Black River Weekend
| River: | Black |
| Skill: | All |
| Trip Date: | 02/21/2014 |
Three intrepid swamp crawlers gathered at the Kayak Kabin in Mossy Log Friday night eager for two days of paddling on the Black River. According to the North Carolina Nature Conservancy,
“The Black River and approximately 70 miles of two of its major tributaries are designated as Outstanding Resource Waters by the N.C. Division of Water Quality. The relatively undisturbed Black River system has extraordinarily high water quality.
Tall, flat-topped bald cypress with huge buttresses completely dominate the sometimes open canopy in the old-growth stands. This extensive forest, including several trees ranging from 780 to 1,600 years in age, is considered to be the oldest stand of trees east of the Rocky Mountains.”
Most of the really old trees are in the Three Sisters Swamp our destination for Saturday’s paddle.
After some coffee, a quick breakfast and running the shuttle Eliot Mintzer, Andrea Sordean-Mintzer and I launched from Henry’s Landing at 10:40 am. The Clear Run Gauge (USGS 021006500 Black River near Tomahawk, NCor TOMN7 on the NWS Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service), the only gauge on the Black River, is about 30 miles upstream of our put-in so it does not necessarily reflect what is going on so far downstream. It was showing flow of 1600 cfs and level of 10.2 feet, well below flood stage of 17 feet. With levels at 10 feet the bases of the large old cypress trees, many with hollowed out cavities inside of them, and the tall cypress knees are underwater. With so much of the bases hidden from view some appreciation of their size is lost.
But the advantage of levels that high is that water covers an area of the swamp much larger and deeper than usual allowing boat access to areas normally above water or to shallow for paddling. There was so much more to explore! And explore we did, including the Narrows (see page 46 of the 2nd edition of Ferguson’s book) which in recent years has silted up and can only be run with high water.
Around noon we entered a short cove to look around and found a lot of trash floating there. The high water had flushed a lot of it out into the river. After spending about 25 minutes picking up as much as we could and filling our hatches as full as we could get them we continued on downstream.
Another 20 minutes later and we were at the top of Three Sisters. Other than the trash stop our trip down was relatively quick which left plenty of time to explore the swamp. We spent around 2 ½ hours poking around. We explored the area on river right at the top of the swamp then went down the Narrows on the left, back up Haw Mill Creek which empties into the Narrows, back down the creek into the Narrows again then to the bottom of the swamp. Not done exploring we then went up the middle channel a ways before turning around to continue downstream.
Around 4:20 we took out at Newby’s Landing. According to Ferguson the distance from Henry’s to Newby’s is 9.7 miles. Of that, the paddleable section of the swamp is only about a mile. The distance paddled on my GPS was 12.2 miles which means we managed to paddle an extra 2.5 miles in this relatively short 1 mile swamp. I would have happily paddled much longer in the swamp but it was 4 miles to the take out.
After taking out, loading boats and gear and changing clothes we headed to the Mad Boar, a fabulous restaurant in Wallace for dinner. The food was excellent and a great way to end the day. One of the paddling clubs I belong to is fond of saying that they aren’t sure if they are a paddling club that likes to eat or an eating club with a paddling problem. Problem or not, it was a great day on the river topped off with a fine meal.
No one set an alarm Saturday night so we all slept until nearly 9am Sunday morning. We whipped up a breakfast of coffee, sausage, scrambled eggs with onions and peppers, and toast with jam. We planned to paddle from Wildcat Bridge to the Wildlife ramp in Ivanhoe, a distance of 9 miles.
Our lazy start meant we didn’t get on the river until 12:22 pm. Gauge readings were similar at 1700 cfs and a level of 10.3 feet. As on Saturday, due to the high water there were numerous areas where water flowed out of the main channel through swampy areas off to one side or the other. About 25 minutes after putting in we noticed large amounts of water were flowing into a swampy area on river left and wondered where it would come out.
About a ¼ mile after that we saw a cove on river left we decided to explore. We kept going up, up, up the cove. About 12 minutes later we came to the same place where we had just seen water pouring off to the left. Now we knew where the water had come out. We paddled through the water pouring in and continued on our journey.
At one point we startled a herd of deer and watched them jump into the river and swim across disappearing into the woods on the other side. Later we saw a critter dive beneath the water before we could tell what it was. Could have been the Black Ness Monster. (Probably it was just a beaver.)We saw several wood ducks and heard but never saw an owl.
We took out around 4:00 after having paddled 9.6 miles. The extra half-mile or so is accounted for by our detour up a cove and back out onto the river.
It was a great weekend to be on the river.