Paddlin’ Ed

Sunday morning May 27th dawned bright, clear, and warm on the campground.  Most had been doing some serious sleeping after a long day on the Ocoee on Sat. and a serious chow down afterwards at “Herbs” (not to mention a little medicinal liquid relaxant indulged in by a fair number while relaxing around the campgroud after dinner).  Suprisingly though not to long after myself and a very few began to move around and get breakfast, the rest followed and began to ready for the day’s paddling.

Seems like it was around 10-12 of us headed for the Cheoah, with most doing a breakfast stop in Murphy and then on to Robbinsville and on out toward the highway toward Santeela and Calderwood lakes – along Tapco Rd.  Arriving at Joanne’s store for our put in we quickly unloaded, dressed, and set shuttle.  Dana (of Mark and Dana) provided our shuttle and allowed us to get all the cars to the take out at Caldlerwood lake access/takeout.  After doing a little clown car routine to get around 8 of us in the vehical we ran to the top.Just after noon we put in.  Beautiful day,  clear, sunny blue sky with only occasional white whispy clouds, warm (and warm water to boot), we where off.  Jeff provided trip guidence and general lines and did an outstanding job of keeping the group moving.   All of the initial rapids we came through great with perhaps a roll or two and one roll up off a bow.  Down at the ledge around the swinging bridge, I took the corner on the left over the drop got squirreled on the current line,  set up, hit but the current was working against me, so feeling the urgency to get up and into the eddy and not flush down I swung under and off-side rolled poping-upright over in the eddy (one of those, “yeah that was nice moments”).

From there we eddied out above the natural dam, and all dropped it ok,  I notice it was a bit more sucky even in the right spot than my preious experiance and dug in at the bottom and moved into a flow just to the left in the corner to get some extra push out.  Everyone got down ok,  that was great as this a really tricky spot with bad consequences.

From there we continued working our way down, focused on keeping the boat on line downstream and digging in where needed to pull through holes.  Down at “Land of Holes” lines went pretty good overall.   I did get force left with a boat passing on the right at one point and did a short dance in the rather nasty hole, where after spying a flow at the end I reached out and pulled my side surf to it so it whipped my nose out and then dug in hard to catch the rest of the flow and pull out clean and headed downstream.  Further downstream we all had to do some tight and techical moves through rest of LOH’s,  (I got a nice move in front of a rock from left to right that had given me some trouble on a previous run,  putting my shoulder downstream to the rock and raising the bottom to the current upstream so the boat walked around on the current.), overall there where lots of nice moves in the group.

Aways down we had one temporary broach on a rock in one of those very narrow channels amoung the scrub brush growing in certain parts of the river on a very tight and narrow turn with serveral vexious rocks in the drop.  The effected party hung and worked off but for a brief time there was some mytery about the paddle involed.  I came into this narrow move just after the broach started right behind another boat, forturnally the other boat made it just below and I dug in hard and move through the narrow space just above.  Concerns went up almost imediately about the whereabout of the paddle,  with the eddies at the scene full a couple of us moved down to make sure the blade had not slipped past.  After a bit the word fortunately came down that all was good, paddler came out upright and clean and paddle was found.  Down a little way we pullout at gravel access and did lunch break.

From there we continued down working the lines, weaving the holes, doing the drops etc. on down to the rocks along the road just above the last entrance rapid to the pool above Bear Creek Falls.  Now this is a place where you really want to make these little eddies along the wall and not slip off.  After a brief walk down and review of possible lines, we moved back to the boats.

Milt headed out first and ran down moving all the way right to left and eddied down above the pool on the left.  Kurt and Jeff made their moves and worked down.  I headed out and had originally planned to move out a little left to get a tongue down two drops then move back quick to the right, but past the two drop I found the current more friendly going with flow left, moved into upstream ferry across left then back right hard around a rock ledge catching a flow going down and right , ending up in slow moving pool with choices of going for left or right eddies, or turning and running the line over the falls.  I opted for running the falls and dropped ok, just a little left of the ideal spot, taking that last stroke at the edge and pulling the knees up to avoid penciling in.  I landed up-right but a rolling cross current whipped me over coming off the foam pile, hung for a second and rolled up clean, eddying out on the left.

Once the rest of the group came down we headed for the bang down boof on the left at the ledges below in to a big eddy.  Once in the eddy below I learned back in up above the falls we had a boat slip off and run the falls without its owner (bad boat-gonna have to send that one to obediance school-right after getting the dent in the bow out).  Forturnately the stray boat was recovered still paddlable and re-united with the owner.

From the eddy we set off down the run toward Tappco lodge but just a ways down, but had to hold up for a bit to recover one boat and get it mated back up with a paddler, then off to finish the run down to the right eddy down at the Tappco lodge.  Then to the right eddy under the bridge and then down toward “Yardsale” hole with most catching the eddy just above to the right and then either to the far right slot at the holes end or dropping the boof off the end of the eddy into the slot.  Myself, I dropped the boof, and was quickly looped over and out, set up, rolled up finding myself at the center lip of the next ledge hole below sideways, basically with the roll-up going to roll-over into the hole.  I hung for a second or two catching the outflow, rolled up coming out, and into eddy below.

 At this point most of the group had moved on down the final paddle out, the last three of us pealed out and followed down the last run to the lake.  It was magnificent paddle, great river, great group,  awesome day,  good time had by all.  We reached the take out on the lake at around 4 pm, group in-tack.  Dried out, changed loaded up said our good bys, and thank-you’s to the trip leaders.  Some headed back for another day of paddling, while myself and a few other headed for home after a great weekend.        Paddlin-ed