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TIDE-HSV

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So why would you run it upside down? I'm assuming you can't see underwater because of the turbulence.


Man, you are a LOT braver than I.
'92 has the answer. There was, as 25k cfs, an unpredictable breaking wave about 1/3 of the way down. If it broke, you went over. It broke on me. At 25K, there was a huge cushion riding up the rock. (The pic you have is at a much lower water level.) It seemed to me that all, or almost all of the river was hitting that boulder, mounding up and going around the left. I figured I'd just tuck tight and follow the flow, wash up the boulder and then roll up. I'd never have dreamed there was even enough water to run the damn thing on the right. The rock hitting my helmet was bad news. If I had been out in the middle, where I thought I was, the rock would have been many feet below me. A rock meant I was near the right bank, which was correct. Swinging the paddle around is something we practice a lot of two different rapids - "Crack in the Rock" on Chatooga IV and "Road Block" on the upper second mile on the Little River Canyon, so that came as second nature. As I said, I had about a 3' chute. Somehow, I still feel cheated that I didn't get to ride up that huge cushion on the lava rock. However, it's not that easy to stay upright on one of those, and I didn't go back for a second run... ;)
 

TIDE-HSV

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So why would you run it upside down? I'm assuming you can't see underwater because of the turbulence.


Man, you are a LOT braver than I.
That's about normal summer level, about half the water I ran it at. The slot I ran is to the left of the photographer. If you know water, you can look over there and see that it's just not even there at that water level. That big wave which stopped both boaters stock still for a few seconds is what capsized me. At the level I ran it, it was much taller, pyramidal, and broke about every 10-12 seconds. Once underwater, it just conveyor belted me over to the right shore...
 

92tide

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'92 has the answer. There was, as 25k cfs, an unpredictable breaking wave about 1/3 of the way down. If it broke, you went over. It broke on me. At 25K, there was a huge cushion riding up the rock. (The pic you have is at a much lower water level.) It seemed to me that all, or almost all of the river was hitting that boulder, mounding up and going around the left. I figured I'd just tuck tight and follow the flow, wash up the boulder and then roll up. I'd never have dreamed there was even enough water to run the damn thing on the right. The rock hitting my helmet was bad news. If I had been out in the middle, where I thought I was, the rock would have been many feet below me. A rock meant I was near the right bank, which was correct. Swinging the paddle around is something we practice a lot of two different rapids - "Crack in the Rock" on Chatooga IV and "Road Block" on the upper second mile on the Little River Canyon, so that came as second nature. As I said, I had about a 3' chute. Somehow, I still feel cheated that I didn't get to ride up that huge cushion on the lava rock. However, it's not that easy to stay upright on one of those, and I didn't go back for a second run... ;)
crack on section iv was always fun. i bruised my knuckles a couple of times in there :). ran all of the routes there except left. did see a body stuck in there once (it was there for about a week before they were able to get it out). never got to run the upper section of lrc
 

TIDE-HSV

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crack on section iv was always fun. i bruised my knuckles a couple of times in there :). ran all of the routes there except left. did see a body stuck in there once (it was there for about a week before they were able to get it out). never got to run the upper section of lrc
I had the jolly experience of pulling a body out of there. The photographer was also a crack climber. He managed, after being belayed, to slip a clove hitch around her wrist and about 20 of us managed to pull her out, but it took max effort by all of us. They put her on a backboard and my daughter and another guide gave her CPR all the way across Tugaloo. Nobody could get them to stop. After that, I don't think I got another decent night's sleep that whole summer. Constant nightmares of Deb on IV.

I recovered the girl's paddle below. It was brand new and had her name and address on it. I found out later that she had been at the bridge, trying to get somebody to let her tag along. She was green and had no business on that section. She finally found some people who were almost as green as she to let her go. She came out of her boat above Crack and they got a rope to her, but she wouldn't turn loose of her brand-new boat - tried to hold onto both, which lined her up with left crack. She lost her grip on the shore line and followed her boat over the drop. The boat floated over the "mail-slot," but her body shot right down into it. As we were getting her body out, I noticed she had no muscle definition at all, totally flaccid. It was not a paddler's body...
 

TIDE-HSV

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crack on section iv was always fun. i bruised my knuckles a couple of times in there :). ran all of the routes there except left. did see a body stuck in there once (it was there for about a week before they were able to get it out). never got to run the upper section of lrc
I'm sure it's because it's late and I'm half asleep, but what are you referencing in bold. Oh! Little River Canyon? I've only run the upper one and two, although I've caught it at high water. I also ran Town Creek at 2500 cfs, IOW, Ocoee release. That was exciting. BTW, did you ever get to run Pillow Rock on the Gauley? That huge mass of water piling up on the rock reminds me of Lava, except it's on the left...
 

