Paddling the Lumber
| River: | Other |
| Skill: | Novice |
| Trip Date: | 07/06/2019 |
Route: Chalk Banks to Cypress Bend Winery (access by special permission). This started and ended as a great day on the river with kayak paddlers and staff from Lake Rim Park in Fayetteville (9 people total). However, when we got about ¼ mile south of US-401 ( Raeford Rd) we ran into a huge clearcut on the west bank. This goes on for 0.9 miles as the crow flies or at least 1.25 miles on the river. Google Earth imagery shows this as being cut about March of 2018. Probably due to Hurricane Florence and/ or later storms, many of the buffer trees fell in the river, some even from the east bank which was not cut. This made for some very tedious and slow work (which I classify as "over, under, around, and through"). I consider a little of this fun, but this seemed to go on endlessly. It finally petered out about 1/4 mile south of the RR bridge. My advice to anyone trying this is: bring a saw and do not go alone. At one point, my kayak was pinned by swift current against and with the nose slightly under a tree trunk and do not think I would have been able to resolve this situation by myself. At this one point, the current was so strong I had great difficulty even turning my paddle underwater. But seven of our party did get past this without getting pinned. On the plus side, we met some park people in a johnboat with a chainsaw clearing from US 401 north, and by that time we had covered from Chalk Banks south without much trouble, so that short segment through the park should be in pretty good shape. Joan Schneier