Middle Ocoee Long weekend
| River: | Ocoee |
| Skill: | Intermediate |
| Trip Date: | 08/11/2012 |
I posted yet another trip over to the Ocoee with hopes of another great weekend with my daughter and some friends. A couple of the usual suspects responded as well as a couple of folks hoping to paddle a shredder. I also got a call from a friend of a friend of a friend who wanted to join us. Pretty tangential relationship but the guy said he had quite a bit of experience with the Ocoee and he sounded nice on the phone. A lot of rain early in the week had me hopeful for a rare summertime Tellico run but alas, Saturday morning found the Tellico empty and my truck headed to the Middle Ocoee put-in.
We met and set shuttle. During the shuttling of cars, we somehow added three first timers to the group. That made 4 folks I hadn't paddled with before so I was a bit nervous as we put on the river. Anyone who has paddled the Ocoee a good bit has had an experience with that unknown guy that claims to be an expert paddler but somehow swims 7 times. We peeled out high and started the fun ferry around Grumpies. Everyone was doing okay as we caught the first eddy. When we peeled out, we had one person decide to explore the fish population on the way down to Staging Eddy. We quickly reunited him with his boat and continued on down with a few stops to play around. We stopped before the Moon Shoot and Broken Nose to explain the options to our first timers. One of the first timers missed the eddy just above Broken Nose and ended up running the main line but he escaped without any incident. The shredder decided to practice a quick side surf at the bottom of Broken Nose but escaped without any major carnage.
We ran the top of Slice and Dice, and I proceeded down to catch an small eddy above the normal playspot below Slice and Dice. There is a neat little spin / ender hole there I like to play in. One of the guys behind me didn't expect me to eddy out there and speared me pretty hard in the side. I managed to paddle up to a rock where I held on until I caught my breath. I was sore but that didn't stop me from trying a few flat spins in the hole 🙂 We continued on down through Moonshoot, Double Suck, and Double Trouble without incident. We stopped at the Jump Rock below there to do some bow stalls and stern squirts before continuing on through to Flipper. We ran the far right line at Flipper and a few folks tried unsuccessfully to hit the Watauga move. We were soon above Tablesaw. The Shredder leaked out of the eddy into an eddy below and had some difficulty getting back into the main current but did fine once they got out of the eddy. Everyone had good lines at Diamond Splitter except for me. I tried unsuccessfully to move from the top river right eddy to the river left eddy above the Diamond Splitter rock but didn't ferry out high enough to make it across and got stuck briefly on some rocks before wiggling my way off and running the normal river right side of the rapid.
We stopped below Diamond Splitter on river left to stretch our legs and get a snack. While we were there someone told my daughter she needed to go look at some rocks on the bank above where we were taking a break. She found some cool designs on the rocks up there made by placing smaller rocks in a swirl pattern. In the middle of the design was one of the famous Ocoee Amulets with the same desing painted on the amulet. She was beyond excited (not hard to imagine if you know Alyssa).
We continued down with a few stops to play and catch eddies along the way down to Cat's PJs where a few people got out to jump in the mystery move spot for an interesting swim. We were soon at Hell Hole, and then through Powerhouse, and onto the takeout. At the takeout, Alyssa said she was too tired for a second lap so we headed to the campground and then Herb's for some grub. The rest of the group ran a second lap that may have included some epic / scary shredder carnage. I wasn't there so I can't really relate that story.
On Sunday we met again minus our 3 extra first timers. We had a pretty uneventful but fun day. No real carnage from Sunday. We said goodbye to 3 of our group on Sunday – two headed home and one headed to Asheville for some unknown reason 🙂
On Monday it was just the shredder, my daughter, and I. We ran into Fast Fred and one of his friends at the put-in and ended up paddling with them most of the day. Yet another beautiful day on a great river with nice folks was over too soon. Thus concluded another summer on the river with my daughter. School is now back in session so our free time on the weekends will now be crowded out with marching band, school work, parties, and people way cooler than dad.