Pigeon Trip from the Familes Paddle Too Event
| River: | Pigeon |
| Skill: | Intermediate |
| Trip Date: | 05/26/2012 |
Heading into the Families Paddle Too event over Memorial Day I had hoped to get together a trip on the Pigeon Gorge for Saturday. It was the first scheduled release of the season and I was looking forward to a fun day. I had posted earlier in the week to the FPC and CCC message boards to see if anyone already had a trip we could join. I found folks from both clubs that were leading trips and soon found an unusual problem – which trip? The Foothills Group had responded first so we decided to join them for the day. Leaving from Smoky Mountain Meadows there were 9 of us that decided to head to the Pigeon. From those 9, it was the first time for 4 folks and the first time in a long time for at least one other in the group.
When we arrived at the put-in, I found total chaos as there was what seemed like hundreds of folks there ready to paddle. Most of the Foothills crew had gotten there a bit ahead of us and they had a lot of folks. Three folks from our group (including two of the first timers) joined in with them and the remaining 6 from our group split off to form a separate group.
I saw a couple of other groups there from the CCC, no surprise on a warm spring day! We soon found ourselves working our way through the first rapid, eddying out at the bottom to make sure everyone was doing okay. The 2 first timers still with us seemed to be surprised by the big waves but did well. We proceeded on down the river, swapping places with one of the groups from the CCC as we made our way down. The Pigeon has about a million neat play spots with holes and waves to surf, squirt, ender, and do countless stupid tricks on – none of which I will win any rodeo competitions for but it sure is a lot of fun!
One of our first timers is a guy that I had really been hoping to get on the Pigeon for quite a while. Every time I paddle with him it seems he can't get enough surfing and playing on the river. For the first time ever, I had to push him to get out and play in some of the bigger waves. He did great – I see the Ocoee in his near future!
We continued playing our way down the river with a couple of stops to adjust outfitting, eat snacks, and hydrate. We were soon eddied out above Lost Guide, one of the Class III+ rapids on the Pigeon. I explained the line and then we peeled out and made our way down the right, moving to slightly left toward the end, then clipping the right edge of the big hole at the bottom. We stopped and a couple of us enjoyed goofing around in the hole at Lost Guide, although no one seemed to really get a good surf there that day.
We continued on down, with quite a bit more playing thrown in for good measure. We were soon at Double Reactionary, where our group tried several different lines, all with success. A few good surfs and such ensued at the great wave below there (Hollywood?). Next up was the final Class III of the day at Accelerator. Everyone made it through upright, although some lines were smoother than others. We did manage to squeeze some more surfing and boofing on our way to the takeout. We unwound shuttle and made our way back to the campground. A fun day with a great group – two first timers, lots of playing, and no swims. A great start to a fun weekend!