Lost off Huffman Bridge

With no chatter of an ad hoc group paddle, we decided to check out another section of the Upper Catawba River Valley. The Huffman Bridge Access, near Valdese NC, is #16 on the river trail map. It's another nice paved parking lot and I learned that "canoe access" means shore access, no ramps. The shore wasn't mud, or sand, but pebbles. Here's a river view downstream from the put-in. And another, just upstream from the bridge, of Kathleen entering the shallow cove ...


Now for the embarrassing part: After checking out this little cove, which I remembered seeing on Google Maps satellite images, we headed further up the river. In no time, I became directionally challenged. I could see three different choices and nothing that indicated which was the river. We choose the rightmost option and started off. I knew there were several feeder creeks coming into the Catawba - including the Johns River, which we paddled last week. After a period of time, I lost confidence in the choice and we turned back. As we went up each of the other two options, we hit dead ends in no time. Sheesh! But they were attractive dead ends; one had a wood duck box in the water and the other was clearly a cove. Lesson learned = Always bring a map in the boat! (After getting back home, these detours were obvious on Google Maps.)

In any case, we turned around and headed back up the river. A partial justification for my confusion - the Catawba here is completely impounded. In other words, it's backed up and has no noticeable current. It can't be that deep either. Here I am holding on to a tree stuck in the middle of the river ...


The southern side of the river is, for the most part, more attractive since it's formed by hills along most of our paddle. The northern side tends to flatter sections. We didn't see a whole lot of wildlife, but what we saw was marvelous. A good sized eagle, a half dozen wild turkeys (a rafter of turkeys?) scurrying up a steep hill, and a huge owl. We'd never seen wild turkeys before. And Kathleen thought it was an owl, but couldn't tell what kind. I only saw something with a 3-4 foot wingspan flying back in the woods very quietly. In the non-animal kingdom, there was this really striking mushrooms or lichens on a floating branch ...


As we kept going up river, we passed a couple feeders on the north side, one of which was the Johns River. But we didn't make it all the way up to the next bridge where US18/64, Lenoir Road, crosses over. It was getting late for our turnaround point, and gunfire from a nearby shooting range was a bit unnerving. Between the hills and some really tall, completely open, hangars for a municipal plant, the gunshots produced some really odd echoes. Not distant echoing but rapid retorts almost like an automatic.

All in all, about 3.5 hours on the water.

Mystery Waterfall at Moss Lake

Being the last day of a February warming trend in the Carolinas, I stopped working early and went for a short paddle. Who knew I would encounter .... (bring up opening chords to Beethoven's 5th Symphony) ... the Mystery Waterfall at Moss Lake!!!

I donkey my Necky down to our access ramp and put in mid-late afternoon. Not much time, so not much planned. I head across the calm water for coves opposite us on this big open area. On my way through one, I notice a spider walking on water. I'm thinking this guy got itself in a pickle. How can he grab anything to eat if his legs are keeping him on instead of in the water? I remembered to bring the camera so I snapped some but, being a rather small spider, none came out very well. I keep puttering along and I realize that this cove ends, not in a dredged out section with houses and docks all around, but an actual natural area. There are grasses with frogs croaking to each other. They sounded like thick leather being twisted: uuurrrr-uh, uuurrrr-uh, uuurrrr-uh. Quite fun. From my running days, I know we have scads of smaller frogs that peep like crazy in the early hours of cool spring days. Here, I'm snuggled into the grasses looking back out the cove ...


Going further in, I start hearing running water over the frogs. The way is covered over by an evergreen hanging down to the water. Ah-ha! I know I've got a secret spot because Kathleen, being afraid of snakes in trees, wouldn't follow me through here ...


After I clear the evergreen (a laurel of some kind?), I go a little farther and catch sight of a magnificent waterfall! ...


And here's a closer look ...


Okay, well, maybe not so magnificent. But I was amazed to see anything like this at all on our lake. The little valley here must extend back aways and cover enough surface area to have a continually running creek. I'll have to poke around maps to confirm. In any case, I'm not putting any location here because I want to kick off my career as a tour guide and charge $5 apiece for a trip into this unexpected little delight in our neighborhood.

As I keep puttering around the perimeter, I come across a house I'd never noticed before. It sure likes like the seminary I spent a year doing pre-theology before deciding to get married instead - except it wasn't on a lake. (For non-Catholic readers, pre-theology for us is, now, two years of philosophy.)


On my return back, I'm a little surprised to see one of our many Great Blue Heron up on the roof of someone's dock. With terns flying above, I think it's a nice picture to round out the day ...

