For all you paddlers out there, there is a new survey put out by AW to assess people's opinions of the Cheoah and the release flows that have been made so far. Please take the time to fill it out. Here is the information.

This heads up is courtesy of Tom Okeefe.

Here's a trip report written by my good friend, Tom, from Seattle, WA (and a nice picture of him, here). If you want to see my trip report, it's two entries prior...

Sounds like it's story time.

So American Whitewater had its staff meeting and board of director's meeting at Tapoco Lodge on the banks of the Cheoah River this last week. If you're down there some time where you're weathered in and looking for a nice southern meal and a hot shower I highly recommend it as paddler-friendly lodging. The owner is a County Commissioner who provided strong support for restoring the river and providing recreational opportunities and through some slick interpretation of the local regulations he managed to snag a liquor license in what is otherwise a dry county (rumor was that because he has a tennis court he can call his lodge a "club").

As many of you probably know the Cheoah is one of our big success stories for the year with 500 people attending the first release on Sept 17th last year. For 75 years the river was dewatered but now it has restored base flow and scheduled ecological pulse releases in the fall and spring that attract paddlers. Over the days of our meeting on Thursday and Friday I would look out at the river (which you can see from the dining room at the lodge) and it was just a pile of rocks with 100 cfs trickling through. We all eagerly awaited the release from the dam set to arrive on Saturday morning...

Saturday began with a frenzy as everyone made the mad dash to the Jackson Kayaks motor home for boats. Most board members and staff come in from out of town so you never really know what boat you'll have until about half an hour before the run. I was a little slow on the draw when the melee began and emerged from the crowd with Emily Jackson's pink Hero. For those of you who don't know the boat it's basically designed for Emily who is a teenager and although I have short legs it wasn't exactly the right weight match. Eric warned me that it was a little skinny and I'd feel like I was in a slalom boat--after assuring him that I had paddled slalom I was off with my pink boat looking for space on a car.

As more people began spilling out of the lodge for the boat pile the supply quickly dwindled and everyone just grabbed whatever they could as cars starting pulling out of the parking lot. Nobody had taken on the role of trip leader and pretty soon we were about two dozen people up at the highest put-in below the dam. Paddling with AW folks can be interesting as we have the full range of abilities and skills (not to mention everyone paddling with whatever boat they grabbed 30 minutes before). We have guys representing the elite paddlers in the country, a few folks over the hill, some just starting the sport, and everyone in between.

Now the Cheoah is not a great river for a large group. The run can be generally characterized as continuous class IV and many of the eddies are filled with trees that have established themselves in a river that's had no water for 75 years. Everyone filed into the current like a long row of ducks with the first person far out of sight from the last. I can tell I'm over the weight range for my boat right away as the nose really sinks if I lean forward at all so I have to do a lot of active driving on the run to keep the nose up and stay out of trouble.

We get to the first ledge drop and Charlie Walbridge, piloting his new glass C1 obviously made from a mold out of the 1970's, decides he's going to portage. Everyone else runs the drop but there's limited communication and not much eddy space so everyone just sort of trickles downstream. At the next good eddy someone says, "where's Charlie?". It becomes obvious that nobody had waited for him so someone announces that we should split the group in two and one group should wait for Charlie. Nobody takes charge and the groups are uneven as nobody wants to be in the group sitting around waiting for Charlie. I learn later that the 5 who stayed behind at that point waited for about 40 minutes with Charlie grumbling that he was sitting there waiting to join a group of folks who wouldn't just ditch him (I can just see the journal article now on sticking with your group).

We get a little further downstream, and Eric who is the AW Safety Chair stops, noting that the group doesn't really look that much smaller, and says, "did someone really stop and wait for Charlie?" Nobody has a clear answer so Eric grabs a few people and they eddy out and I never see any of them again. I continue on following Sutton--my rule on these trips is find one person you trust who knows the river and whatever happens make sure you stick with that person. Sutton had guided me down the Tallulah last fall and had run the Cheoah a number of times so I just stayed right behind him.

By this time we're down to about a dozen or so. We pass by EJ and Dane Jackson who are launching at an intermediate point downstream with Ben VanCamp. The group further breaks up as a couple people decided to paddle with them. Then we get to Bear Creek Falls--The Big 'Un. Sutton has a huge hole that has opened up and his boat is leaking like a sieve. We get out to scout the drop for a few minutes and by this time we are down to a group of four. This is also where I meet up with Elise who tells me that Morgan just came past. Sutton and Ryan decided to portage. I'm in the water with Mark Singleton so the two of us run the rapid and have a clean line threading the holes on river right. For the next mile or so the river is great fun with lots of little ledges and offset holes. Sutton gets back in paddling his sinking boat as fast as he can. He decides to take out at Tapoco Lodge and then Ryan and Mark decide to do the same. I knew Morgan would be down at the take-out so after getting the beta on the last couple drops from Mark I head off solo (I did join up with another group of guys for safety as I ran the last rapid but they were having a lot more trouble than I was).

