I usually coordinate this trip the end of April because I've found that the last weekend of April is late enough to be warm, but early enough to still have water somewhere. This year, I had more water than I wanted. After nervously watching water levels all week, we ended up with the Goldilock's Solution for kayaking: the Cape Fear was too high, the Eno was too low, but the Haw was mostly right (5.8', only a bit higher than my preferred novice level of 5.5').
Scheduling a creeking trip even a few weeks in advance is always going to be a roll of the dice, but I hoped that fortune would favor the bold as I announced my intentions to paddle some natural flow creeks on one of my rare spring weekends off. Despite the best efforts of rain dances, it became clear to me about ten days out that the forecast wasn't going to work in my favor. The big rains fell in the mountains on the Sunday before the trip, and by the following weekend the creeks had dropped out.
We met Kevin in the Nanty gorge on our way to the Ocoee River Saturday morning. The weather was damp and cool. I look forward to the warmer weather coming soon. It was a dry hair day other than a practice roll.
https://youtu.be/8A6Y3JNV0oQ
I saw less carnage this weekend than the previous opening weekend.
Fred
Spam, Spam. Spam, Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam, Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. January 20th. Debbie's. bacon and egg biscuit. Bacon and egg biscuit. 220 Sweepstakes. Very early. Tom Womble very earlier. Food doantions. Hygiene donations. Case of Honey buns. Thanks. Boats rolling in. More boats rolling in. Still rolling in. Lot 2540 van. Marty thankful. Nice. Helen no show.
10:25 first shuttle wave. 10:37 second shuttle wave. Clear road. Clear road. Snow road. Clear road. Thanks Zeb. Take out. Duke shuttle bunny.
Ocoee Drawdown is a special time. It's not cold, but you can tell winter is coming. Except for this year, where the weather was in the 80s. It's a time of peace and quiet on the Ocoee, where you can find your way. Except this year, with the sadness of its impending end. 2018 is the last year of the last licensing agreement. While there was a lot of confusion about whether Drawdown would continue, it's on the release schedule for 2018. That said, it's not expected for 2019.
In all of my years of paddling, I've never run the Dan through Kibler Valley. I'm not sure why I haven't ever made this trip before. The river is a scenic, narrow, scrapy but fun run at a 7000KW release from the Power House. For my 1st D I had assembled a crew of Donna Murphy, Greg Murphy, and Rick Higgins along with a crew from the Smith River Valley paddlers. Rick and I met at the REI in Durham and made the trip up to Kibler to meet up with Donna and Greg. We ran two laps with Greg and Donna showing me some fun moves up and down the river.
Murphy's Law definitely presided over MurPHEST. We may have to change the name next year.
We arrived Thursday night at camp and the rain came. Camp was great with two of our old friends from New York (Mike and Billy) and 4 of their other friends (Pedro, Rope, Phil, and Duncan) that joined them this year.
Jason contacted me Wednesday regarding this trip. As luck would have it I had not commercial trips to work. Jed also joined us at the put-in. Jed showed Jason several cool new lines as we ran the river. It took nearly two hours or more to reach Goforth as we worked the river. The second half was run more directly. It was a fun day for all.
We had some rains the week before the trip so the flows in the high country area were good. We decided to run the class I-II section of the Watauga River. I had been wanted to run this section of river for several years and never had any luck catching it at a good level. We had 8 on the trip. We had 3 tandum canoes – Keith and Theresa Raker, Chris Campbell and Taylor, John and Jamie. Melinda was in an OC1 and Diane was in a Kayak. The level was a fluffy 650 cfs. The 8 of us ended up running about 4 miles upstream of 321.
Most of my trips go so smoothly that they are boring to read about. If you're on the trip, this is usually a good thing. We had a sunny day with blue skies and 1240 cfs on the Embreeville gauge. The group started out with 6 (Liz, Wes, Mort, Gary, Peter and myself) but grew to 9 by the time we were paddling with the additions of Robert, Gretchen, and Suzanne.