Clear Water in the Johns River

I wanted to investigate part of the Upper Catawba River Trail. After consultation with Rick from Outdoor Supply Co, inspecting the trail map, and checking trips in "Paddling Asheville," I settled on the Johns River. We intended to put in at US 64/18 (between Morganton and Chesterfield NC) and see how far upstream we could go. If it turned out to be too short, we could keep going downstream past the put-in and head to the Catawba River proper.

We got to the access point (#15 on the wonderful river trail map) close to noon. Our only company were a couple of power boaters - one pulling out, the other putting in. Here's a view of the access point and the bridge.



Almost as soon as we cleared the shadow of the bridge, we realized there was something different here. The water was crystal clear! We could see the bottom even when the river seemed quite deep. I haven't been in much of any water yet that wasn't muddy. This really changed my perspective on these rivers. I barely noticed anything about the scenery - I spent the whole time looking down! Probably a good thing. The Johns here is in a fairly wide valley. With the water level a good 6 ft below the ground level, we didn't see much except the trees that bordered the river.

The river bottom demonstrated a fascinating variety. When sedentary, either shallow or deep, there were always ripples in contour and even in color: sand, brown, and orange sometimes with valleys containing leaves. There were tons of trees and branches to be seen on the bottom. When the current was strong, coarse-grained sand, pebbles, and stones. Interestingly enough, I think it was displaying a morphology described in Luna Leopold's "A View of the River" where the depth undulated fairly regularly - deep pools evident quite regularly along the length. There were a number of swinging ropes suspended from trees over the river - clearly favorite spots for kids to come play.

Additional variety was provided by the rocks along the way. Compared to other paddles so far, the rocks here aren't much to look at above the water. But HOLY FREAKIN' COW, under water was a completely different story! The river went WAY DEEP by the rocks. Duhh, the sand/dirt underneath erodes out much faster than the rock. With the really clear water, we could see the deep ledges created and the striations in the rocks themselves. So, even when there was barely any rock above the surface, there was plenty below. Stunning.

The water clarity also allowed us to see the shear quantity of trees, branches, snags, etc that were down there. More than you would guess from seeing at the surface. The snags were fascinating - most were natural but many were not. The spookiest thing was seeing the trees reaching up from the bottom, like drowned things, trying to drag us down to join them.

We didn't make it all the way up to the Corpening Bridge. If I'm spotting the big aluminum barn on Google Maps properly, I think we made it about three quarters of the way. About 3 miles as the crow flies before the current got too strong and rocks blocked us here:



As it was, we were 3 hours out with a couple munchie breaks. Heading upstream first was great because we could really see what was in the water. It only took us 1 hour & 20 mintues to get back. I think we would have missed a lot if we'd been paddling with the current the whole time. I wish I had better pictures. I couldn't take any of the really nifty stuff in the water.



We had a really nice time and a really positive experience in this area. It's only about an hour or so away from us. We will definitely be up this way again soon.

P.S. Should I have put a "science geek" warning at the beginning of the post? Oh, well, too late now.

Warm Winter Weekend on the Way

After several nights of temps in the 20's, we are supposed to get into the 60's on Saturday and Sunday. We're unable to paddle on Saturday, but thinking about the Upper Catawba River somewhere for Sunday. It's mostly chains of big lakes managed by Duke Energy, but there are some short free flowing sections too. Hoping to find someone who can make recommendations to avoid rapids beyond our skill level. Otherwise, it's pouring over old trip reports on various web sites.

Dutchman's Creek

Inspired by Mike S's solo venture, the Cruisers had an adhoc paddle up Dutchman's Creek, off the Catawba River at Mt Holly, on Feb 1. We made it there before the push off time and joined a dozen other folks. Ray, Dorothy, and Andy were present again. It was a short trip.

The creek winds through mostly residential areas. Traffic noise was never far away. It did have some nifty (unpainted) rocks. It also had low block wall spanning the creek but with a 8 foot wide break in it. The water level was high enough to provide decent but not heavy current to paddle against. With a head of steam, it wasn't hard to navigate. But, without it, it took some harder paddling to make it through. Silly me - I neglected to take a picture. Further up, there were rocks that would have required getting out and walking through. There was one narrower gap where several guys tried to paddle. Ray got far enough through the gap to get into a bind when he got off his line. The current pushes your bow perpendicular and can wedge you in a narrow gap. I missed the action but watched a few others give it a try. Kathleen had a nice time talking to Ginny. Ginny is currently working at Presby-Matthews where Kathleen did several on-call stints in CT and also worked their mobile MRI unit. The trip was short enough that it was hard to have long conversations with everyone. I talked a bit with Kary and Eddie who are also new kayakers having bought their boats last summer.


Eddie contemplating his line before trying the gap in the rocks:

Andy, Kathleen, and a road over the creek:

Ginny:

Bridges (2 RR and 1 road) over the Catawba River below the creek: