About Canoeing

I never got into kayaking.  I tried it in the seventies but never took the time to learn to roll.  Instead I made a few attempts at running the New River without a roll and swam a lot.

In 1980, when we opened Carolina Wilderness Adventures, I had the opportunity to canoe.  We had a canoe livery for Section 10 of the French Broad downstream of Hot Springs .  I could turn the old Blue Hole Canoes around backwards, sit facing the opposite way on the bow seat and make it a solo canoe.  It was a big canoe for solo and the position wasn’t true for a solo boat as this position was pretty far back of center.

I got pretty good at canoeing, but with the funky positioning in the Blue Hole when I took on a lot of water all the water would move to the back of the canoe (because that was where the weight was, me).  By the end of a real big rapid, I would be balancing this missile that was bobbing straight up and down in the water.  Double Trouble on the Ocoee, the Keeney’s on the New and Sweet’s Falls on the Gauley were the classic runs I remember this happening in.  Yes, I did the Upper Gauley in the canoe.  The first time I only swam in Iron Ring.

I also got into tandem canoeing these Blue Holes.  One of the first partners I had was Jane Duncan and we had some good runs on the French Broad .  After not tandem canoeing any for about a decade, I got back into it a little bit with Shari Coressel in the late nineties.  We did the French Broad , Lower Yough and the New River .  We swam three times on the New, but also had some great runs and had a blast doing it.

I also remember a great run on the Ocoee with Brad Howarth.  Normally I would paddle stern, just because I was bigger than my partner.  We would take on less water that way.  The Ocoee was a real challenge and I loved it because I got to paddle bow, as Brad and I were of similar weight.

My best tandem partner was Neil Kahn.  We were really good together.  I know we did the New once and smoothed it and we would do an annual run for several years on the Lower Gauley and would smooth that.  We even did the Upper Gauley once.

We did the Upper Gauley in August of 1983 at low flow, around 1100 cfs.  Now, I’m not one for glory, like of first descents and such.  In my many firsts, I usually didn’t even know it, or if I did it wasn’t usually to be the first, we were just doing it because we were there and it was the thing to do.  I’m also a statistic freak, so I like to set the record straight. American Whitewater had a article about the Gauley in its newsletter during a Gauley season in the early 2000’s.  It mentioned that so-and-so and so-and-so were the first to tandem canoe the Upper Gauley in 1985.  I never contacted anyone about that, but to set the record straight here, Neil and I would have been the first to tandem canoe the Upper Gauley in 1983.  Reading that article was the first time I learned about our run being the first to do it.

Another story of Neil and me tandem canoeing was in Costa Rica .  We were able to get hold of a canoe and tandem canoe a multi-day trip on the Chirripo-General.  While paddling an easy stretch, Neil and I looked to our left and saw a huge boa constrictor in the sugar cane.  It was by far the biggest snake I had ever seen.  We were glad to be out in the water and the snake in the cane.  A few minutes later, right above a Class II rapid, an animal’s head just barely popped out of the water’s surface right next to us.  Only getting a glimpse of it and having just seen the boa, we thought it might be a swimming boa.  As we went into the rapid it again barely popped its head out right next to us.  By this time Neil and I are freaking out thinking there is a boa constrictor swimming next to us in the rapid.  Even though we were really good canoeists and it was highly unlikely that we would swim a Class II, we were yelling at each other “don’t swim, don’t swim”.

We didn’t swim and when we made it through the rapid the animal fully surfaced.  It was a cute little otter that Neil and I were so panicked about.

I still canoe some and love it, but it’s usually limited to one or two runs a year on either the French Broad or Pigeon Rivers .