The Big Group on Big Laurel Creek

By Trent Pearce

4/13/03

            Sunday morning found me frantically calling five different people at approximately five-minute intervals, trying to coordinate a massive paddling expedition among a group of completely disorganized folks. David wanted to paddle, he didn’t care where. Randy was the same way, so long as he didn’t have to drive. Jason, being in Kingsport, wanted to paddle something a bit closer to him, ruling out the Cumberland Plateau and Daddy’s Creek, our chosen destination from the day before. Brian had wanted to do Daddy’s Creek, but didn’t go to bed until 3 am and was now having second thoughts. Tim wanted to paddle the main Obed, of course, the only run he ever wants to do (thanks, Wes!). And myself, well, I just wanted to get everyone together for a good day of paddling, so long as it wasn’t on the damned dammed Ocoee. Randy, in a stroke of excellent judgement, informed me that Big Laurel Creek was probably good to go, a run that I have been picking his brain on for quite some time. Hmm… this would alleviate almost all of the conflicts (except for Tim, whose opinion sometimes just has to be tossed out =). So I called everyone back (again), and by 10:30 there were 5 boaters, 6 boats, and two shuttle rigs outside my apartment. We left promptly at 11, a nice early start for a semi-club paddling trip.

            Once on the road, Brian realized that he was driving on empty with the low-fuel light on. Then at the gas station, he realized that his wallet was in his apartment. It was my pleasure to buy his gas; having left my gas-guzzling POS in Knoxville. After a bit of hacky sack in the parking lot, we loaded up and headed for Hot Springs, NC, the take-out. One memorable moment during the drive involved staring at a massive ledge-hole on the parallel French Broad River, only to find Brian's car heading swiftly for the ditch. A bit of over-correction and some head-knocking saw us through. When we arrived at the NOC take-out on the French Broad, I realized that Jason, who was planning on meeting us there, would never EVER find the place. So we moped and dallied in the grass for about thirty minutes while I tried unsuccessfully to reach Jason on his cell phone. Then when we saw his van speed across the overpass above us, we decided that we should probably lay chase. Luckily we caught him at a train crossing, and after organizing all our gear and arranging the take-out vehicle, we were off.

            The drive to the put-in was a mere 10 minutes, absolutely outstanding compared to some of the runs in Tennessee that can take 2+ hours. When we arrived at the put-in on Big Laurel Creek, Randy made the comment that he had never seen so many people at this particular put-in before. Interesting. By the time we were geared up, we had picked up another member, whose name eludes me at the moment. We'll call him Charles. Charles was an "old-school" boater, so to speak; he wore funny-looking paddling gear, used an ash paddle, and paddled an enormous Dagger FreeFall. He and Randy had a discussion, and Charles said that he had paddled Wilson's Creek several days before, so Randy was convinced he would have no problems. (just for the record: I am a bit leery of people who come up to you in the parking lot and ask you to "take them down" a river, especially if they say that they "have a bomb-proof roll", aka a pool roll). Anyway, the seven of us put-on the river and headed down.

            The first rapid of note involved a narrow horizon line between two boulders, which turned out to be a steep 3-foot drop onto a pile of rocks. After everyone goofed their line for the most part (as Randy put it, "nothing like adrenaline to make easy rapids hard"), we stopped at a nice little ledge-hole for some extended surfing. Unfortunately, we also caught up to every other boater on the river at about the same moment. Not wanting any part of this disgusting, Ocoee-esque crowd, we all simply surfed until they were well out of sight. After a couple of unsuccessful cartwheel attempts by myself and Jason, Brian throwing one end, Randy front-surfing real fancy-like, Tim getting windowshaded, and David pulling a mystery move, and it was time to head on.

