Nice day on the water among CCC friends and we may have even seen the birth of another addict to the sport.
We had 1 novice, couple intermediates, and some advanced paddlers along with a couple instructors and an instructor educator. Hmm, great opportunity for some newer paddlers. Decent weather and good conditions for a better than average wave shape for surfing (pool level around 19.3' with flow of 2600cfs).
The true hassle of coordinating a trip is never knowing if anyone will show up. With last-minute heavy rain in the Triangle even more so. I could have just stayed home and paddled! Even posting weeks in advance, a few days out I had one confirmed person. On Thursday I briefly had six. Fortunately, it's the Ocoee.
River: Nolichucky Sat 8/11. FB9 Sunday 8/12
Particpiants Sat : Marta Mount, Scott Daniels, Gary Bills ( allK1), Bob Wiggins and Len Prosniz in the shredder. Sun: Scott, Bob and Len
I have a well-documented history of attempting to rescue those in distress (with varying degrees of success). After two runs down the Ocoee on the 4th of July, with only an uneventful rescue of boat pinned in Diamond Splitter from …
CCC volunteers found enough tires for two cars, enough plastic bottles to open a recycling center and enough sandals, boots and flip-flops to open a shoe store during this year's cleanup on the Tuckasegee where the river empties into Fontana Lake.
Instead of heading for a river on a hot July morning, 24 paddlers decided to tackle a raft of trash about the size of a football field. Volunteers hauled in 150 bags of trash, eight tires, one ottoman, one bowling ball and a very large icemaker.
Trip report – French Broad Section 9, June 23 and 24, 2018. Trip coordinator – Wayne Jones.
On Sunday May 13th we had a group of 6 on the French Broad. 5 people joined me for a trip from Bardhard down to Stackhouse. The trip went well. There we two people that joined me hand paddlng Frank and Koz. It's a rare thing to have 3 hand paddlers on one trip. Also on the trip was Greg and Donna as well as Elliot. It was a nice day on the river.
Rain is a good thing, but it sometimes complicates a trip coordinator’s choice. When I planned a “Richmond area” trip many months ago, I was thinking about the James or Appomattox. The rain earlier this week washed those thoughts away – both rivers were too high for this open boater to consider running. I finally settled on the Rockbridge Baths section of the Maury River near Lexington, Virginia. While all the “big dog” boaters were meeting upstream to run Goshen Pass, we were gathering in front of the Rockbridge Baths Post Office.
I usually coordinate this trip the end of April because I've found that the last weekend of April is late enough to be warm, but early enough to still have water somewhere. This year, I had more water than I wanted. After nervously watching water levels all week, we ended up with the Goldilock's Solution for kayaking: the Cape Fear was too high, the Eno was too low, but the Haw was mostly right (5.8', only a bit higher than my preferred novice level of 5.5').
Scheduling a creeking trip even a few weeks in advance is always going to be a roll of the dice, but I hoped that fortune would favor the bold as I announced my intentions to paddle some natural flow creeks on one of my rare spring weekends off. Despite the best efforts of rain dances, it became clear to me about ten days out that the forecast wasn't going to work in my favor. The big rains fell in the mountains on the Sunday before the trip, and by the following weekend the creeks had dropped out.
