Dan River
| River: | Dan |
| Skill: | Novice+ |
| Trip Date: | 07/01/2006 |
Where: Dan River, Kibler Valley-Pinnacles Power Plant to Picnic Table take-out
Distance: 2 miles?
Difficulty: Class I-II
Water Level: Power plant releasing at 9,000 kW
Trip Coordinator: ????
Paddlers: (K-1) Charlie Morris, Roger Rittmaster, Lynna Woods, Caroline Gilmore, Allison ?, Jeff Dennie; (OC-1) Jan Bolen
Sighted: Joe Berry, on foot, trying to find us. Numerous other CCC’ers from the surrounding area. Bambi, or at least a bambi look alike, running down the river fifteen feet in front of us and then crossed before our very eyes.
This was only my second run on the Dan River and it had been two years since my last one. It was even more fun than I had recalled. I do not know where the gauge is for this river, many go by what the power plants generating capacity is and 9,000 kilowatts seems to be just about right. Our group made the run down in about 2.5 hours for the first run. There were a few beginners on this trip which was really great to see. Watching folks nail the first crisp eddy grab was a lot of fun. Worth mentioning is one memorable swim. An unnamed kayaker was experimenting with front surfing and got flipped. I am a handpaddler and learned a neat-o trick to share with other knuckle dragging handpaddlers. I was having a heck of time getting the boat to an eddy and then I looked down at the swimmer and realized that they were holding on to their paddle. I thought, “what do they need that for, I’m the one that needs it right now!” So, even though I’ve been in this situation countless times, it finally dawned on me to stick the webbing strap ends of my handpaddles in between my teeth and take the swimmer’s paddle. Yeah, the power of leverage! It made it a lot easier for them to swim and easier for me to push/pull. That’s not even the good part though. Once swimmer and boat are in an eddy, the swimmer gets out and turns to me. I calmly state that they have a huge cicada fly on their shoulder, swimmer is more afraid of the fly than the bumpy bruising swim they just took. Swimmer comes back down close to the water so I can remove the fly. While swimmer is bent over they look down into their still swamped boat and exclaim, “I caught a fish!” Sure enough there is an inch to two inch long fish hanging out in the boat. While draining the boat we both laugh about the cicada and the fish until almost all the water is out. “Hey, do you think the fish will fit through that hole?” I ask. Swimmer drops the boat and sees the fish lying there, high and dry, “I’ve killed it, oh no!” Swimmer picks up the fish and sets it into the water, and it swims off to safety, alive and well.
The Dan has all the beauty of the Nanty but is about a third as wide in most places so it has the feeling of a creek. And you do hit lots of rocks; it’s barely more than a foot deep in most places it seems. But it doesn’t have the dangerous swim factor that creeking brings with it (although the abrasion factor on knees and butts is still rather high). It pretty much has the best from both worlds of river and creek. So, it begs the question…is it a creek or a river? Well, three of us went back for a second helping of this clear and clean mountain whatchamacallit. On the drive back from the take-out we decided it should be called a “criver”. The Dan “Criver” is a must- paddle in my book, if you are a solid class II boater looking to sharpen your paddle or if you are a more experienced paddler who hasn’t forgotten the lure of a crystal clear mountain stream. FYI, on our second run, we bombed down it in under an hour. It really is up to the paddler to stretch the trip out or you’ll find yourself at the take-out before you are even hungry for lunch! I had a great time with everyone on this trip; it was a great bunch of folks to paddle with. But I would like to call special attention to Jeff Dennie and Caroline Gilman who really went for it on this trip!