Paddlin’ Ed

With dam release season ending and little natural flow,  I headed to the Ocoee from running the last release of ’08 at the Cheoah the day before to catch the Ocoee’s last scheduled release of ’08 on Sunday Nov. 2nd.  I arrived thinking I would most likely find a friend or two around,  but with no one I knew in sight,  I started sizing up groups getting ready and approached a group with a mix of  TSRA paddlers out of the Murfreesboro Tenn. area and some AP’s out of Alabama, who allowed me to join for their run.

It was a brilliant sunny day,  temps a bit cooler in the low 60′s but quite comfortable.  Plenty of follow,  a fairly good release.  It was a nice run with good company, a very friendly group and with this group taking a couple of 1st timers down I had time to run ahead a bit and get some pictures, and play/work the rapids and features along the way.

I got several eddies down through Broken Nose.   At Slice and Dice,  I did however find the tongue hooking a bit unusually around the 2nd hole and slide into the end of it,  but after a few rodeo moves and squirts and one roll,  hit the eddy to the left at the surf hole, and then worked some surfs from both left and right.  On down at moon-shoot several of us hung a bit and surfed.  I got in some nice moves through double suck doing the middle line through the slot in the rock out cropping river center.  At Double suck one of our group in a OC-1 took a bit of a bang swimming.

Down at Tablesaw our canoeist with the banged up leg had to pull off an walk the rapid.  I ran on down to Diamond Splitter and waited a bit for the rest of the group,  while they where dealing with him.  After a bit, as it was getting late and cold,  I taged into the middle of two other good groups of paddlers paddled on out. 

Great weekend, and it was nice to get in the last two dam releases of the ’08 season in this part of the country.

SYOTR- Paddlin-ed