Here's an article about my
very
first time paddling whitewater. My first boat was a
Pyranha
Acrobat 300, which was considered a 'hot' playboat back in
1996. Affectionately called the 'Banana Boat' by landlubbing
friends and family, the Acrobat was a 10 foot long surfiing machine
that took me, in a matter of months, from timid flatwater floundering
to true whitewater navigation. Three months after I bought it I
navigated the lower Doe River with Rob Thompson. Our moment of
pride was boat scouting a class III rapid, meaning we inspected,
processed and determined a navigable path through the rapid in the few
seconds between sensing it around the bend and dropping into the thick
of it.
Two months later, I took the Acrobat down
Wilson Creek
gorge. To this day I remember that as the loveliest day of
paddling I have ever experienced. I ran my first class IV rapids
(eight in total, as we made two runs through the gorge with its four
class IVs). I swam twice, but loved every minute of that
beautiful March day. Later that year, I bought my first and only
brand-new boat, a Dagger RPM, the next 'hot' playboat. I used it
as a river runner and in it I finally learned to roll
confidently. I made several trips to the
Nantahala,
a playground for paddlers, with my RPM, but those trips were all prior
to the levying of
usage
fees by the Forest Service. The winter of 1997-1998 I paddled
the Tellico River in my RPM, a feat common in playboats today, but
regarded as unwise at the time. I later found out why when the
thin bow of my playboat pinned in the riverbed, resulting in a
nasty
swim and lost paddle.
Unshaken by my Tellico experience, I ran more and increasingly
difficult rivers for the next 4 years or so, climaxing with runs on the
Upper Gauley and the Tallulah Gorge. What boat I paddle has
become less important to me as the capabilities of playboats evolve
more rapidly than my own skills. I can be just as nervous in a
four-year-old
boat as in a
brand
new one. While the
Gauley is
by far the biggest and brawniest river I have run with monster rapids
like
Pillow
Rock and
Iron Ring,
the title of singlemost biggest, baddest rapid ever goes to
Oceana on the
Tallulah River in Georgia. I know, that photo is somewhat
deceiving - what's so bad about that? Well, notice that photo was
taken from the lip of the gorge, a few hundred feet above the
river. Here's a river-level perspective
of the same rapid.
It's an enormous slide that drops fifty feet over a distance of about
100 feet. The only better way to describe it is to tell you to go
back and look at the photos again. (By the way, none of the
Gauley or Tallulah photos are mine; they are publicly shared photos on
American Whitewater's website. Unfortunately, I have only
memories and eyewitness accounts from my own descents of these rivers,
neither of which make good hyperlinks. We didn't take cameras and
this was before the era of
professional
paddlesports photography.)
I ran Oceana during my first trip to the Tallulah, in April 2002.
I paddled the river two times since then, but portaged Oceana each
time. For me at least Oceana was a once in a lifetime
event. I had wanted to run that rapid ever since American
Whitewater listed it in their rivers index in the late 1990s, and after
having read a
story
by John Bell about the first whitewater releases earlier that
decade. Nowadays, I'm content to paddle local rivers such as the
Tye or Maury, and I also enjoy teaching paddling classes for
UVA Outdoor
Recreation in the pool and on the
river.
Next month will be nine years since I first dipped a kayak paddle in
whitewater. It sure doesn't seem like that long!
-July 19, 2005
