Trip #18, Paddling Asheville, June 2010

I had a great time on a fairly nearby paddle today with Andy and Claire. It was a stretch of the Broad River in Rutherford County - trip #18 in Betsy Mayer's Paddling Asheville and Southern Appalachia. One of my favorite local trips so far is close to her trip #13. I'm definitely going to start working more trips from this book.

The put-in and take-out was somewhat steep. The put-in had a steeper incline - we used rope to lower our boats down. No pictures of my own since I dunked & ruined our camera at the May boat demo session with Great Outdoor Provision Company. Andy's will be linked here. The river had a steady, manageable current the whole 11 mile trip. It took about 5 hours with a lunch break and a tree hacking break. Claire and I got the break on the latter. Andy used his handy-dandy handsaw to cut some limbs to clear a way through a tree that spanned the river at one point. (We did use my tow rope to pull some of those limbs free. The next paddlers can thank Andy.) This, and an easy pull around, were the only serious blockages. We were easily able to navigate around other trees and rocks we encountered.

The water was clear enough to see some submerged stuff. And clear enough to see color differentials when the water went deep. This is an old theme for me - I'm just fascinated by the way the river bottoms change: sand, pebbles, big rocks; ledges of sand on an inside of a bend with deep drop-offs to the outside. The trees that were down gave me the impression that big water would roll down dragging behemoths from the river banks. That's probably not the case, but it was a compelling image in my mind.

We passed a pair of black cows, a pretty brown horse, a small dark heron, a great blue heron, several kingfishers, miscellaneous small brown things, a very big owl (that we didn't get close enough too), and a half-dozen turkey vultures by the water. Not a whole lot of wildlife, but the trip was very, very enjoyable.

I also got to put into practice techniques picked up from the Brent Reitz Forward Stroke Clinic dvd. This was recommended by a couple of guys I follow on Twitter, Bryan Hansel and David Johnston. Even with low-angle paddling, the "chicken wing" approach, of keeping the elbow up, even with the hand & shoulder, made a HUGE difference in how the torso rotation, and power in the stroke, felt. Brief description here.