Who has the energy to type anymore? Day Three of my Southern whitewater excursion started with some much needed down time. Ben and I hiked down to High Shoals Creek to look at some sick slides. Now all we need is a couple inches of rain! After some rest we met up with Talia, Kevin, and Renee to get a few laps on Edge Of The World on Amicalola Creek. Like everything else in the South East, it was low. It was so low that there weren't many options open. Luckily the main part of the drop was still deep. I get to try out a Grande Jefe from Liquid Logic for the rest of the week. At first I thought that it was to big, but once I started boofing it off the drop, I couldn't get rid of my perma-grin. That boat is a blast to paddle. We did about four quick laps on EOTW (see my videos), and headed over to Kevin and Renee's for some tasty burgers (thanks Renee). On the hike back to the cars I stopped by to read the guage. 0.1' Yikes.
On day four Ben had to take a group of kids out on the lake to teach them which end of the paddle to stick in the water, so I opted to paddle the south branch of the mattress till noon. After everyone got off of work we drove over to the Chattooga to paddle Section 4.5 (Bull's Sluice to the lake take out). It was also very low, coming in at around 0.8'. Nevertheless, we put on the river at about 7pm. Yes, we put on at 7:00 pm. "Kevin, are you sure we're going to have enough light to finish this run?" "Of course. Plus these's going to be a bright moon tonight so we'll be fine at the lake paddle!" So with as many assurances as it took (not all that many it turns out), we ran Bull's Sluice and headed off down the river. Being that it was so low, it was slow going. But we scraped our way down so how. A couple of highlights for myself was Stokoa Creek Rapid, which is a 10 or 12 foot slide into a narrow trough that empties out the left. The way to run it is facing 45 degrees to the left shore and use the hole at the bottom and the angle of your boat to eject you left. the exit is only a boat width so flipping would not be a good option. I came out alright, but I left a little bit of my right paddle blade on the rock. Seven Foot Falls was a fun boof (I need to got those pics from Kevin) and pretty much the only place that we had time and light to take pictures. When we got to Entrance Rapid in the Five Falls, the low level and the fading light were making things sketchy. I've haven't seen the Five Falls in over 10 years (not like I saw then that day either!). Everything was read and run. At Entrance Renee hit the big rock and then slid down into "The Gultch" upside down. She was very lucky in that she didn't hit anything on the way down. Next up was Corkscrew, which looked very different at this level. The entire river channeled down in the first drop into an enormous curler that kicks violently to the right. Ben ran it first and boofed over the curler. Talia ran straight down the curler and zipped right. I decided to boof the curler and use the curler's right kick to turn my boof downstream. I entered the rapid "with much enthusiaism," as Kevin put it, and boofed over the curler right into a rock which stopped me dead, right at the lip of the first drop. Rather than land in the hole sideways I reached up with my right paddle blade and took as big a stroke as I could grab as I went over backwards. I plugged the hole stern-first and held on to that big right stroke to turn back around, miraculously still upright. We had to portage around Crack In The Rock because the water was flowing under the large rocks, not between them. We blue angeled the last two, Jawbone and Sock-Em-Dog (the biggun') because the light had finally given up to the dark. Nothing quite like running back-to-back class fours blind and in the dark! Apparently this is how Ben and Kevin like to do things. All in all it was an awesome trip, even though I wish we could've spent more time in the Five Falls section.
Yesterday and today I was with Ben as he took his instruction classes down the Cartecay and the Upper Chattahoochee. Both really, really, really LOW. Interesting to say the least.
I hope that it rains soon. Tomorrow we head to the Ocoee again because that's pretty much the only thing that's running.