Big Laurel May 14, 2016
| River: | Big Laurel |
| Skill: | All |
| Trip Date: | 05/14/2016 |
Big Laurel Creek 5/14/16
It's unusual to get the highlight of the trip before you finish setting shuttle, but this day was different. On the way back from dropping off the cars in Hot Springs there was a mama bear in a peach tree with a cub on the ground. She was pigging out after winter and apparently oblivious to how unripe the peaches were.
The rest of the trip was largely uneventful to a reader but pretty satisfying to the paddlers. Les, Charlie, and Jim had driven up from South Carolina to join me. The level was +1 on the painted gauge where minimum is somewhere between -4 and -5. Enough water but not a pushy level. No first timers and no swims, so it was a pretty mellow day.
Big Laurel is a beautiful creek and is followed on river left by an old rail trail. As usual there were hikers out on a Saturday and as usual most of them were somewhere between surprised and astounded to see kayakers navigating waters that seemed to them unrunnable. The action is fairly continuous with only one pool of any size. It's a 3+ so it grabs your interest without being scary.
Big Laurel is fairly technical, so you need to have accurate boat placement and angle. There is the rewarding feeling of mild euphoria when you run clean lines. Everyone one the trip got that feeling.
Once you get to the French Broad, you can hike 0.6 miles up to Stackhouse or paddle 3.5 miles down to Hot Springs. We had chosen paddling over hiking. The stretch on the French Broad includes windy flats – you can guess what that means. The flow on the French Broad was about 2300 cfs so the flat water went fairly quickly. For your perseverance you get to run Kayak Ledge, Frank Bell's and Surprise. Kayak Ledge and Surprise went smoothly. At Frank's Les decided to show me a line that I had never seen anyone run before. It was a little – what's the word I'm looking for – eccentric? – not quite; sketchy will do.
I've added link to a video taken by Les. It's heavily edited since the trip is well over 3 hours. In order 1) unnamed rapid, 2) Stairstep, 3)Narrows (running it and from eddy), 4) wavetrain, 5) Humble Pie (running it and from eddy) – this is where the roll is. We then enter French Broad ; the first rapid is Kayak ledge where Les is almost abducted by a flying space alien at 1:22. Next is the sketchy line at Frank's by Les and I, followed by the second drop in Frank's – skirting the main hole.
– Lee Thonus