Roadtrip

Great week in the southeast! Started off with a fun day on Wilson Creek with the gals on Wednesday and Linville on Thursday. Got some rain and the weekend off so Ryan and I figured we'd head to West Virgina where snowmelt had kept Mann's Creek flowing for days. After making a few phone calls we determined Mann's Creek may well be running a very low flow. Instead, we set our sights on a little known creek in Virgina that drops close to a 1ooo feet in three miles. You may recognize some of the drops and the mandatory portage in the pictures below from the American Whitewater page on Bottom Creek. You won't find any flow info there but you will find several photos posted by Gordon Dalton along with a few important notifications about the mandatory portage that is hard to spot from upstream. Go with someone who knows it your first time so you don't miss it and die!

Beautiful Mouse Creek falls drops in at a rapid known as Swiss Cheese

Steve Powers shows how it's done

Eye of the needle aka Inner Earth. This picture doesn't show the long entrance to the portage which could be easily mistaken as a great rapid. Go with someone who knows where to get out.

Ryan styles Three Blind Mice. This is the last serious drop but the creek continues for another mile of steep class 4.

Ryan warms up on the Kettels.

Despite the low flow we had a blast out there and were blown away by the creek. We hung out with friends and met some great people. Thanks Steve and Joey. Saturday night we headed to Watauga where we experienced sweet free camping at the put-in. We awoke to a perfect level for Watuaga. Good times.

Upper Creek Photos

On January 25, 2010 a group of southeastern paddlers attempted Upper Creek in North Carolina. Toby Macdermot was the only person to complete the river that evening in his kayak after accidentally running a portage. The rest of us ran out of daylight portaging Toby's drop and chose to hike out over running unknown class five in the dark. Toby's drop is huge and totally unrunnable due to two logs that are in play. How he managed to come through unscathed in his kayak puzzles the shit out of me, but he did.

View from the top of Upper Falls. This is a great alternative put-in and is at the pull-off for Upper Falls from the road (181). Once above the falls, you can ferry over and hike up river left to get four or five worthy drops.

Toby drops into a tight Raven Fork like drop

Below here were two more good slides that were like the Toxaway.

Pat Keller on one of the cool drops before Upper Falls

I will definitely go back as there are plenty of good big drops and the portaging isn't bad, however, Upper Creek isn't a classic. Anyone looking for an exciting day on some new whitewater will enjoy Upper Creek. Use FR 982 as a takeout road. You can drive up a ways creekside to shorten the paddle out on FR 197.

Jocassee Double Video

Here's a short video from yesterday's session on the Whitewater and Thompson rivers. Check out previous post for pics and short write up.

safety first,

D

Jocassee Double Header

I am totally stoked to have gotten to run the Whitewater and Thompson rivers today. None in our group (Baker, Drew, and I) had ever done either of the runs so we enjoyed an entire day of exploration. I was blown away by both the runs and I can't believe it took me this long to explore these rivers for myself. We had perfect flows, the whitewater was top-notch, and the scenery is a notch above the top. We hit the Whitewater first, putting on around 8:30 and with a level of 1 foot, which was really nice.

The "mini" gorge comes quick and it was stout in there. This picture is looking down towards the 3rd drop, which is actually hidden by the cliff. But as you can see, it's tight.


This is looking up at the landing of the first drop (big slide with boof on right). Once again, the drop is hidden.

This is the second drop, the meat if you will. It was really rompin' in there. We spent over an hour scouting the gorge before dropping in. Drew went first and slicked the entire series of rapids. He then came up and played safety/video guy for my run which went equally as smooth. We got a little video but it's so tight in there we could never get the whole gorge. That would take multiple camera angles.

The rest of the river was super-cool with a handful of huge powerful rapids like 55mph and ...merge lane?. The only thing we had (mandatory) to portage was the sieved out drop directly above the mini-gorge.

I enjoyed the hell out of the Thompson River. Instant classic in my eyes. Beautiful paddle and rapids with huge slides. And, you get to paddle into Lake Jocassee, which I've never done. Below is a sequence of Drew running a big slide. This one was sick. Complete with a sieve, shrap metal, and plenty of places to piton.

He's already dropped 20 feet

Catching some air in there. At this point, directly to Drew's left is some dicey shrap metal extending out from a log/rock sieve combo that could cut you, if not kill you.

He's right where you wanna be

nice!

