Raven Fork, Whitewater and Big Creek

I met up with Erik Amazing after his class and we began our pilgrimage to Asheville, NC at 10pm. After driving all night we arrived at the Toxaway. After a bit of leftover Pad Thai we put on to run some of the top portions of the river. It began with a sketch slide that ended in a nasty piton. We ran it with varying degrees of success.

Then we continued down to the Put-in slides. They are about as much fun as you can have in a kayak. They go for a couple hundred of yards then drop off a 20 foot waterfall. It was a great way to start the trip. We continued down paddling some other rapids until we decided to hike out and meet up with Geoff Calhoun and Isaac Levinson to paddle some other goods.

We all met up and decided to do the Raven Fork. It was a bit low, but we went for it anyway. After a hour long hike through stinging nettle hell we arrived in heaven. The rapids were huge and intoxicating. The Raven Fork is an incredibly technical creek in one of the most awesome gorges. The rapids are all huge but with carefully chosen lines, they go really smooth. Erik and Isaac each ran Big Boy for their first time which was pretty inspirational.

http://americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/3351/

After a much needed night sleep, Erik and I decided to explore the Whitewater River. It was a pretty awesome river full of big slides into waterfalls. The highlight of the trip was a sketchy 25 foot seal launch into a tiny boxcanyon, down a tricky 10 foot waterfall into a 30 footer.

http://americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/3564/

The next day, Geoff and I meet up with Toby McDermott and JJ to run Big Creek cause it was pumping water. Big Creek is in the smoky mountains which is synonymous with long unrelenting and awesome rapids. Unfortunately, my camera got covered by an energy bar so no pictures were taken. We hiked 4 miles up the trail to run the class V upper section. The river reminded me of the Upper Blackwater at 400-500cfs. The rapids were all read and run if you had a solid boof stroke ready. We punched a ton of big holes and the rapids lasted so long that I had a lactic burn by the time I could snag an eddy. It's a totally awesome river and I highly recommend it.

http://americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/3341/

See you out there,

Nathan

HIgh Water MD GNARRRRR

Any time that i paddle up to the falls, i get a little excited. This time, it was a few more feet higher then when we normally run the lines. The high water brought in a slide to the left of Pummel. It was about a five foot drop to a big slide into a right turn. The eddy to scout the line was right between the slide and a very high water Pummel which looked like it could swallow the white house. Eric Orenstein ran the slide and hit the wall that was directly in front of the first drop.
He didnt make the right turn and had a pretty hard hit. Then i ran it and made sure to keep a hard right angle to avoid doing the same. Then we bunched up real tight and went for a ride through horseshoe. We came, We conquered, We shredded the gnar.

Sam Kane

Spring Break

I got off for spring break so I made the drive back to DC. It was quite a shock for me to get back into such cold water. First I went to Portage Hole on the Potomac with Peter and we worked on some new tricks and such in our playboats. I also did Great Falls with Geoff. He was paddling his new Dagger Green boat and he was making it look really good. As soon as the rain started to fall I knew it would be time to go creeking over in WV. Geoff came to my house to pick me up and there was a minor emergency because I could only stay a day or two and Geoff wanted to stay for a while. I gave Scott a call and he and some buddies were going to try to get on Seneca Creek, WV which is on the classic creeks over there. So I chose that option and let Geoff go to another part of WV. Seneca runs very infrequently because it starts way up high at Seneca Rocks so it has a tiny drainage. Luckily, we had enough rain (sleet) to bring it up to a medium-lowish level which was very manigable for a crew of people who had never done it before. By the way, it is 13 miles long so it is quite and undertaking. I had never paddled with Scott, Billy or Curt and I thought that we worked really well together out there. think it took us about 6 hours of solid paddling to get to the take-out. There seemed to be a lot less sieve's/undercuts than some other WV creeks I had done before. However, wood was a big problem but we were able to sneak and avoid most of it. Scott's pitoned his boat and decided to give it away to another potomac local paddler who is without a creeker. Very classy of him. It was defently a fun week and I can't wait for low-water potomac when I get back. haha

Nathan

Winter Long Boating

We been working on our old school tricks.