92tide

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I'm sure it's because it's late and I'm half asleep, but what are you referencing in bold. Oh! Little River Canyon? I've only run the upper one and two, although I've caught it at high water. I also ran Town Creek at 2500 cfs, IOW, Ocoee release. That was exciting. BTW, did you ever get to run Pillow Rock on the Gauley? That huge mass of water piling up on the rock reminds me of Lava, except it's on the left...
yeah, i got to run gauley several times, lots of fun and pillow was always crazy. always fun to watch the locals catch the room of doom and then splat the rock.

never got on town creek, although, that was my favorite creek level to listen to from the "gauge goddess" (the recording on the old tva 800 number for river levels). if town creek was up, that meant other stuff was running.

as to the left crack stuff, the guy was also a first timer down and also swam out of corkscrew and was trying to swim to river left and got pulled down in the crack. they had ropes attached to him and tied off to the bank and had to wait for the water to come down to get him out. we had a couple of gals with us that day who freaked out about the whole thing, so my mind wasn't super clear and i got severely pinned on the left bank across from decap rock in jawbone and completely folded a boat. had to get pulled out of the boat by my friends, then the boat washed out to dead man's pool. we had to stomp the boat flat and then i had to paddle that across the lake.

not sure who would take a person down five falls and not explain multiple times that in no case do you let your self go left in the pool above crack.
 

92tide

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I'm sure it's because it's late and I'm half asleep, but what are you referencing in bold. Oh! Little River Canyon? I've only run the upper one and two, although I've caught it at high water. I also ran Town Creek at 2500 cfs, IOW, Ocoee release. That was exciting. BTW, did you ever get to run Pillow Rock on the Gauley? That huge mass of water piling up on the rock reminds me of Lava, except it's on the left...
i can't quite remember the differentiation on lrc, its been so long, but I'm talking about the first 3-4 dig drops i think it was called something like suicide section, some nasty undercuts, etc. either run the falls or put in right below. my last time there, about half of our group ran it and i just met them at the end of the suicide section. couldn't quite get the cahones to run it that day (probably a good thing at that point in my boating career)

i think the next section was upper two. i would walk down the steep trail and put in right below the last drop of suicide (i think it was pinball) and run all the way down. i vaguely remember a rapid named roadblock, but don't remember many details of that run. i did it 3-4 times in the mid 90s and for whatever reason, never made it back over there after i moved back to atlanta in 97. if it was running, we were usually running other creeks
 
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TIDE-HSV

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yeah, i got to run gauley several times, lots of fun and pillow was always crazy. always fun to watch the locals catch the room of doom and then splat the rock.

never got on town creek, although, that was my favorite creek level to listen to from the "gauge goddess" (the recording on the old tva 800 number for river levels). if town creek was up, that meant other stuff was running.

as to the left crack stuff, the guy was also a first timer down and also swam out of corkscrew and was trying to swim to river left and got pulled down in the crack. they had ropes attached to him and tied off to the bank and had to wait for the water to come down to get him out. we had a couple of gals with us that day who freaked out about the whole thing, so my mind wasn't super clear and i got severely pinned on the left bank across from decap rock in jawbone and completely folded a boat. had to get pulled out of the boat by my friends, then the boat washed out to dead man's pool. we had to stomp the boat flat and then i had to paddle that across the lake.

not sure who would take a person down five falls and not explain multiple times that in no case do you let your self go left in the pool above crack.
I used to not give Jawbone the respect it deserved, until a guy did exactly what you did and drowned two days before I ran it. I capsized for the only time ever in that rapid. I used to just drop off into it on a low right brace and ride it out. I've mentioned that I have a quick roll, really more a pry, with no setup. They said that day, the boat never stopped movement at all, just went over and rolled right back up. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one to have to stomp a boat back out flat. Mine happened at Sweet's Fall on the Gauley. I hit wrong and rolled at the bottom. I started over to river left, when I noticed that all my friends were jumping up and down and pointing downstream. I noticed, for the first time ever, that there was no eddy where I was heading. Instead, the entire river was disappearing under a huge boulder with about a 3' crack in the middle. I had no chance to make the eddy. I determined I was not going through there in the boat. They said my vertical out of the boat was 2-3', probably exaggerated by the circumstances. Just before going under the rock, my last thoughts were of all the fatalities on that river at undercut rocks, and, if there were a strainer under there, I was dead and my body might never be recovered. It was black under there for a long, long time, it seemed. When I popped out downstream (obviously I survived), there was my boat, floating around in the pool below, with its tail sticking up in the air like a scorpion. I pulled it out and jumped up and down on it (Dancer). There was a crease behind the cockpit until the day I sold it to a friend. I explained to her that it had a weakness there, but she'd already backed off the Ocoee and was just doing the Nanny. Just occurred to me that it was the second boat I'd sold her. The first one was a Seda Climax, out of California and made out of Kevlar and epoxy. I got caught in a hole on the Ocoee at flood and eventually bailed. (Came out of that with a vicious sinus infection from the filthy water.) My boat was floating below, broken in two. I brought the halves home and rebuilt it. She bought it also, with my disclaimers. It looked good. I ordered the original gold dye for the top from Vic Seda, along with the epoxy and Kevlar fabric and white dye for the bottom. You had to look closely to see the original damage. I probably should have run a car body shop, where I could have made real money... :D
 

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