Paddlin’ Ed

Well, seems like it had been a long slow winter with limited rains.  March arrived and things where starting to pick up for 2009 at last.  Rains arrived enough to bring the Nolichuchy Gorge between Poplar NC and Chestoa Tenn up to good runnable levels with enought flow to provide a two day event for John H.-OC1, James C.-OC1, Bill H. K-1, Mick S. K-1 and myself in K-1.   Not only did we get a rain event but temps warmed into the high 50’s to low 60’s after some very cold winter,  though water in gorge was downright cold.

On Sat. we where joined by several TRR and SRVCC members – with Sammy, Bob, and Connie in Bob’s raft and Justin K. in k-1 and oc-1 joined John, James, Bill and myself for the run at 1350 cfs.  Overall a pretty good group,  with most everyone working on keeping to solid know lines with the cold water temperature.  Though I had run the Noli many time, I had only gotten two run in the year before with prolonged drought in 2008,  but as it had been awhile it had a bit new feel.  John held a bit of  demo at the top of Rooster-tail on what happens when you hammer into the diagonals up top and proceeded compete with his boat for first down the run.

On Sunday,  John H.,  James C., Bill H., Mick S. and myself ran the gorge again joined by Will T. in OC-1.  Due to a rain event overnight upstream we actually got a flow increase to 1450 cfs.  Our smaller Sunday group was a core of experienced paddlers so we played a bit more,  and went for some of the more difficult lines in Quarter Mile, On-the-rocks and surfed a bit at Jaws and Twin Eddies.  For some reason John who is an excellent paddler,  demo’ed the right side diagonals at the top of Rooster-tail again, guess he didn’t quite get all the bottom mapping data the day before,  just wasn’t his weekend for that one,  seems like he was a’sputterin and mutter’in a bit at the bottom, though the rest of his run was seamless both days.

Overall it was really nice to finally breakout and get back on the river after such a prolonged dry and cold spell.  Finally the rains came.