Check it out:

Middle and Lower Cullasaja

It had rained on thursday night and I was dying to get back in my creekboat. I had classes all day friday so skipping school was out. I gave Adam Secrest a call on friday evening to see if he was going to be boating the next day. He gave me Eli Smith's number so we could carpool from Asheville. I woke up early and made it over to Eli's house just in time...to wake him up! We got rallied within an hour and were ready to hit the road. Predictably, we made a wrong turn and didn't figure it out for a while, delaying us another 40 or so minuted. We ended being about 1.5 hours late on a 1.5 hour drive. Funny stuff. Luckily, Adam and the crew he was with were really late too.
All together we were 7, rollin' pretty deep. I guess it was Mac McGee, Adam Seacrest, Eli Smith, Daniel Stewart, Jon Angermeier, Isaiah Stunna'shades and I. In the interest of time, we decided to skip the upper section. Defenitly a good decision. The middle section was nice, but it had a good bit of flatwater.
There were a few good rapids on that section, but nothing too spectacular. We all took a nice long look at Superslide which is visible as the big bunch of white at the top of the pic of Cullasaja falls. It is a super cool slide with a big kicker boof at the bottom. If anything went wrong though, you would be attempting a first decent on a big drop that lands on rock. Super Slide is pictured below and at the top of the picture of Cullasaja Falls. With such a fast moving pool we all decided to walk it (some more happily than others though).
After hiking around Cullasaja Falls we put back onto what looked like a totally different river. There were tons of perfectly clean drops. Naw, just kidding. It was probably one of the mankiest looking low volume rivers I have ever done. All the rocks were sharp and irregular. To quote Leland Davis, "What this river lacks in length it makes up for in mank." On the first drop, we had to use the german technique of "duck-an-boof". Mac is pictures below about to make the second boof in the sequence.
After that rapid, we came up to Eclipse and Next Time. Eclipse got its name because it eclipses Sunshine, a known class V+, in difficulty. It is a pretty legit section of whitewater, Both of those rapids are pretty stout. None of us were on our game and high water might clean up the drops some so we carried around those two. We continued on through the mess of sieves, caves, undercuts, machete rocks and strainers until we got to the end. As we were all talking about the possibilities of Superslide, Next Time and Eclipse at the take-out, Eli announced that he hated the river and he would never do it again. I think people in this area are pretty lucky because there are so many other great runs in the area that they can write off rivers as fun as the Cullasaja and still have a bunch of creeks to paddle. I will be back; however, to Eli's credit the Cullasaja isn't very popular anymore.

Nathan

P.S. Adam made a post on his blog and has a cool little video up.
http://tengallonhats.blogspot.com/2008/02/cullasaja-we-had-some-logistical-issues.html

Mexico Part I

Alright, so this is how it went. I found the biggest duffel bag I could and stuffed it full of food and kayaking equipment. I dragged it to the airport and hopped on a plane. In 21 short hours of car, then plane and finally bus, I was in Tlapacoyan, Mexico. We started out on one of the coolest sections of river I have ever run, known as the Tablaso section of the Alsaseca. "Tablaso" means to get slapped in the face. The coolest rapid on that section is pictured below. The river makes two really sharp bends then continues on through a really narrow fast channel. SWEEEET!!!
The next day, we did the Super Alto Filo Bobos. This river started out with some really nice creeky drops. Including the one pictured where I boofed and then all the water immediately went into a pour-over slide. Then some side streams came in and it became more of a creeky river. We continued on down and did the class III-IV Alto Filo Bobos as well. This was a 20 mile day on the river. To celebrate the long hard day, I bought some tamales from a street vendor lady. I had also saved some apple cake to celebrate. I took a bite of the apple cake, only to discover a huge cockroach. This made me loose my appetite so I gave away my tamales. The poor fool who ate them got really sick and I was fine. Luck comes in all shapes and sizes.
The Rio de Oro is really where it's at though. We parked in a cattle field and shouldered our boats for about 20 minutes to the creek. The ocean is visible from the cattle field and you put in right below where the river perculates from the ground. The river is primarily a volcanic canyon with incredible water quality. After some quality drops the river drops into the coolest cauldron canyon I have seen. The first drop is 30 foot plus drop where you do a cross current move, rock boofing off the left side and freefalling down. It's very unique. A few rapids later there is another 30-ish drop. But this one is perfectly clean. Very Classic. After those couple hundred feet, the committing canyon ends and it is all smooth sailing until you get to the ocean. We had some 6 foot waves, waiting for us to surf.

Signing off for now,
Nathan Sass

Photocred: Ajay "I am giving up kayaking to live in Ohio" Sapre

Pre Christmas Playboating Session

I was out at Wet Bottom yesterday, just about the perfect level on a nice warm day for December. I was having a great time for the first couple surfs untill i broke my paddle. But I came out there again today for a Christmas eve paddle with my brother. After Wet Bottom, i headed down the MD chute to meet up with Sam and Nathan Sass. I'll let the pictures tell the rest.














And remember kids, a huck a day keeps the playboats away.