April 2nd-4th, 2020
Getting done with a 96 hour week at the fire department, I was tired and discouraged. My wife is immunocompromised and has multiple co-morbidities for COVID-19, so I’m living in our basement. It’s nice, with a bed and bathroom and squat rack and X-Box. But I needed some time away to recharge. I’d planned my now-annual ritual spring trip down to the Big South Fork in Tennessee to packraft some rapids. I vacillated on whether or not to drive down there, but in the end justified it because I needed to get out.
I parked at the Burnt Mill Bridge parking area at 2pm on Thursday, with a few other cars in the parking lot. I passed about 5 people on the way to my put-in about 2 miles west of the parking lot. The section of river I would raft first was Clear Creek, which is mostly class II. I had carried in two packrafts for this trip: My Curiyak, and also my Yak. I inflated the Curiyak once I reached the river. I had been meaning to push my comfort level with the Curiyak further than the class I water I had previously paddled in it. The boat performed reasonably well. What holds it back the most in whitewater is it’s lack of a rockered bow and it’s generous interior width, which allowed my hips to slide from side to side, making me feel sloppy in the boat. I’m guessing both of these problems have been fixed with the Caribou. Also, the need to pull over and dump water every 10 or 20 minutes is a bummer. But it’s 2.5 pound weight advantage over my Yak buys a lot of forgiveness. I managed to paddle it well on the class II water, and gained some confidence as the miles went by. I portaged the lone Class III rapid, a big sticky hole in a constriction of river. I camped at the confluence of the Clear Fork and the New River, which come together to form the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. The Big South Fork was running at 5000 CFS down to 2100 CFS at Leatherwood Ford during this trip.
In the morning I inflated my Alpacka Classic (Yak), which has a cruiser deck and DIY Wilderness thigh straps. The first rapid, the Confluence Rapid, is a fun read and run Class II. The differences between a rockered bow, thigh strapped, decked boat, and the Curiyak were immediately apparent. The Classic handles so much better and allows me to relax and enjoy the Class II rapids much more than the Curiyak, which always feels like it’s about give me swimming lessons. I took the almost mandatory 3-hour side trip around the beautiful Honey Creek Loop carrying only camera gear.
Returning to my boat, I paddled all the way to the O&W bridge before taking out and hiking the rail grade east. The rail grade leaves the river and begins to follow Pine Creek, which looked boatable to me, as I looked through the trees from a hundred feet above. On a whim, I decided to float it.
Pine Creek
Leaving my pack under the bridge over Pine Creek, I inflated the Classic and headed down stream, not knowing what to expect. The boat handled so much better without any weight on the bow. I can’t wait to get a boat with a cargo fly so I can maneuver this well on rapids all the time. The creek started out mellow, and then got progressively more interesting as it lost elevation. Creeking is fun!
Paddling through some large boulders, I came around a corner. Something felt off. The rock under the river suddenly got very smooth and shallow, and the air felt a bit different. My spidey sense was tingling, and when I looked up, I realized there was a horizon line about 40 feet downstream. I was about to paddle over a waterfall that I didn’t even know existed a moment before. I paddled hard toward the right bank, but the creek was too shallow for my paddle to gain purchase in the water. As I approached the thunderous roar, I knew it would be too late to beach the boat before I went over. I instinctively slid out of the thigh straps and jumped out of the boat onto the shoreline about 2 feet shy of the drop. In the video my dismount looks really smooth, and it felt that way in real time as well. Had I noticed two seconds later, the outcome would have been different. I stood thankfully on the shore, watching my boat fall 10 – 15 feet down the rocky falls, and then go over a second set of falls to disappear out of sight. Laughing maniacally, I savored my good fortune. “That’s why we fucking scout.”
After recovering my boat, I carried it to the top of the lower falls (not the steep upper falls) and slid down the nice slick rock slide. Downstream from the falls, the creek started to drop faster. There were a series of class IV technical and manky drops, some with nasty sieves. I portaged what seemed like half of the remaining creek, enjoying the sections where I could paddle within my skill level. At the bottom, I deflated my boat, rolled it around my paddle, and hiked the rail grade back up to where I had left my pack.
That night I camped near the outlet of Pine Creek.
There are a series of disused trails and old roadways that connect in the woods on the east side of the river, leading back to the confluence. Some of these may be on private property, but there are no houses within sight. In the morning I followed these and put back in on the confluence for a second lap on the Big South Fork.
I flipped and swam several times, but had a lot of fun. I decided to surf a little wave, which I’ve never done before. I screwed it up and flipped, and immediately realized I had made a stupid mistake. I hadn’t thought about what was downstream of the wave I was surfing.
Losing my Boat
In defensive swimming position, I looked downstream for about 2 seconds. I gauged my speed downstream to be high enough that I would be swept into a powerful and continuous series of rapids (Double Drop, Washing Machine, and The Ell) if I tried a wet-re-entry into my boat. For the first time ever, I intentionally dropped my paddle. I swam hard left, to try to place myself in the lee of a small rock. It worked, and I climbed onto a large boulder in the center of the river just in time to watch my boat float off upside down without me. I had kept the wetsuit and PLB and phone and map in the divorce, but the boat took everything else. Looking at the sky, I could see the sun was unfortunately low in relation to the canyon rim. Cursing myself for making two stupid mistakes in one day, I planned how I would get myself through the rest of the rapid without a boat. I was able to position myself in the flow so that I wasn’t injured by the rapid, and let it carry me downstream in the defensive swimming position. I had to hike over the difficult terrain downstream, stopping to look for my boat in every eddy, hoping that the huge boulders on the far side of the river didn’t hide it from me. I hadn’t seen anyone on the river for the entire trip, and I was contemplating how to spend the night without any gear. Lots of jumping jacks and even more regret, I guess. I should have had a fire kit on my person.
Cresting a large boulder, I saw a 6 or 8 person raft, and one of the occupants was holding onto my boat and pack! I was so relieved. They were all rafting guides from Nantahala Outdoor Center on a personal trip, and they had been waiting with my boat for me to arrive for a while. I had been hiking downstream for over half an hour, so they had been worried. They kindly offered me beers and one of their paddles, since mine had swam off somewhere to belong to a better paddler. I didn’t have it marked. My judgement today hadn’t been great, so I had to turn down the beer. I did take the paddle though. I managed to make it through Oh Shit rapid (Class III) upright with the canoe style paddle, which really surprised me. Those things are way harder to paddle with than a kayak style paddle. With my tail between my legs, I decided to take out at the mouth of Honey Creek Canyon and return to my car, instead of finishing the planned route down to O&W to camp for the night. I hurried up the trail in the fading daylight. I did the last 8 or so miles by headlamp, listening to my phone beep and beep as it began to receive cell signal again. I welcomed the return to civilization to think about how I would do better next time. Consequence-free mistakes don’t happen too often in the backcountry, so I’m very fortunate and thankful for how this trip turned out.