white water madness

me and alex have been talking about doing an overnight white-water canoe trip for a while. we finally bought a book and picked a section in western NC that should take about two and a half days to do. the section was two rivers. the first section was on the cane river that started in BFE, NC and this river dumps into the nolichucky, just before the nolichucky gets serious. so i started doing some homework and made some calls to the canoe shops around town and nobody seemed to know anything about the cane river and everyone thinks we are crazy for attempting the nolichucky on a two man canoe. sounds perfect!!!

hope we don't run into these guys.

alex came over to the house the night before we left and we test loaded the boat to make sure we could fit all of our gear in the boat along with the floatation bags. all of gear was not very much. we have figured out the bare minimum we can get away with on our previous trips so our load is light. the heaviest thing we had in the boat was the cooler full of beer. this is classic "wiley rogue" style for us. no water, just a water purifier. this will allow us to drink the river water instead of packing bottles of water. in this pic all of our gear is either in or next to the blue duffel bag.

we headed out friday night and drove through boone to get to our take out point. we stopped and had supper with one of my friends at mellow mushroom. mellow mushroom is one of my favorites, so if this were my last meal at least it would be a good one. we dropped off my car in some random field and rolled out in alex's car to the put in. we just hoped that my car will be there where i left it when we got to the take out point. once we arrived at the put in around midnight we couldn't find anywhere to sleep. no good camp spots and the place just had a weird vibe to it. we passed by some construction areas on the way to the put and figured this would be our only option for a sleep spot besides slingblades backyard. we pulled in behind some heavy machinery and rolled out our mats and sleeping bags and slept in the dirt. this would be the first rough night.

the next morning couldn't come soon enough. i was ready to get out of the construction zone and get on the river. we rolled up our stuff and got on the river by 8 am. the river was small with little current, not really what we were hoping for. what do you do in a situation like this? you crack a beer of course. we had a few beers before lunch to make the constant dragging and scraping more bearable. as always we made the best of the not-so-wild river by laughing our way down it. drinking beer and goofing off, this is what we do best.

that afternoon we made it to the nolichucky and quickly found a campspot. there were very few places to camp on this trip because of the houses that lined the edges of the river. we found a decent spot close to some train tracks and figured it was going to be fine because it was saturday. trains don't run on the weekend do they? YES, apparently they run a lot on the weekends on this track. all night long a super loud train would come by about every 30-45 minutes. this makes for long night number two.

the next morning we packed up and headed out. this should be our big day. today is the day with all of the white-water we were amped to do. i told alex "well man, it was nice knowing you". he replied with "i love you man". and off we go into wild nolichucky ahead. we had about an hour of flat water before we reached the nolichucky outfitters raft put in. the scenery was awesome and the weather couldn't be better. the day started out extremely well.

when we saw the nolichucky outfitters rafts and kayaks at the put it we knew it was on after that. the first rapid was probably the wildest one of any we did that day, and for sure, the wildest one we had ever attempted. the river had a super steep decline with all kinds of twists and turns around large rocks. we were the only canoe on the river this day.

just kidding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

believe it or not, we made it down the entire river with no swimming. we almost lost it once or twice but held it all together. some of the rapids had big drops, some of them just had fast pushy water with lots of tight turns. each was a different kind of challenge for our boat handling skills.

at the end of the white water run we were beat. our arms and backs were fried. we were glad to find a good campspot this night with no trains and no construction zone. we settled in and got a fire cracking, cooked some food, put down a few really warm beers, and then we hit the hay. we were both beat and the ground never felt so good against our backs.

the next morning we got finished around 11 am. which, was right on time i might add. my planning was dead on! i had to walk down the road for a few hundred yards to the field where i left my car two nights ago. to my surprise, it was still there. no busted glass, no flat tires, no racial slurs spray painted on the hood. it was all good. another successful adventure in the books. until next time keep it wiley!!