            The river continued to be Class II boogie water for a ways, interspersed with decent little surfing spots. The the gradient began to pick up, and we all ran a wide, chunky ledge and eddied out above an obvious horizon line. This was Stairstep Rapid, a turbulent Class III+ triple-drop into a couple of wave-holes with a nice overhanging rock at shoulder level on river right. I caught a micro eddy just above the first drop and hopped out to scout my line. First drop was about a foot, with a wide shallow hole at the bottom. Second drop was about 3 feet, with a rock splitting 2/3 of the current that needed to be run to the left. Third drop was maybe 4 feet, into the crashing wave-hole at the bottom. For the amount of gradient we had previously seen, this was quite an impressive change. Several folks ran it while I was getting back into my boat (and struggling with my bruised foot from the Little River earlier in the week). I decided to run the drop down the middle with a left-hand angle to avoid the shoulder-wrecker at the bottom. Punched the top hole, off the second drop leaning forward so as not to get back-endered, of the third drop and hard left through the following wave train to catch the eddy. No problems, although it was quite a rush. Tim made the comment "That was interesting". Quite so. After this the gradient picked up, and we cruised through some really quick Class III-ish water before coming to another obvious river-wide horizon line. Randy said we might want to scout this one, so we clambered all over each other to get out on the left bank to scout (in hindsight, the right bank would have been much better). This was Suddy Hole. A Class III if run correctly or a Class VI if not, this rapid consisted of a wide, shallow reef where the river dropped some 6-7 feet into a large pool. On the river right bank is the suddy hole, where about 3/5 of the river funnels and drops into a 5' deep, 3' wide narrow crevasse featuring an undercut ledge and a double hydraulic. Quite the eye-opener, a nasty little place that you might never come out of. Just to the left of this is the sweet line, a shallow slide over the rock strata terminating in a little launch pad. Then further to the left, the slide features some nice, razor-sharp rocks and lodged trees for the unwary. The sneak, all the way over on far river-left, had a giant tree chocked in it, so it was the main drop for everyone. Randy went first, and eddied out just below to pinpoint the narrow margin of water that you wanted to go down, which was quite hard to discern from the top. With maybe a foot for error on each side, everyone got back in their boats and bounced down, with no major carnage.

            The water picked up below Suddy Hole, and soon we were in solid Class III boogie water. Big waves, sticky holes, and no pools. There were plenty of eddies, though, and we eddy-hopped our way down to the top of the Narrows, a long, turbulent rapid which consisted of the river funneling down to about 15 feet wide and dropping through a steep, fast chute. This was heavy water, but everyone bobbled through with no major problems (except Jason, who decided it would be fun to flip right at the top and roll up in the middle). After some quick ferries across the super-fast plume of water at the bottom, we headed downstream.

            After the Narrows, Big Laurel Creek calmed down to about a mile of shoal-type rapids before going under the railroad bridge and dumping it's waters into the muddy French Broad, which was chugging by at about 7000 cfs. The French Broad, just for the record, is a wide, slow, boring, and disgustingly smelly river; I would have no desire to paddle it again save for the trips down some of it's tributaries. After what seemed like an eternity of wide, shallow waves and a strong headwind, we reached Kayak Ledge. A mid-channel island splits the river; half goes left over a series of shoals, and half goes right, pitching over a broken five-foot ledge, creating an enormous hole and lots of funny water below. We got out and scouted it, and everyone in the group opted to run the tounge straight through the hole save for myself, who thought it would be more fun to boof over the steeper part of the ledge on river-right (which at higher flows creates a nasty keeper hole). Everyone had clean lines except me, and we won't discuss that one. About a mile downstream of Kayak Ledge was Frank Bell's Rapid, which is the epitome of big-water rapids. The river narrows a bit and crashed over two irregular ledges, producing giant waves, a couple of massive holes, and enough squirelly water to keep a squirt-boater content for a lifetime. We all made it through fine except for Charles (old-skool guy), who decided to side-surf the mega-hole at the bottom in his FreeFall. After a bit of a trashing, he popped up next to his boat and began the long swim to the bank. After Frank Bell's, the French Broad petered out to a few measly surfing waves and one little ledge (Surprise Ledge) just above the takeout.

            Back at the van, Jason, Brian, and David ran shuttle while I got naked by the river. Having to use a little discretion because the place was swarming with people, I managed to get decent with the minimum amount of bare flesh. The guys returned with the vehicles, and we headed up to Hot Springs to the Paddler's Pub, which turned out to be the most disgusting, nasty, redneck-infested, piss-poor service pub that I have ever had the misfortune to dine at. I had a beer and nothing more. So if you're in that area of the world, and it's rained a bit, skip the Pub and check out Big Laurel Creek. You'll like it.