I then met Morgan, Elise, and Eva at the take-out. Later I learned that there was all sorts of carnage with the rest of the group I had started with and even the subgroups had further fractured as boats were chased. It's an entertaining run for people watching as the whole thing is roadside. After my run I walked up the last mile and saw a canoe twisted like a pretzel, a boat impossibly pinned by a big boulder, and a guy stranded on a rock at the lip of Bear Creek Falls. I watched at least a dozen guys try the river left line and land on rocks--one folding up the nose of his boat on impact. It's a good show.

That's the river report. It was fun seeing Morgan, Elise, and Eva.

This weekend we headed out for Western NC to meet with Tom (from Seattle) for the Cheoah. Tom is the Western Region coordinator for American Whitewater, and they were having a fund-raising dinner & party to celebrate the opening of this river. Due to a dam up above, the river has rarely had water in it for the last 50 years, except during severe rains and flooding. Because of that, the river channel has become a bit of a forest. But I digress.

This fundraising dinner was a $100 dollar a plate affair. Normally, we wouldn't have considered such a thing... (daycare is too expensive, sapping the budget). But, in his huge generosity, Tom bough a whole table worth of seats, with his own money, and invited us to come to the dinner (for free...). Wow. Given this incredible invitation, I had no excuse not to come. I was kind of leery of running the river, since I'd heard it's a good place for carnage, and because of too much work and not enough rain lately, I hadn't been boating in months. Well, this forced me to go boating.

The weekend before we drove out to the Ocoee. We had lots of fun boating with Ben, Thomas, Bridget, and Chris. I felt like I remembered how to do this thing, though it is only class III. It was kind of funny. We got to tablesaw (I think that was the one - I don't run the Ocoee often enough to remember the names), and at the top Ben said something about catching some various eddies on the way down. I couldn't hear much of what he was saying, but he had a long, serious discussion with Thomas (his ~17 yr old son) about the rapid. Anyway, they finished the powow and Ben headed down. I went next, and caught as many eddies as I could. Apparently these have numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... I caught all of them but 3. It was kind of like creekin'. Well, at the bottom, Ben was like, "wow, you caught all of them!". I was like, "what? what did I do?" Apparently this was a big deal. Hmmm. Later he told Bridget, and she was mad at me that I caught all those on my first time in the Ocoee in like 10 years... Ok, so this made me feel like, hey, I can still paddle! Plus, I actually was getting a few spins at Hell Hole, and there weren't many other doing that. But I can blame that on my excellent boat, a Necky Orbit Fish. The boat spins for me - I don't have to do anyhthing. The next day, Elise had a great run with the same group, while I watched Eva. There were some serious thunderstorms, so we spent a bunch of time in the car, and under the bridge watching the paddlers at hell hole. It was funny - at first when we went down there, there was only one paddler at the hole (it was early), and we were watching as he tried surfing. He had one of those totally serious looks on his face. (aside: why doesn't anyone smile when surfing? Isn't it supposed to be fun?). Anyway, Eva kind of got freaked out because maybe she thought he was being hurt or something by the hole, and she wanted to go. So we went back up to the car. Later, Chris came down to play, and he said he would smile a lot if I brought Eva back down there. So she and I went back down to watch him play (along with the big crowd that had formed), and every time he went in the hole, he'd intentionally look over with a big grin. Eva started enjoying watching them, especially him, and realized that the activity was OK. Good thing, too. Wouldn't want her thinking that playboating is not fun or something!

To make an already too long story longer, it was decided that I might survive the Cheoah. We headed out Friday night, set up camp at about midnight (typical for us....), and then went looking for Tom along the river in the morning. Well, it turns out we drove right by him, and didn't realize it. I was concerned about having someone to boat with since we hadn't seen him. I saw some NC friends, Ricky, Lisa, Doug, Dotty, and John, and they mentioned I could come with them. Since they were ready to launch, I rapidly got my gear together (with help from E) and launched with them. This was Saturday, the high release day (1,000 cfs, plus a bit coming in from tribs). Only Lisa and John had been on the river - once last fall. It was a good group to boat with.

