09.02.08
The Chilly Nanty and Crossin’ creeks on mountain driveways… (h2 part 2)
So we ended up leaving for the trip on thursday night and made some good time. We were lucky enough to have an offer for an overnight stop in Kentucky so at 2am we rolled into Pat’s in-laws and passed out for 4 hours. After a groggy wake up call, we drove on for a few more hours. We got to North Carolina and the Nantahala river – our destination for the day, only an hour or so after we told our friends we’d be there (sorry Larrys!).
After all that driving we were definitely ready to get moving and get on the river. We were about to be woken up pretty quickly – the Nantahala is dam released and the water comes from the bottom of the dam so its COLD (about 45 degrees). Our group enjoyed a nice easy paddle, enjoying the views and playing wherever possible while rolling as little as possible due to the chilly water. For many of us this was the first real river we’d paddled in long time, and for Bob this was the first non beginner trip besides his visits to East Race, so it was a great warm up for most of the group.
The hardest rapid (Nantahala Falls) was at the very end and it provided some good opportunities to practice our rolls. Some of us (ok me – see picture to see where NOT to go haha) missed the line and I decided this was a great time to practice hitting lines so i ran it 2 more times, I finally hit the line i wanted on the last run. That rapid ended the run so we enjoyed a wonderful meal at the NOC restaurant River’s End (try the sherpa meals they are great!) which has a wonderful view of the river.
We said goodbye to Larry S and headed off to find the cabin we’d be staying in the next 3 nights just outside Sylva, NC. We wind our way up a mountain road following the directions we were given to find our cabin. I was a little worried about the creek crossing, but that ended up being the easy part about getting to the cabin. I was in the lead (aka guinea pig) and it didn’t bode well when my first attempt at getting up the mountain road failed miserably. We reread the instructions and made sure we got a good run at the hill (imagine at least 8% grade with all pea gravel and a drop on one side with a creek just a foot off the road). Once again my trusty prius proved it always thinks it knows best. My problem was that my car could tell i was losing traction and would cut my engine power (to presumably gain traction again) but that meant we lost all momentum and ability to get up the mountain driveway. After many failed attempts (and me completely losing it) we finally decided to let Larry B and Pat attempt to get up the drive. Their vehicles apparently don’t think they know best and allowed them to make it up the hill. We ended up loading up larry’s element to get all of our stuff to the cabin. I admittedly broke down during this whole process and was mad at my car and the stupid driveway so it took me a while to calm down but eventually all was well… we all were so tired that we all went to bed fairly quickly.
The first picture is looking down at my prius from the cabin driveway and the second is of the cabin itself.
it was a great workout walking up and down each day! You can also see the creek we had to drive over in the background.
The rest of the pics are of the wonderful waterfall that was basically in our front yard.
