Christmas

This was an extended weekend for me. I had Thursday through Sunday off. I had been looking forward to it for two weeks! I am very glad the Holidays are just about done! I am so tired of spending money! I was beginning to think my wallet and bank acct had holes in them with plumbing directly attached to stores! Hopefully now we can go back to saving and replace what we spent on each other!

Thursday, I went and met some friends on the Upper Green. I was so shocked to still see snow! There was lots of it. Some of the secondary roads were still covered in the shadowy places! Galimore Rd., which leads down to the parking lot was still mostly covered. The parking lot did not have a single spec of gravel showing! We all talked about how to run shuttle because apperently someone had seen that the put-in was not plowed and the plow trucks had blocked the entrance with a large pile of ice and snow. We all piled into two vehicles and headed for Pot Shoals Rd.
Once we all got unloaded we were able to park the cars with out needing to run a second shuttle. We all proceeded down the river and had a great run! The weather was beautiful!

Snowy Weekend

This weekend was a blast! It was filled with fun and new experiences. I kayaked both days and Saturday did a new river. So let me get into the details of this weekend.

Thursday evening the temp started dropping and clouds moved in. The weather guys were calling for a chance of snow, here in Greenville, SC, and were looking at a really good chance of accumulation for the mountains of NC. So we all get up Friday morning to find out the Hendersonville, NC store was closed and they were still getting snow all day. We, unfortunately, didn't get a dusting. We saw some flakes occasionally, and lots of sleet. So later that night when Ashley, I , and some friends all went out for dinner and Christmas shopping the roads were fine. It actually warmed up a degree or two after the sun went down.

Saturday, I had plans to paddle the Tyger, in Spartanburg, SC, with some guys from Columbia, SC. At 8am one of them called me and cancelled, due to the temperature. So I called around and made plans to try and get into Green River cove. I figured since we didn't get any snow down here, they probably didn't get socked in. That was my first mistake. So I get a few guys lined up to meet me in Columbus and go paddle the lower Green and see the snow. I loaded up my gear into my pick-up truck and got under way. I took Hwy 25 up the mountain and just before I got to Hwy 11 the snow had started to stick a little and there was some in the ditches. As I passed Hwy 11 there was about an inch covering everything. (as you can see by this photo)

So I continue my journey up the mountain and as I go the snow gets deeper and deeper. By the time I pass the state line into NC I am looking at about 4" of snow on the ground. (as you can see here)

So, we all finally make it to Columbus, NC and realize the state has not plowed anything but the Interstate and the major Hwy's. So there is no way in the cove. I made the mistake of bringing the pick-up rather than bringing the Jeep. Had I taken the Jeep, I probably could have gotten everyone in and made it into the cove. Oh well. We all met in front of the park just down from Brick and threw snow balls and made a new plan.

We decided, after much deliberation, that we would drive back down out of the snow and go paddle the Middle Saluda. I had not run this section before. So I was rather excited. I like running new stuff and I also like the mountain creek style paddling, which is what they told me this would be. So we all followed each-other over to Cleveland, SC and changed clothes at the F-mart. We set up the shuttle and were in the water by 1pm. This run is very interesting. It has some nice medium sized drops, some boulder garden areas, and some flat water, with farmer's fields coming up the banks. I really liked it. After we got off the river and had a beer, we went down into Traveler's Rest and hung out in Sunrift for a while. I bought two new hats and a 2-pack of wool socks. Before leaving, Jake and I made plans for Sunday to try again to get into the cove. I told him I would be bringing the Jeep and I would get us in weather they plowed or not.

Sunday, Jake and I had made plans to meet up in Columbus, NC again. Then Rick said he was in and would meet us there too. So we all get there about 11am and start the trek into the cove. They have plowed the secondary roads about 1 lane wide, so everyone was able to get down to the take-out. Rick and Jake ran their vehicles up on to the snow bank so they were off the plowed path. We loaded their boats onto the Jeep and figured we could push their vehicles back onto the road when we got off the river. So we headed up towards Fishtop and stopped at Fred's. He had his new bood stove glowing and fresh pork chops cooking in a pan on top! He offered us some, but we declined since we all had eaten just before meeting in Columbus. We told what we were doing and he said he would join us once we got down to his place via the river. Then we headed on up to Fishtop.

