Well, we're finally starting to get some spring rain in the North Carolina mountains, after a two month shortage in good water. Two inches of rain fell in the Jocassee gorges, and Spencer, Andrew Holcombe, and myself decided to paddle the Horsepasture River. For those who haven't done any paddling in the Jocassee gorges, I would describe a day out there with one word: a MISSION. Access to these creeks as they drop off of the face of the earth is not easy at all, and most require a burly hike out(like four miles burly) with a creekboat on your shoulder.
Go Team.
I'd always heard about the Horsepasture being an amazing river, but we had a bit of a problem on our hands with paddling it: none of us had ever done it, and the take out trail is right above a 700 foot waterfall, Windy Falls. I felt confident and adventurous to try it, but that waned a bit as I heard Spencer talking on the phone to a friend, Riley Cathcart. "Ok, so you take out in a crack on river left directly above the first drop of Windy. Is it easy to recognize?" I pictured the three of us boat scouting the river, and suddenly finding ourselves walled into a last chance eddy above the huge waterfall, with no way out or back; one of every extreme paddler's nightmares. Finally Andrew came up with the brilliant idea of Riley leaving something visible on the side of the river to indicate the takeout. "A cheesit box??" Spencer blurted into the phone. "Alright man we'll look for it, thanks for the help." He turns to Andrew and me and says that basically our only chance of finding the trail and getting out before dark lies on a snack box.
Getting ready to go get lost in the woods.
We put on the river at a low but good level of two inches on the gauge, and after a quick, scenic portage around the 150 foot Rainbow Falls, we were into the goods. The gorges of this region are unique when it comes to their beautiful, bedrock granite rapids, and the horsepasture is no exception. This is four miles of the most quality whitewater that I have ever run, with no mandatory portages.
Spence at Stairsteps- really cool rapid!
The Crux in its element.
Really cool flake boof at the top of a burly rapid.
After about three hours of boofing, scrambling for eddies, and scouting blind drops, we came to what we thought was the last rapid of the run. You may remember this rapid from the "You Got Served" section in LVM where Nate Elliot pitons his brains out at the bottom of a big slide, and then gets thoroughly worked in a walled-in keeper hole. This rapid is much more mellow at lower water, but still a highlight of the run. It was close enough to Riley's description of the last rapid, so we began our search for the takeout trail.
Spencer and Andrew immediately sprinted into the woods downstream looking for the trail, and I followed as best I could, but I'm a bit of a clutz on land, and I was soon lost in a rhododendron jungle yelling into the forest to see where they had gone. After ten minutes of stumbling around and basically getting nowhere, I figured they had turned around and gone back, so I trudged back to the boats, and finding noone there, went to sleep on a sunny rock. I woke up an HOUR LATER to Spencer and Andrew climbing out of the woods with bewildered looks on their faces. They had hiked about 3/4 of a mile downstream and a couple hundred metres upstream and they hadn't found anything resembling a trail. It was 4:30 and we still had a two hour hike to go once we found the right trail. The prospect of hiking straight up 800 feet or more over the ridge didn't really appeal to any of us, so we made the decision to blast downstream through the drops that the boys had already scouted, and hope for Riley's Cheesit box to show up soon after where they turned around. The slides after Nate's rapid were absolutely awesome, alot like a non-stressful version of the boogie drops on the Toxaway. We cruised down the section quickly, and soon noticed that the river left wall was building into a granite gorge, and if we had made a bad decision, backing out had just become much more difficult. We did a quick scout of a rapid very similar to Zwicks on the Green, and after boofing off of the drop, I saw Andrew on river left holding the red Cheesit box in the air heroically!! Sweet!! From there, we had to climb up a crack in the cliff wall, and through several more crucial turns in the trail, all marked by other parts of our sacred Cheesit box wrapped around trees. After two hours of brutal hiking, 15 minutes before the park was to be closed, we found ourselves back at the car.
Thanks to Riley, Brad Kee, Pat and Scott for taking care of us with the markers, we probably would have ended up spending the night if it weren't for you guys! The moral of this story-- go with someone who knows the run.
Full Horsepasture Gallery
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