Paddle Smoothly and Find a 10 Foot Stick or RETHROG Reprised
| River: | Cheoah |
| Skill: | Intermediate+/Advanced |
| Trip Date: | 06/29/2014 |
Paddle Smoothly and Find a 10 Foot Stick or RETHROG Reprised
As soon as I got to WOR on Friday this year, I headed straight for the shaded camping area in the lower field. I had scoped out the spot a few weeks earlier while teaching the kids’ clinics. The problem was, as I was walking up to the office to pay for my site, a member of the PA crew was already there asking about camping in the same spot. A discussion ensued and we agreed to split the area up since there was plenty of space. My daughter and I set up camp and then went to the Nanty to cool off.
The next day we headed to the Upper Ocoee for Alyssa’s first run down that section. She had enough fun that she decided to continue down the Middle as well. We returned to camp tired after a long day. Turns out our neighbors had decided to paddle the same stretch of river. Sunday morning I was headed to the Cheoah with a small group of friends. I saw my neighbors standing amongst a large group of folks after the morning meeting and tapped one of them on the shoulder to ask where they were heading. They indicated they were headed to the Cheoah but were worried that their group was too large. I invited them to join our group and they accepted, bringing our group to seven total.
Everyone had a great time down through the upper section of the river. We stopped in the eddy above God’s Dam to discuss the line, and I mentioned to catch the river left eddy below the drop due to reports of a hornet’s nest in the river right eddy. Everyone had good lines and we continued down. We eddied out again above Takeout to discuss the line – split the goalpost rocks on the right by paddling aggressively right. Again, good lines by all and we continued down to the Forest Service Bridge where we took a break to eat and stretch our legs. It was decided here to eddy out above the entrance to Bear Creek falls to scout the rapid and the falls.
We were soon scouting the rapid – with the group selecting a river right line through the entrance followed by eddying out river left above the falls and then taking the double drop “creek line” in the center of the river. We were soon in the eddy above Bear Creek Falls – with clean runs of the tricky entrance by everyone. I then reinforced the “creek line” – drive onto the rock in the entrance and then be ready to brace right, and take a quick stroke to boof the second drop, then paddle through the swirly water and into the river right eddy with a river left eddy as a back-up if you miss river right. I peeled out, ran the falls, and then took up a spot in the eddy below with my camera to take pictures. There were some interesting lines that included multiple rolls, but everyone made it into the river right eddy upright and in their boat.
I then explained the line just right of the rock below: an autoboof into a small eddy followed by several small drops with meaty holes, and busy water for several hundred yards. I continued down to the first good eddy and waited for the crew to follow. A few moments later, a not so great line by one member of the group led to a hole ride followed by a swim. He quickly got himself and his paddle to the bank. I started chasing his boat downstream but it got stuck in a spot where I could not eddy out. I caught an eddy, parked my boat, and started scrambling up the bank to his boat.
After considerable scrambling through doghobble, brambles, and poison ivy, I was on the shore with him looking at his boat. His boat was stranded in a hole about 10 feet off the bank. Some really swift current separated us from the boat, with rocks, trees, and stuff we didn’t want to mess with just downstream. Further out in the channel was a really nasty hole that we wanted to stay far, far away from. The boat’s owner suggested a live bait set-up. I knew I didn’t want to go out in the channel at that spot and didn’t want him to go out either. It was then that I saw a long, straight stick on the bank – about 10 feet long. I found that if I reached the stick out from the bank, I could almost reach the boat. I always carry 15 feet of rope with a locking biner on each end in my PFD. I got that out and tried to wedge the biner into one end of the stick with the gate wedged open. I then held the rope and the other end of the stick in an attempt to improvise some type of gaff hook. I found I couldn’t quite reach the boat and the biner wasn’t very secure. The owner of the boat then used his knife to notch the end of the stick so we could wedge the biner securely. He then positioned himself just in the edge of the water. I held his PFD securely, and after a couple of tries, he successfully snagged the biner onto the back grab loop of his boat. It was then just a matter using the rope to haul his boat in to the bank.
It then came to my mind that we had pretty much perfectly followed the RETHROG method taught in swiftwater rescue – Reach, then throw, then row, then go. We found a way to stay with the least risky method possible – reaching. I’ve never seen an improvised gaff hook method mentioned in any class I’ve taken but given that it works, I’ll gladly add it to my personal SWR arsenal for future equipment rescue.
A short time later, the group was all gathered in an eddy and ready to continue our journey downstream. We discussed the line at Tapoco lodge rapid, which everyone ran well. We then discussed Yardsale and the general line before moving to the small eddy just before the rapid. I seem to remember discussing how to run Yardsale on the far left but somehow ran it on the far right. We had another roll or two among the group in the short distance before the lake but no further out of boat experiences. At any rate, we soon found ourselves in the very cold lake with only one tally on the group swim counter.
The short version: Cheaoh during WOR – 7 boats – all had fun.