Editor's Note: A little Trip Report from Last Winter to get you ready for This Winter!

Road Trip South

After Christmas break this year I got laid off from my job (again) and the brutal cold of winter set in and all the rivers froze solid. This made for some long boring days alone at home thinking of all the paddling I did last year.  When I was laid off previously there was a total 99 days on the water, man was that great...boy does this suck. I tried to stay busy at home, No Fun! I even tried to get my fix snow boarding and even though there were epic conditions I just wanted to GO BOATING! I knew then what I needed was a Road Trip to the warmer waters of the south east where the winter is not as cruel as in West Virginia. My friend John had been after me to go do the Pigeon River dries in North Carolina with him...and now is the time! 

 I made a few calls and Bill, Pat, John and I made plans to leave on Friday afternoon after they got off work. We set our gps to Newport, NC and made the 6 hour journey to the cheapest hotel that we could find...49.99 split four ways with a free breakfast bar; man, we were living. We were greeted with mild temps in the morning of 31 degrees with a high of 45, not to shabby for a guy who had not seen anything above 32 in a while. We called our friends Sean from Knoxville and John from Georgia to meet up with us at 11:00 at the take out of the Dries. For those who don’t know I-40 suffered a huge landslide a few months back and is still not clear. So a shuttle that used to take 15 minutes, now takes 1 hour on snow covered forest service roads. It would have taken us longer if a nice young lady had not showed up with a chainsaw and cut an overhanging tree for us.

It had been 9 years since my first time there and due to a mix up (right John) I ran it at 2,000cfs ,by far the scariest thing I had ever done. When we finally arrived at the put in we were all pretty stoked to get on the river at a perfect 830cfs. The dries start out at a mild class 2-3 and build up to some of the coolest class 4-5 boulder ledge drops around. There are a bunch of 4 foot boofs into sticky ledge holes with the most notable rapids being 'No Where to Land' and 'Chinese Arithmetic'. 7.2 miles later we found ourselves at the take out with no swims and big smiles. After 1 hour up and 1 hour back of shuttle and another hour to Sean’s house in Knoxville we were very ready for some food. After some very good Mexican food along with a few cold beverages we retired the night watching the NFL playoffs and of course the weather channel.

It rained all night and the radar looked good for the Smokies so we got off to an early start to check out the West Prong which we found to be to low. Bill was searching on boater talk with his phone and saw someone had posted a visual of 1’3”on Overflow creek in Georgia. Visuals is what Boater Talk      should have more of and I really appreciate whoever posted it, because two and a half hours of driving and we were there. We found the gauge reading 1’2” which was another perfect level for our first time down this Southern Classic.

We thought we were good on time but somehow it was 3:00 pm by the time we got to the put in. I knew this was not a good idea to put on so late for our first time down, but I had wanted Overflow Creek for 10 years and...I was there.

So we put on and charged hard through anything where we could see the bottom, but it wasn’t long before we were getting out of our boats. We were looking at blind falls and Bill, who did not scout, asked me where to run it. I yelled to him down the pipe and he had a good line until his stern hit a flake and pitch polled him deep in the pool below. Let’s just say that the rest of us ran it a little to the right with good lines...sorry Bill. We pretty much scouted everything after that with good lines through 'Gravity' until we saw a big horizon line which we recognized from pictures as 'Singley’s Falls'. Singley’s is big, about 30’ I think, but paddled very well with big smiles from all. There was some good boogie water for a bit till we ran up on 'Marginal Monster', which after scouting I decided to walk...I did not see a great line. I lowered my boat down to look at the hole below the drop when I heard John yell that someone was running it. Who ever they were they had a great line down the left that we did not even see. Since everyone but me was still up top I watched all my buddy’s run that same line and style it...Oh well maybe next time. We all found some sort of a bad line through 'Pinball' which had some wood in it making the preferred line a bit tight. A mile or so of good boogie and we were at the take out bridge where we were blessed with one of the best sunsets ever. We finally did one of the most classic southern runs (after I waited for 10 years) and we finished it in a very respectable 2 hours and 15 minutes.

It was now 5:50 pm and we were still coming off the high of Overflow Creek when the reality of the major drive ahead set in. I called home to tell my wife that I had started home, but instead of NC or TN, I was in Georgia. She said "When will you be home, don‘t forget I will have to pick you up since you did not drive?". I thought about it for a bit and quietly said I should be there in 9 hours, I know this was not ideal to her but she is the best wife and I’m lucky to have her. So with things straightened out at home all we had to do was put the rubber to the road and knock out the miles. By the time we got home we were all very tired and ready to get out of the truck and into bed. When I finally lay my head down I wondered if the trip had been worth it, but when I closed my eyes and relived that warm Overflow sunset I put all doubts aside.

~Shawn McClung