After rafting the Upper Hiwassee on Tuesday, Stephen and Dawn were already planning to raft the Tallulah the following Sunday. During our "jeep ride" up the mountain they had asked me if I wanted to come with them. I still needed to find a winter job, but was so thrilled at the thought of running the Tallulah I told them to go ahead and plan on me being there. If I found a job and couldn't make it down Saturday night, I would just have to wait for another opportunity next season.
When I returned home from the Hiwassee trip, I went out the next day and applied for a job at a local pizzeria called Nona Lisa. The owner, Katie, received me well and invited me to fill out an application, which I did. She called me in on Friday for an interview and asked me if I could start working that afternoon. I said, "Absolutely!" I told her that I had plans to go rafting that weekend, but if she wanted me to stay so I could train, I would certainly stay. (Responsibility would have to come before adventure if I was going to have a paycheck over the winter.) But Katie was very gracious to me and encouraged me to go ahead on my trip. I was so thankful! I had secured a job and was still going to be able to raft a new river - and a Class V at that!
When Saturday came, I eagerly packed up all my gear - barely dry as it was - and headed for Ocoee around Noon. I would spend the night in Stephen and Dawn's camper at the Outpost and they would meet me early Sunday morning to leave for the river. It would be a two and half hour drive.
During the drive to Ocoee, I spent time praying to the Lord and thanking him for his grace. I was astounded by all the ways in which he has blessed me - blessings I do not deserve. For none of us deserve the grace of God. Certainly not myself. For though we may all appear to be good people outwardly, the human heart is full of evil. I know this to be true of myself. If I do good, I do good with the intention of receiving praise. If I love, I love only to be loved in return. If I am charitable, I act so that I may receive something in return. All of our motives are selfish. This is our sin. We want what will benefit us, and we do not know how to love selflessly. Only God loves truly. God is love. Once we know the love of God, once he regenerates our hearts and makes us alive, only then can we love others and grow in virtue. This virtue is often tainted by vice, for we still fight and often succumb to sin, but the Lord does increase his children in holiness. For this I am thankful. And I am thankful for all the Lord's blessings in my life.
I arrived in Ocoee around 4 o'clock Eastern time and spent the evening visiting with Dave, the grumpy old man who lives on the hill (he's actually a sweetheart). After dark I returned to the camper and struggled to go to sleep for all my excitement.
The next morning, Dawn was the first one to arrive at the Outpost. She had just finished working a shift on the ambulance (she is an EMT and Stephen a paramedic - both work on ambulances). She hauled all of their rafting gear into the camper to sort through it, and while sorting she made fruit smoothies and we conversed about our religious beliefs.
When Stephen arrived he already had a Puma loaded up on top of the van. We grabbed all the gear, threw it in the back, and piled in. I made sure I had plenty of warm dry clothes for the ride home, and plenty of snacks for the ride there.
We turned right out the Outpost onto Highway 64 headed toward Murphy, North Carolina. This drive took us right alongside the Ocoee River and up through the lower Appalachian Mountains. It was a beautiful drive, winding through hollows and hills, passing farmland and small country towns.
As we neared the river, Dawn briefed me on paddling with Stephen in an R3 situation. She told me what to expect from his guide commands, and how to run certain rapids like Tanner's Boof. When we got to the parking area, there were at least a hundred other people all outfitted to go rafting and kayaking that day. You could feel an atmosphere of whitewater camaraderie where everyone was unloading gear from car tops and suiting up in their helmets and pfds. Stephen found a shuttle and took the van down to our take-out. Dawn and I organized the gear in a way we could carry it down the 596 steps we must walk (with the raft!) to get to the bottom of the gorge and put in.
When Stephen returned, he turtled the raft on his back so that Dawn and I only had to carry the dry boxes the hundred yards or so to the top of the stairs. When we reached them, we set the raft on the railing and he and I slid the thing all the way to the bottom. It was cumbersome, and we had worked up a good sweat by the time we got to the river. I was fascinated with the put-in system; there were stairs all the way down to the water for kayakers to slide off into the eddy, but rafters had to hook carabiners and ropes to their boats and lower them down to a slanted rock shelf from a wooden deck up above it.
(In this photo you can see the kayakers walking down to a platform on the left where they push off into the water. The terrace extending to the right is where rafters lower their boats over the railing and down the rock shelf. Someone must crawl out on the shelf to catch the boat and lower it the rest of the way into the water. That was my job when we did this. Also, what this photo doesn't show is the roaring 100 ft waterfall just to the right outside the scope of this picture - Hurricane Falls. Though it's not runnable, the sight of it and the noise certainly adds a level of intensity.)
The very first rapid on the Tallulah hits you right out of the gate, with no warm-up. It's called Last Step. It consists of a couple of ledges you drop with a cross current at the bottom that shoots your boat to the left next to a rock wall. As we put on, I watched an acquaintance of mine run the rapid whom I knew from the Ocoee. When she and her friend hit the cross current, their boat turned nearly straight up on its side and she fell out. That was comforting.
We took our turn to ferry across stream and set up for the ledges. We ran them and hit the cross current clean, but I felt the force of the current as it grabbed our boat. Dawn had grabbed my arm just to be safe, since I was on the "falling out side".