Once at Fishtop, we were really about to start the fun! None of us had done a snow paddle before so we were all really excited. The parking lot had about 6" of snow laying on it, and so did everything else. Rick and Jake carried their boats down the trail but I opted to use mine as a sled and got in and slid down the hill to the creek. We all forded the creek with out incident. There is normally a large sand hill that you walk down and get in to your boat next to water. Today, it was covered in 6" of snow. So we got in our boats at the top of the hill and really SEAL launched! We played in eddies and paddled our way down to Superman's Rock. There I decided to hike my boat up the trail and sled down using the river bank's new 16" drop off as a launch ramp. This turned out to be one of the best play spots of the day! Rick, Jake, and I all did this several times. We then paddled on down to Fred's and he joined us. WE had a good time the rest of the way down the river enjoying the beauty of the snow and the peacefulness of the river. We were all quiet for the better part of the trip. It was very nice. When we got down to the 2nd bridge, Rick and I had scouted the long steps that make up the Tubing take-out. They go down about 40' and are carved into the side of the hill. Rick and I hiked up it and Rick decided to be the test pilot for this slide. He did just fine and so I went down! This was the best part of the day!! Rick and I both ran it twice and wow! It was soo fast!

Well, thanks for reading about my weekend.

So, I am so glad to get the chance to write again. It has been a while. Ashley is doing great. I have been trying to get to this for a while. I have several runs to tell you about and things to mention. I guess I will list these kind of differently from the rest of my blogs but here is!

Hominy Creek: This is kind of fun! Very narrow, hard to get in! The water was at a good level and there were no strainers that had to be portaged. It was a class II at best, so anyone that says its bigger than that is crazy! Lots of flat water.

Enoree River: Great run, really close to home. Rain dependant. Very fun. The first dam that you come too is pretty big! I let the cold and my nerves get to me and walked it. I am not really good with first descents. I let my nerves get to me! Not too big of a deal though. I will get it next trip. There is rebar and huge bolts sticking up from the bottom just past this dam. At levels a little higher they could really present a problem.

Thanksgiving: We had a good time with Glen, Pam, and Bethany. Ashley worked the morning shift and we spent the afternoon with them. The rest of the weekend Ashley worked and I paddled.

The weekend of the 5th: We spent a ton of money, but had a great time. We went out with friends for dinner and after-dinner drinks. Then ended up at a strip club and closed the place down! I am sure you can imagine the money spent!

This last weekend: I paddled both days, had a swim, and did a new river. All in all a good weekend.

Holidays

There has been so much going on I have not had time to write! Did some paddling over the holiday weekend and added it to the list but other than that, I have not had time to think about writing. I will try to catch you up to date later this week. I have a Halestorm concert tonight at the Handlebar. Hopefully, should be able to catch you up and tell you about the concert Thursday or Friday!

A Paddler's Style Weekend

This weekend was crazy!! I have been home so little this weekend! I paddled two days and hiked half a day! Try all that in a standard weekend and let me know how you feel on Sunday evening at 9:45pm. I am most assuredly not complaining!! This was one of the better weekends of the year I would say! So let me tell you about it in detail!!!

Saturday:

I got up at 6:15 like it was another work day and I started getting things ready for my biggest day of the weekend. This is the biggest day of the year for a lot of southeast boaters! This is the day of the famed Green River Narrows Race!! So, I get my stuff together and wait for Melissa to get to my house. We are meeting here at 7:30am to drive up to Hendersonville and have breakfast. She gets here on time and... surprise, she is super hung over! LoL!! She asks me to drive and so I load my boat on her car since she has all of Daniel's stuff too and he is meeting us later in the day. And so the day begins. we drive up to Waffle house and she tells me all about her night out with teacher friends. We eat some breakfast and drive over to McDonald's where everyone else is meeting us. We gather all of them up and head for the Green.

The Green Race:

We arrive there nice and early and get parking right near the trail head. We are talking like 200 yards from the trail!!! This is a big deal, because when we left, the traffic went up the road close to two miles!!! We started our hike in at 9:30 and walked at a nice steady pace. It was very pretty up in the wooded mountains and got me thinking of doing a little more hiking. We got to where the trail goes down the steep part in about 30mins and we all were feeling pretty good still. We started scaling down the trail/goat path and surprisingly we were at the bottom, by the river, in 20mins. So our whole descent was 50mins. The dam was releasing 24 hours a day so we did not get to see the water come up like I did last year, but it is still impressive to see! We ran into lots of friends and got to see these guys and girls paddle some crazy stuff! We watched the first hour of the race and then began our ascent out of the gorge. This had a whole new level of difficulty to it because people were still coming down the goat path in a steady stream!! We made it out in and hour and five mins. A very respectable time! We said our goodbyes the friends we were with and headed for the lower Green.

