Tar River and Cattail Creek
| River: | Other |
| Skill: | Novice |
| Trip Date: | 05/19/2024 |
Tar River (Shock Overton Rd to Hwy 15), 2.17 miles
Aaron Vaughan and I ran this section that we had read about in Paul Ferguson’s Paddling Eastern North Carolina. It was the second most exciting in terms of gradient that is mentioned on there for the Tar. I of course wanted to tack on a micro-creek to the trip so we started on a brief trip down Cattail Creek off Shock Overton Rd. The creek wasn’t the most exciting that I’ve done, but wasn’t the worst either. We felt like if the Tar was about a foot higher, most of the rapids in the creek would have been runnable, but there still were a few portages for strainers in the short distance and lots of scraping.
Once we reached Belltown Rd, there was probably the biggest rapid of the section, a heavy class II wavetrain that didn’t quite reach II+, but maybe some would call it that. What continued was more solid class II drops for the next 1.7 miles or so with very little flat in between until the very end. There were multiple braided sections of river where we followed the most flow, but could have chosen different routes. Some decent surf waves along the way as well, but not great eddy service to catch them so you needed to catch on the fly.
Once we almost reached the takeout bridge, Aaron found some mushrooms on one of the banks. I didn’t know he was a mushroom hunter, but it was a neat addition to the trip.
All in all, we decided that this short section had a bit more action than the more popular section downstream that is listed on AW and was a great short run. While we expected rapids to be washed out at this level it was actually ideal. None of the rapids quite reached the excitement level of the Schoolbus rapid downstream, but it was a great novice run with read and run rapids fairly consistent for when water levels are high. Think Upper Haw or Eno as a comparison for example. Level was 7.1 ft on the USGS gage at Tar River and we felt this was good medium flow. I’d recommend between 6 and 8 ft for fun whitewater action with not a lot of consequence. The creek, on the other hand, was not one I’d recommend necessarily for most, but it wasn’t too miserable. While it was narrower than most I’ve explored, I’d call it middle of the road in terms of potential to frustration ratio. Most would probably want to start at Old US 75 though, which would add more rapids on the river and a couple extra miles. I have a video below of the creek filmed from my pfd if anyone is curious about what a mid range gradient central NC micro is like at low water levels. My phone cut off right when it started to get interesting though.