The next rapid comes immediately after Last Step, and it is Tanner's Boof. Stephen eddied out and told us how we needed to run it. He said it was actually an "auto boof", because a rock protruding from the pour-over helped launch you out. We ran the boof and hit the water clean, immediately back-paddling to avoid running into a large boulder, and then slid through a narrow rock passage. It was pretty cool.
Up next was the rapid of fame on the Tallulah River - Oceana. Class V.
Above this rapid we pulled over on river left and got out of the boat to scout it. We watched several kayakers and a few rafts run the massive slide. I watched one kayaker run the middle line and boof off the rock ledge seen here midway down the rapid just to the left of that explosion of water. His whole boat left the ledge and he got some incredible air before he landed in the green water of the eddy on river right. I was so stoked. After Stephen took several photos, I cheered, "Let's do this!" and we made our way back to the boat.
As we entered the rapid, Stephen warned us that it was imperative we hold our 10 o'clock angle. He said once we launched over the rooster tail at the top there was no going back, no way to stop your speed, and no way to change your angle. If you didn't have the right angle, you chanced smashing into the protruding square shelf that creates the huge mass of water in the middle of the line. Some friends of mine had done just that the week before and when they hit the rock it blew the middle thwart out of their boat. The plan was to run just left of it, though there's no way to avoid crashing into the spray of water (which that was fine. It wouldn't be fun if you didn't experience the water monster in the middle of the rapid. We just didn't want to hit the rock monster).
We launched over the rooster tail and I was impressed at how quickly we gained speed. I felt like I might fall out of the raft and leaned over toward Dawn to counter the pull of gravity. When we smashed into that water monster, I actually thought we hit the rock. I learned afterward that we didn't. That spray of water had so much force, and you hit it with so much speed, it's like being slapped in the face with a wet mop (as Stephen so aptly described it later). But the rapid isn't over yet. After you hit the water monster the line takes you right into a meaty hole at the bottom of the slide. Our boat submerged in this hole and I grabbed the strap on my opposite side in an effort to stay in. We had run it clean, and I screamed with excitement when it was over. I had never done anything so fun in my life. That rapid was awesome. I wanted to carry our boat up the rock shelf on river left and run it again, but I knew that would be a huge hassle for three people, so I didn't suggest it. If my adrenaline hadn't been pumping thus far, it was certainly pumping now.
I'm fairly sure that the next rapid was called the Gauntlet, though I only remember big waves and holes, but no defining features. I certainly remember the following rapid, which is called Bridal Veil.
Like we did above Oceana, we parked our boat above Bridal Veil and scouted the rapid. Stephen pointed out a rooster tail we wanted to line up on and how at the bottom of the slide there was a wave we wanted to hit that would launch us slightly upward and into the eddy on river left. To the right of that launch, the rapid formed a huge hydraulic hole we didn't want to get caught in. We ran the rapid clean, and that little launch at the bottom was a lot of fun. A pretty cool rapid all around, but not nearly as intense as Oceana.
When we pulled into the eddy, some kayakers paddled over to us from river right. Their expressions were worrisome, and they asked us if we had room for another person in our boat. One of their friends was kayaking and swam the Gauntlet and experienced foot entrapment. In an effort to save herself, she had to pull her ankle out the rock trap in such a way that she sprained it pretty badly. She couldn't walk and couldn't put pressure on it by paddling anymore. We ferried across the pool below Bridal Veil and parked on the bank. Dawn administered what first aid she could while Stephen arranged the boat to accommodate another person. We were able to have her sit in the front compartment and Dawn and I moved to the middle thwarts to paddle. She was extremely grateful and offered us homemade cookies if she ever saw us again.
With our new companion riding along, we ferried back across the river to the far river left bank and entered Zoom Flume.
After Zoom Flume came Amphitheater, but past that I don't remember any other names of rapids. We dropped ledges, punches holes, and climbed waves. I had more fun rafting the Tallulah than I had ever had in all my whitewater adventures. In describing it to Stephen and Dawn, I told them I almost felt like it was disloyal to the Ocoee to love another river more. But in hindsight, it's not a matter is disloyalty. It more like leaving your home to experience a new adventure and being overwhelmed with the beauty of a new place. When you go home, it will always be peaceful and refreshing, simply because its home. But you will always long to go new places.
When we reached the lake, we paid a man with a motor boat to tote us across to the takeout. We said goodbye to our companion and wished her well and we carried our gear back to the car. After visiting with some kayakers and having a glass of wine, we loaded up and drove to the top. We parked where we began and spent a few hours hiking around the rim of the gorge and getting some photos. We shared some good conversation about the Lord, as Stephen is very inquisitive about my faith and enjoys philosophical discussions. We hiked well after dark and finally headed back to Ocoee around 7 o'clock, stopping for Hibachi on the way back. It had been a good day, with great memories made. Stephen was planning to come back the next weekend to kayak the Tallulah one last time before they shut up the dam for the winter. He invited me to come with him, but I declined on the grounds that I was eager to start looking for a church. I had now run the Tallulah. I needed to start settling into a routine at home as I began my new job. I figured I would be done with whitewater now for the winter. But though I did not return to East Tennessee the next week or the following, I was not done with whitewater just yet. There was yet another river that would soon run due to substantial rainfall in the East, and little did I know I would be out there once again, only this time not in a raft.
Stephen's Go Pro video footage of our Tallulah run:
Tallulah River - Go Pro Footage
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