of 2 feet and 4 feet before the waterfall.

Alan Andrews of Washington, Pa., successfully ran the first two drops but caught a wave that slowed down his purple canoe, the "Nexium Tablet," at the top of the falls.

The canoe rolled and ejected him.

Andrews, 52, who works for PNC Bank in Pittsburgh, said he was underwater longer than he wanted to be. "I didn't know if I was upside down or right side up," he said.

He rolled himself into a ball and his life jacket brought him to the surface. He swam across the finish line to the cheers and applause of several hundred spectators gathered on both sides of the river.

"I think I won my division," the former amateur rugby player said with a big smile. "Of course, I was the only canoeist entered."

Jennifer Franko, a Windber, Somerset County, native who ran the falls three times, did well on her approaches but capsized twice after she ran the falls. "The bottom of the waterfall is very intimidating," she said.

Franko, 25, a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and Andrews were two of several race participants who practiced for the event last Sunday at Valley Falls on the Tygart River in north-central West Virginia.

Jeff Snyder, 43, host of the festival, thrilled the spectators by running the falls several times while standing up in a blue-and-white inflatable kayak.

"Some runs were better than others," said the woodworker and furniture maker from nearby Accident, Md. He made his own wooden helmet and 10-foot wooden paddle.

"[Snyder] is the most fun to watch," said Corey Gress of Lititz, Lancaster County, who attended the festival with his wife, Linda, children Ashley, 9, and Josh, 7, and parents Ben and Sandy Stoltzfus.

"[Snyder] really stands out, literally."

The smiling Ben Stoltzfus said the family was going to run the falls "but we were afraid we'd get wet, and now we're soaking wet from the rain."

The fees for running the falls ranged from $10 to $35, depending on what volunteer activities participants did to help with the event. The proceeds went to the Ohiopyle-Stewart Volunteer Fire Company and American Whitewater, a national organization dedicated to conserving and restoring America's white-water resources.