Watagua Gorge northwest of Boone NC is a truly awesome place. Class 4-5 whitewater, steep, creeky, with rapid after rapid that will get your attention down the run. It is remote, beautiful, and a run that will truly get your attention.
Friday 3-21-08 arrived, with rains just a day or so before had brought levels up the night before and melt off from warm temps had add to flow. This particular Friday was a holiday so there where quite a few people out of the run. Levels on the Sugar Grove gauge which is several miles upstream where reading about 260cfs and the gauge on the Guy’s Ford put in bridge read -1″. Just downstream we found streams where however bringing in a lot of water, so actual flow with these feeder creeks was definitely up and running good.
Darron P. and I had talked the night before and decided to head over to meet Eddie C. and a group of his friends from SC. All together we had around 10 of us, a big group for this run, all in K-1. We where in for a great day on the river, good water, sunny and decent temps into the low 60’s by mid afternoon, though tempered a bit by the crystal clear cold water of the gorge. It had been fall of last year since I had been on this run.
As we set off down the gorge our group fairly quickly progressed through repeated technical rapids 3+ to 4+ in nature till we arrived at hydro our 1st class 5 , where several got out to scout and safety’s were set along with those taking pictures. Hydro involes a neck down of the river to a fairly narrow area running with the left bank boulders down one side a row of boulder and rock wall down the right side funneling most of the river through the passage between maybe 25-30 foot wide with plenty of features down its length of probably 200 foot or so including ledges, diagonals, hydraulic line holes and ending at a even narrower mouth at its far end. At the outlet mouth it slants into a 7-8 foot drop into a hydraulic hole with rock at each end requiring the paddler to punch through or suffer being recirculated.
From there our group continued on working the almost continuous and highly technical rapids down to Diana’s ledge on river right. This ledge may be a class 3+ but it demands respect. Off line in the center there is a dangerous hydraulic hole not visible from above. Far left, boofing off hard or the slot/slide down off the left end of the ledge are the ticket. Myself I did the left slot and found plenty of fun in it along with 2 or 3 others, while the rest did the right corner boof.
From Diana’s ledge we continued working down to above Watagua or Stateline Falls or 2nd class 5. A couple of folks ahead of me dodged into eddies just above, I elected to move on and ran 1st down making sure to hit the right opening over this high rock precipice. The opening (and you need to be in the right one) is narrow and you pretty much blind until your well into it. However the objective is to enter the opening and move from left or center headed right off the short slide at the top as you drop off it’s edge for below if you don’t get right is a huge boulder just under the water below the left side. I got well right, perhaps a bit much and dropped pretty much into the bottom of the hole below and went a bit deep, was surprised to clip a bit of rock coming up well right and ding the right side of my bow a bit (fortunately with a bit heat this came out ok later), just a bit surprised to catch any over there. The rest of the group worked down the drop headed right all doing nicely with a roll here and there below, its pretty squirrely coming out of the hole at the bottom. A few of our group got pictures from the high rocks below on river left.
From, Stateline falls we worked our way down the last groups of large rapids down to the last ledge of any size “boof or consequence” a vertical ledge drop of probably 4-5 foot on river left with guard rocks on its ends, requiring a good boof of the water going over the left side of the left end rock “aka - the boof” to avoid the consequence of landing and being recirculated in the hydraulic below the ledge.
From Boof or Consequence we worked a few small rapids and caught the right channel below where the river divided to the take out steps. Hiked out up the hill, loaded up and said our farewells. We had an excellent day, and great group to run with.
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