Nolichucky Gorge
| River: | Nolichucky |
| Skill: | Intermediate |
| Trip Date: | 05/20/2017 |
Most of my trips go so smoothly that they are boring to read about. If you're on the trip, this is usually a good thing. We had a sunny day with blue skies and 1240 cfs on the Embreeville gauge. The group started out with 6 (Liz, Wes, Mort, Gary, Peter and myself) but grew to 9 by the time we were paddling with the additions of Robert, Gretchen, and Suzanne.
Things were a little confusing at the Nolichucky Gorge Campground with several groups arriving at about the same time, all needing shuttle drivers, and there being a slight shortage of shuttle drivers. A little creativity got our crew to the put-in and away we were. Everyone in the group had been down the Noli before, so it had the makings of a pretty mellow trip
The heavier action on the Noli occurs in the first two miles. The rest is read and run for a reasonably competent paddler; although there are alternate lines where you can get into trouble if you want to. The last of the bigger rapids is Roostertail and Liz flipped as she caught just a piece of the hole. A lot of success in rolling is about remaining calm. Liz did and rolled up like she was practicing in a pool. She had a grin like a jackass eating briars (not sure if I've ever actually seen that). I told her two things 1) if that grin got any bigger it would meet in the back of her head and the top of her head would fall off and 2) it was a bigger confidence booster than the last 50 clean runs that I've had on Roostertail.
Gary and I often paddle together and are both fairly solid boaters. We rarely flip other than playing. However when we do flip, it is almost always in the same spot. In our past 5 or more river trips no non-playing flips. The Noli probably has 20 or so named rapids / features so even if we both flipped on the Noli the odds of it happening at the same rapid are small. However as I was rolling up from flipping on an alternate line at “Hole in the Wall” aka Railroad Wall, I got to watch Gary (the copy cat) flip in exactly the same spot. The rest of the trip was pretty mellow.