WOR 2021 Friday Nanty Trip

Friday’s only WOR Nanty trip did not start without incident. After the morning meeting, about a dozen boaters from several states planned to meet at Patton’s at 10:30 am to run shuttle.

After picking up a passenger, the RAM pickup truck the trip leader was traveling in was simultaneously run off the road by a large RV and clotheslined by a very long (probably 1000 foot) length of rope that was dropped onto the RV by the linemen who had been working on lines all week above route 19 near the campground.

Neither our truck nor the RV escaped unscathed. Jeff Fuller was driving our truck and he came to an immediate stop off the road into the weeds when the RV swerved into our lane, and we watched (and heard) the rope get dragged over the hood, then roof, of our truck and get caught somewhere on the bottom of the truck while the RV continued to drive away in the opposite direction with rope ends dragging on both sides of the road. We braced, waiting for the slack to finally be taken up and the rope to snap. The rope did snap after a second or so, leaving part of it caught underneath our truck and the rest of it being dragged down 19 by the RV.

We turned around and drove to find both the RV and a lineman parked down the road and saw several hundred feet of rope strewn onto Route 19 across both lanes. Traffic was heavy in both directions at that time and cars were driving over the rope. And it was starting to rain. Anna gathered the rope off the road and talked to the driver of the RV and she discovered that the rope had wrapped around the jacks underneath the RV. The rope had also left rope-burn marks across the RV windshield. Eventually, we collected information to make a later claim for damages against the linemen’s employer and set out again to meet our group at Patton’s.

We continued on route 19 past NOC and suddenly traffic came to a complete standstill in our lane, while oncoming traffic continued to drive past us in the opposite direction. We were stopped at a blind curve and had no idea why our lane of traffic was stopped. Eventually, cars moved forward in a start-stop fashion one car length at a time. When we got around the blind curve, we saw that a very large tree had broken off at the trunk somewhere at the top of the hill and slid downhill across the road, impacting the guard rail, then sliding underneath the guard rail and stopped when it finally hit the river bed. The broken tree trunk was blocking the entire lane and crossed the center line of the road allowing vehicles to barely pass between the broken end of the tree trunk and the mountainside.

When we finally reached the put-in, we were greeted there by a thunder and lightning storm and learned that 5 of our original dozen decided not to paddle in the storm.

Connie Boogaard, CCC member from Michigan, graciously opened the awning on her van and allowed all of us to wait out the storm under shelter while we contemplated how long the road would be blocked by the tree and how we would get vehicles to the takeout with a possible road closure.

As the storm subsided, we got word from people arriving at the put-in that the tree was cleared and now Connie, who had decided it was too cold to paddle, offered to shuttle all of our drivers back from the takeout before she headed out.

At 1 pm, our remaining group of 6 kayaks and 1 canoe finally launched in the heavy fog. Poor visibility from the thick post-storm fog added an interesting element to the raft-dodging adventure.

After some ferrying practice with the 2 newbie boaters in our group, we decided to run the river backwards in the dense fog to add yet another element of interest to the trip.

When we stopped at Ferebee’s for lunch, we ran into 2 of the boaters from the morning meeting who had originally planned to put-in at Patton’s and our group of 7 became a group of 9.

We pulled out again at the cement beach to scout the falls with our newbies. We watched our canoeist, Steve Ingalls from Ohio, ran the falls first. Then Steve set safety in the eddy on river right for the rest of us kayakers.

Trip Stats:

🚣‍♀‍ Of our 9 CCC members from North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, there was only 1 swim in the cold Nanty water. The newbies had no swims. Of course, it was the trip leader who had a swim in the river-right eddy directly across from whirlpool eddy.

🚣‍♀‍ 7 of 9 boaters ran the falls. (Both of the newbies ran the falls and 1 boater offered to get out and video our falls runs from above.)

🚣‍♀‍ 5 of the 7 had clean lines at the falls. The 2 boaters who flipped in the bottom hole both rolled up in the washout. No swims at the falls. Yay!

🚣‍♀‍ Newbie Clara, who has only been paddling for 2 weeks, had about 4 or 5 combat rolls in her Dagger Redline, including one combat roll after flipping in the hole at the bottom of the falls and a final combat roll after flipping at the last drop at the slalom course before the take-out. Congrats on a great run, Clara!

The sun finally came out as we approached our takeout at NOC. And we brought everyone back. 9 out of 9.