The lower Green:

This was an adventure right off the bat! We got down there right on time, about 2:30. Daniel was waiting for us there. We began to unload our gear and Anah called and said she was at the top of the hill and would be down in about twenty mins. She finally gets there and so we run shuttle vehicles and now our group is ready for the water. Our group is Me, Melissa, Daniel, Randall, Tyler, Paul, Mike, and Anah. We get in and start paddling at Superman, loosening up and getting situated in the boat when Mike decides to take a gander at the fish. I know you are not supposed to throw people under the bus when they swim but this was Mike's first time on moving water, so first swims are allowed on first descents! I gathered him and his boat up and he seemed fine. Not too shaken! I reassured him that he would figure it out and we headed on down the river. We had no more swims and Mike found his place on the Green. Anah spent most of her time eddy hopping, Daniel was really working his ferrying, Melissa was really content not swimming, and I was happy to be back on the Lower! (It had been a while) After we all got done paddling four of us went into Columbus for pizza and had a great time relaxing and talking over dinner. It was good to be back in Brick, that too had been quite a while. I finally got home about 9:30 and started unloading everything. I hung up my wet stuff had a glass of wine with Daniel and then just laid around till Ashley got home. We talked for a while and then I could no longer hold my eyes open so off to bed I went.

Sunday:

Woke up at 7:30 and headed out to load all my gear for a flat water paddle through the Biltmore estate. The weather was, again, absolutely beautiful! I loaded up and set out at 8:15. I met everyone at the Dunkin Donuts in Travelers Rest. I knew this was going to be big group, and I have since decided this will be our last meet-up in their parking lot. We packed it out. We also packed out the Spinx parking lot, so next year we are meeting at the old Eckard/Rite Aid that closed across the street from Hardee's! I think we made it up to them finacially, because I think everyone bought something! So after about 30mins here we all headed up the mountain to the put in. Once everyone got unloaded, I got everyone to gather around one of the picnic tables and we worked out the shuttle details. I took a herad count and guess what... 53 Paddlers!!! Can you believe that? 53!!! That is my biggest so far and it beat my last one by 21! Well we all got situated and started paddling and everyone had a good time. We got back to Greenville about 5:00. I went over to Easley and had dinner with Ashley and then went home and died a little in front of the computer. Another great weekend came to close!

Family weekend - No paddling

So this past weekend, my parents came up from Darlington, SC. They have been pretty tired of the lower part of the state for a while and I think my Dad is about ready for a move again. They have been dropping hints about moving and so I think they finally have the bug. Dad asked me about a week ago to start looking for some land for them. So this weekend they came up and luckily Ashley was off for most of it! We drove around for half a day on Saturday and half the day on Sunday. We saw lots of property and several they liked but nothing for sure on the first visit. They are looking for 7-10 acres in pickens county. If you know of any land for sale under 100k let me know.

So I went an entire weekend with out paddling. I am now going through with draws. Lucky for me this is the first week of FPC roll practice. I have some friends coming over tomorrow evening for wine and boat outfitting. I am going to work with them on getting their boats more comfortable. I am debating on buying a new float bag for my boat. I have been told to try a bag under my knees. I think I may have to try it. Ashley has said she is going to try getting in my Godzilla. She is going to go to roll practice for the next few weeks and see if it interests her at all. I told her I would work with her at all the roll practices and then when spring gets here we can put her on the lower Green and see how she likes moving water. So we will just have to see how the rest of this week goes. I will let you know!

TSRA Cold Weather Paddling Clinic

So two weeks ago I found out about a paddling clinic the TSRA was putting on. The President of FPC told me about it at our Oct. meeting and said they were going to be paddling the Hiwassee. I got excited! I have been wanting to get over to TN to run this river for a while. So I contacted Trent with TSRA and got on the list for the clinic.