This is the second half of a big slide rapid. The top portion is out of view but drops 30 feet into a mean hole. Then you get to run this down the right. Once again, I got some sweet footage but I'm having tech. difficulties getting it to save in edited format, so I'll post it later.

Check back for video,

D

More Toxaway

So I'm writing about the Toxaway again. I do paddle other rivers, but right now, I've just fallen in love with the Toxaway. Ryan bagged his first trip down a couple weeks ago and came away stoked. Here are some photos from my last couple trips down.

Ryan did the Toxaway! From the grin on his face, he liked the put-in slide. Sorry I didn't get you in action bro, I was dealing with the "piece" camera that day.

Nick in action on the put-in slide (non-piece camera)

Will Pruett engulfed in the first half of Wintergreen Falls

Second half of Wintergreen

Nick catching some air off the big exploder in Landbridge

Ryan finishing off Landbridge. It doesn't look as big from above.

Drew Duval sliding into Energizer

Warm up slide blue angel

Drew and Joe touch down

Check back soon for more Jocassee area goods.

Later,

D

Toxaway River, 9-23-2009

Went to the Toxaway River on Wednesday. We got an early start which ended up being a good thing because there we had to scout everything due to the potential for new wood.

Put in slide


Will getting some of that put-in slide

Series of Adam running put-in slide

This is the bottom of the first part of the put-in slide. It goes on for another 100 yards or so and drops another 50 feet.

Below the put-in slide we encountered some new wood in the little flatwater section, easy hop out and back in. The warmup drop that lands on a shelf on the right was clean, as were the slides below that make up the "Cali" section. However, it was rompin' in there. If you ever get to the "easy, warmup, Cali section", and every hole looks like it could eat you alive, you know you're in for an exciting day. I believe the gauge said 2 inches, but speculation has begun on whether or not the gauge has changed.

Everyone hopped out at minigizer to have a look and it was a good thing because shit had changed. Minigizer is now officially mini-landbridge as you can see from the pic. A big landslide from river right deposited a giant boulder and some trees right on top of the river. It was crazy to see such change, it will never be the same. But, there's good news, just like landbridge, it's feasible to seal launch in off the rock and finish off the slide.

Looking downstream from mini-landbridge. I'm sure I wasn't alone in wanting to seal launch off that rock, but in the end, everyone decided it wasn't worth having to deal with the horrendous hole/whirlpool pocket at the bottom. Not to mention the pungee stick, which is still very much in play.

Here's a series of me running energizer, the next big rapid. Thanks to Will for taking these shots.

still going

and going. Energizer is one of my faves out there, right there with Landbridge and Wintergreen.
Below Energizer Indian Creek comes in on the left. I was happy to see it wasn't kicking in a ton of brown water, but it still added some extra flow.

The first 40 of 40/40.

The second 40. I cannot believe this thing has been fired up, low water or not.

We found another landslide on river left below Landbridge. Landbridge is clean but the small rapid directly after had wood from the landslide. We opted to keep carrying around Landbridge, but with a little less water I think it wouldn't be too stressful to eddy out in time. From there, we got to run Wintergreen, which was off the chain as usual.

Overrall, the Toxaway is a bunch of work. Yes, it's not Disneyland, not even close. If you go in, go prepared and with the right mindset and you'll have a blast. Enjoy those monster drops.

Will got a bunch of video but I only got this one clip of him running Energizer, backwards!

Be safe,

D

Big East Fork Baby!

Today, September 22, 2009, is the day I experienced the Big East Fork of the Pigeon river for the first time and I freakin' loved that shit. We had what seemed to be optimal flow, 2.5 on the gauge, and what turned out to be a beautiful sunny day.


The scene pretty much all day on the East Fork.


Brad Kee at the crux of a significant rapid early on.

Final drop of same rapid

Billy Murphy's doing it, too.
You can't really see in the picture, but all the water on river right crashes into the undercut rock on which I'm standing creating a nasty sieve. It was very ugly, but everybody smoothed this one.

The "baby gorilla" drop towards the end of the good stuff.
This rapid is a name taker, most everyone in our group was forced to take an underwater geology lesson here.

After "baby gorilla", the big stuff's over, but I thoroughly enjoyed the continuous paddle out. What a run! And what a badass place to be with a good group of friends. We took our time with a big group and I still found myself back in Asheville by 4:30.
Check out the short East Fork video below.



Later,
D