French Broad Section 9, June 23 and 24, 2018
| River: | French Broad |
| Skill: | Novice+/Intermediate |
| Trip Date: | 06/23/2018 |
Trip report – French Broad Section 9, June 23 and 24, 2018. Trip coordinator – Wayne Jones.
The French Broad River, north of Asheville is easily my most paddled river, outside of the Haw, which is in my backyard of Raleigh. It has a mostly stable flow, giving you the opportunity to safely estimate what the level will be in a few days, and it doesn’t change terribly much in character within 200-300 cfs or so. Plus, the water is comfortable in the summer, and there is a long easy warmup section to start. The weekend projected to have flows in the 2400 cfs range. The options to run this are to take out at Stackhouse, or to go further downstream and take out at Hot Springs.
Day one. Rick Steeves, Amie Phillips Scott, Alton Chewning, Joe Mount and Wayne Jones. Flow 2560 cfs. The goal was to take out at Hot Springs. Everybody was paddling quite competently, with some unfortunate complications at Big Pillow. In retrospect, a more conservative option should have been communicated, which would be entering the main flow at Pillow just to the right and then continuing a right angle to the large eddy to the right of Pillow, where you can skip the series obstacles that lay in main current below Pillow. The line we took was to eddy out river left above Pillow, which then led to ferrying back across the current above Pillow, which is not a novice move, and has some consequences. We gathered ourselves and soldiered on happily to Stackhouse. One member of the party took out there and the remainder headed on to Hot Springs, with 2 successful first descents of Kayaker’s Ledge and Frank Bell’s. I recommend scouting Frank Bell’s on the train track river right. A highlight of the paddle down Windy Flats was watching a bald eagle swim from the center of the river to the bank (literally; swim, using it’s wings, making noticeable progress across the river) clamber out with a large fish in it’s talons, stand there for a few minutes drying off, and then flying off with the fish.
Day two. Bobby Simpson, Daniel Rhoades, Stuart Nath, Hugh Sproul, and Wayne Jones. Flow 2400 cfs. Today’s destination Stackhouse. This trip turned into a sunny relaxed day slowly working our way down the river, with Daniel splatting every rock and stern squirting every eddy he could find. This was a first descent for Hugh. A solid weekend of paddling for me, and a chance to meet some new terrific people, one unheralded benefit of coordinating a CCC trip. Until next time.