The river is pretty continuous. The first substantive drop is the ledge. We scouted that, just because it has a somewhat nasty backwash. But it was an easy drop, boofing straight off a 3-4 foot ledge. Then came "land of 1000 holes". That was a blast. The name rings true. I couldn't find a line that avoided at least a few face splashes, though I've heard it can be done. After that, the river calmed a bit, into continuous class III for a few miles, with lots of small trees and brush to avoid, making it a bit more challenging. There's a bridge crossing the river, and that's where things pick up. From here there are a series of ledges and holes, leading into the "Big Drop", a 10-12 footer. It got kind of intense paddling up to the eddy we scouted from. The big drop has three routes - right, center, left. Right is the "big water" line with a couple offset angled holes to punch through, without flipping. Flipping is bad because it's shallow, and I've heard rumors of broken teeth and etc. The center line is a tight boof to avoid some rocks. The left line is also a boof, and depending on where you do it, it is either launching from a nearly dry rock into a clean pool, or launching where there's current, but awfully close to some rocks at the bottom. I ran right, along with several others, and that worked fine, though I could see how those diagonal holes would easily flip someone not on their game. The river doesn't calm down after this. There is an island, and we took the left, "creek" line. It was pretty good action, sort of like the Watauga or something. After that it is pretty continuous Class IV action to the lodge, where there's another bridge, and where the gorge narrows. This rapid, aptly named "yard sale", claimed a victim. Dotty got stuck in the ledge. She was out in front of us, then John and I came by, just narrowly managing to avoid taking her place in the hole by sneaking right. As I went by her, she was deep - I could only see her head above the water. She hung out a good bit, before finally bailing out and swimming. As is often the case due to Murphy's law, her boat ended up on one side and she on the other. Fortunately, there was a bridge just upstream, so with a bit of cliff scaling, she was able to go up and cross back down. Then she ran again. This time, avoiding the hole. The next day, I didn't boat, but I hear a rumor that the same hole claimed Ben.

Well, the river calms down soon after that, and we hit the reservoir for a short paddle to the takeout. Elise was there with Eva, and said that Tom was right behind us on the river. Soon he paddles up, by himself. He gets out. He tells us he started with a group of 20 (including the likes of Charlie Walbridge). And ended by himself. The Cheoah claimed 19 boaters! No, not really - their group just kept fracturing and fracturing more, and so at the end it was only Tom. We gave him a ride to the lodge, then went back to camp to relax and have Eva nap (which she didn't). We went back for the dinner, at which Ben was supposed to join us. But it was funny - just before we went in to eat, I saw Ben's party paddling by on the river... he never made it for dinner. The dinner was good, and AW managed to extract some money out of us. The party afterward was fun, with a loud, groovy band. For a while, Eva was the only one dancing on the floor, and everyone else was being a wallflower. She'd have none of that. She started rounding up people, walking up to them and pointing at them and dragging them to the dance floor. She was the center of attention. It was really cute. But also worrisome...what's she going to be like as an adult? A rock star?

Well, to end a long story, the next day was Elise's day to paddle, and she wasn't feeling up to the Cheoah, so she joined Tom's group running the Tellico at low water. She didn't have a creek boat with her, so she ran it in her playboat, a Pyranha I:3. It's in a beautiful little gorge, with a dirt road alongside. So Eva and I followed them down the river in the van, watching them run baby's falls. Yes, Elise ran this 15 foot waterfall twice! Hurray Elise. Anyway, everyone had a great run, with no problems. The group caught up with Charlie Walbridge and Lee Belknap on the river. Charlie actually ran Baby's, in his fiberglass boat! I heard that he made some comment like "If I can't run this waterfall, there's no hope for me...". After watching them run Jared's Knee, a nice little set of ledges, Eva and I went down to wait for them at the takeout. Eva had a blast climbing on the rocks and throwing stuff in the river... Then, soon their run was over, we loaded up, said goodbye to Tom, and did the long drive back.

I'll just say in closing that Tom is a great friend. It really meant a lot to us that he paid for our seats at the dinner and got us to come out there. It was great seeing him. Before we left, on Friday, I was in a terrible mood and felt like not going. Too much stress at work and such. Elise convinced me to go so as to not let down Tom, and I'm really glad we did. If both us and the Wisconsin folks had flaked out on him, I think he would have been very, very disappointed. It's definitely more of a challenge getting out of here to go on trips with a kid in tow! But it is almost always worth it, especially to get both good whitewater and to see good friends.


This entry was written listening to ''Lady With a Fan'', by Bluegrass Dead (Play Count: 5)