Friday the 23rd, I left work at 3pm and head for the campground. I knew it would be a long drive, and I was prepared for that! The weather was cloudy and cool. I took mostly back roads through the mountains of GA to get up to Ocoee River Rats Campground. As I was coming up over the mountains the leaves were in full change and the fog had set in really thick. It was beautiful up there! I knew it was going to be a good weekend. I got to the campground just shortly after 7pm. I met 3 guys who came from the area around Crossville, TN and we went to the Dam Deli. Ocoee River Rats is a really great campground! They have to group rooms with lots of bunk beds, cots, futons, and private bathrooms. Upstairs they had a few private hotel style rooms and behind their facility was tent and RV camping. I stayed in the guys bunk house.

Saturday we woke up early and had classes all morning via powerpoint presentations under a shelter in the campground. It was very cool and we were all bundled up pretty good and most of us were still shivering. We learned about how to dress for cold water swimming and how to tell if someone is too cold. We also were told that it is always good to choose a leader so that in case of an emergency you have someone delegating responsibilities. After morning classes we broke off into groups of 3-4 paddlers and an instructor and safety boaters. I got in with a beginner group and went to the Hiwassee. I know I am not really a beginner but I wanted to run this river and I really wanted to run it with people who knew it fairly well.

So we get to the river and I quickly realize this is a VERY beginner river. Lots of flat water and very wide. The level was a little higher than normal @ 3300cfs. I would not have liked it any lower than what it was. I think it would have gotten very scrapey in places. There were only 3 rapids to speak of and they were pretty mild. The first was Thread the Needle, the second was Stair Step. and the third was Devil Shoals. Thread the Needle was a nice left to right with a slot you run near the rocks. Stair Step was a bunch of very small ledges and dumps you out at the lunch spot. Devil Shoals was by far the best and the last thing on the run. It was a big wave train that had one wave that was breaking at the top. You could time it just right so that it was building for a break when you paddled over it. I wanted to run it again but we had 7 paddlers in my group so I chose to stay with the group. If I ever run this river again I will probably just bullet down to this and hang out there all afternoon!

After paddling we all met back up at the campground and Rick was sitting on the picnic table having a drink and holding his arm. Seems his day was not as smooth and boring as mine was. His group went to the Ledges section of the Tellico, which is section 1 on AW. He made it about half way down before smashing his shoulder on a rock coming off of 9ft Falls. He had stopped at a pharmacy and bought some wrapping stuff and a sling and so we wrapped it up and he took lots of ibuprofen. We had dinner cooked for us by TSRA president Trent, and Charlie made us a great Dutch-oven mixed fruit cobbler. The temp dropped really fast that night since the weather was all cleared up, so we made a camp fire and all sat huddled around it. The funny thing about this is, we were all downing cold beer trying to warm up!! By 11pm everyone was in bed! Trent and myself were the last ones to leave the fire.

Sunday morning we woke up and all kinda just packed up and mingled around talking about yesterday and what was to come today. A few of us ran in to town to the Hardee's for coffee and warm biscuits. We had classes start about 9:30 and we got to build fires and over night tents. We also cleaned everything up so that we didn't have to come back after paddling later that day. Then broke up into new groups and figured out who wanted to go where and paddle. I got in with the group of open boaters and went to the middle Tellico.

The middle Tellico was awesome! This is my new favorite river! I will probably only get to run it once or twice a year but wow was it cool! It is down in a gorge, and has the road right next to it! It has the steep creeking feel to it with out the steep creek hazards. We had 5 open boats and 2 kayaks on this run. In all we had five swims and none of them were me! The other kayaker took two, an open boater took two and his friend, also and open boater, took one. Our two safety boaters had their hands full! Charlie and my self had the lead and took turns reading and running the rapids. I walked the first class III of the run which was Crack in the Rock. We had only been in our boats about 5 mins and were already staring down a pretty nice class III. I ferried back and forth several times looking at it and was just not feeling it yet. I walked around it and two of our five swims happened here. It was looking like I had made the smart decision! All of us chose to walk around Reader's Rock. This little class II+ has an undercut rock that if you run right is very easy! If you run it off line it has class V consequences! The undercut rock runs parallel with the river and is large enough to hold a tandem canoe and passengers! It was not my idea of a good time! Our group got off the river about 4:30pm and we said our good-byes to one another on the side of the road.

On the way home I took the Skyway mountain pass highway up and over the mountains and down into the Nantahala gorge. It was beautiful! The leaves were great and it was warm! I had a nice ride home and I have a head full of memories fro the trip! I can not wait for next year! I will be going back to safety boat for them next year. I would highly recommend this clinic for anyone who paddles inn water that is colder than 70 degrees! Hope to see more of my FPC friends next year.