Linville Lessons
by Tom McEwan
“like a child who, being in a constant condition of wonder, is surprised by nothing.” --George McDonald
WICK’S IDEA was that white water sport could be elevated in
likeness to classic alpine exploration, a la Shipman and Messner,
engendering sagas of
journeys to the world’s most fabulous regions. I, however, was enthused simply to push the
limits of what could be paddled, and to explore the uses of these most highly
maneuverable, shoulder-carried water craft.
In the late sixties, a popular guidebook called Appalachian White Water, by Walter Burmeister, was in wide circulation. Within the five hundred or so pages an abundance of unknown rivers materialized in great detail for naïve readers. Expansive descriptions included details of rhododendron covered valleys, profoundly carved canyon walls, and serpentine and steeply dropping waters. Our free hours between school studies were spent poring over these descriptions and imagining what the rivers would be like to boat. So willing were we, that we hardly noticed the repetitiousness of the descriptions, written no doubt from the purview only of an arm-chair and a stack of topo maps. The Linville Gorge, with a drop of nearly 300 ft./mi., soon became central in our dreams of extreme and forbidding rivers. It only took the next fall storm to send us with our 13 ft. fiberglass, self-constructed slalom boats on the drive to the Linville.
We woke up to a bright morning - after a late night of driving, and sleeping a few hours in the front seat of Wick’s car - looking out over the parking lot near a beautiful, two step falls. Soon we were sliding our boats down the steep bank at the foot of the falls. The river had barely sufficient water to paddle -- perhaps 150-200 cfs. At first the going was relatively easy, and we covered some miles. Then rocks along the shore started to rise and close in, and water began to fall away in earnest.
From that point we scouted nearly every rapid, agonizing somewhat over the consequences of slamming our boats into each new pile of rocks. What were the real limits to this kind of paddling, we wondered, where river was more rock than water? Each rapid required precision. Carefully we kept a count of rapids carried, which afterwards was to give us some measure of success. Sometimes I ran first, sometimes Wick. The pace was very slow.
Around 2 PM we came to a fairly vertical 15’ falls landing in a jumble of barely submerged rocks. We scouted the landing and thought we could identify a weakness in the barrier of rocks at the bottom, where the water seemed to flow through. Wick went first, and with his high C-1 bow slid smoothly through, hardly touching anything. Encouraged by this, I lined up in my high volume slalom kayak and carefully dropped over. “Crunch!” I was slammed to a complete stop. My bow was caught under a rock, and my back deck started to sink under the weight of water flowing over the falls. It was my first experience of a bow pin. I used my paddle to try to push boat and body back upstream to take the pressure off my bow, but no avail. I started to feel pressure against my back, squeezing me further into my kayak and doubling me forward.
I had made this boat myself out of epoxy resin and layers of fiberglass cloth - Kevlar had not yet been invented. I had the idea that the stuff would break. With a surge of desperate energy, I drove my legs and my body up against the deck, breaking through the fiberglass, and was able to get my legs and feet free. Then I quickly swam over to Wick who was waiting with a rope.
That was the end of the day’s paddling. As I climbed out of the water, I found the cockpit dangling free around my waist, and that, in the process of coming through the deck, I was stripped of one shoe and my swim trunks. The boat and paddle we were able to free. The only problem was that we were in a populated National Park, and I still had to walk out up the path, passing hikers and whole families on the trail without being arrested. Fortunately, I still had my skirt and wore it low, like a Scotsman’s kilt.
As we drove back home and discussed the trip, we agreed that, far more wearying than any physical stress, was the emotional stress of constant decision making and running rapids we weren’t sure were runnable. We carried 22 times in about 6 miles.
The Linville was still on my hit list in ’72 when my little
brother Jamie came home from the Olympics with a Bronze Medal. Although he was six years my younger, I
figured that if he was good enough to get a Bronze Medal he was qualified to
run the Linville Gorge with me. He was familiar with the Linville also, having
visited the area on an overnight hiking trip with his summer camp years before. His memories still seemed to be impressed by
some of the campfire stories told about the
It took another good storm to bring us back, this time in
early March, 1973. My girlfriend, Peggy,
drove with us in a VW van. We put in on a river with a good bit more water than
before, maybe 300 – 400 cfs, and we were off early, under graying skies and increasing
winds. Jamie was in his 13’ slalom boat
that he had raced in
Jamie, Wick and I had worked out a kind of ethic which was meant to dampen any competitiveness between us. Each person was to take complete responsibility for his own decisions, and each agreed to respect and support the decision made by any other - even if the decision was to turn around and hike out. As Jamie said, there was no place for ‘being brave’; it only mattered to ‘be right.’ We didn’t want anyone to be pressured into a poor decision.
We ran what chutes and falls as seemed feasible until well into the afternoon, and pounded into rocks when errors were made. There came a certain point that my boat was filling up too quickly, and I couldn’t go on. It was near the Devil’s Hole Trail that led out of the gorge on river left. On the right, the main road followed the river 1000’ above where we were expecting Peggy to patrol for us. We decided that Jamie would go on downriver until he got to a trail that led up to the road, and find our shuttle vehicle. He would then drive around to meet me at the campground put-in.
I hiked up and out for miles, came to an inhabited cabin, borrowed a couple of books of matches, and before dark caught a ride back to the put-in. Jamie returned to the routine of scouting and paddling. He may have made a mile or two more before hiking out on river right just short of Wiseman’s View. He was brought up to an empty parking lot at the overlook just at dark. That night, temperatures dropped and snow began to fall. Jamie was stranded in the parking lot with no matches or survival gear. He was wearing a full wetsuit, a spray jacket, and neoprene booties. He only had a plastic racing helmet on his head. Trying to make himself a little more comfortable, he dragged some newspaper out of a trash can, laid it on the concrete floor of an outhouse, stuffed his jacket with dry leaves, and lay down to wait for morning. His only distractions were memories of camping in that very same place ten years before, and the awe, and the solitude he had felt with the gorge.
Being blessed with the means to start a fire, I wasted no time making myself comfortable in the empty put-in parking lot. I gathered every sort of tree limb and trunk I could move and set it all ablaze. Then after some time, I divided the burning limbs and the coals into two parts, and lay down between the two fires in a couple of inches of warm mud that the fire had melted. Here I spent the night, surrounded by the heat of the fire and pleasantly enjoying the feel of the snow flakes melting on my skin. From time to time I would have to get up to rearrange and re-stoke the fires, but then I could fall asleep again in comparative bliss.
By Noon the next day, Jamie, Peggy and I managed to reunite. Jamie’s face and hands were flushed crimson and swollen from the night’s exposure, and I was covered in mud. Peggy had been taken in by a family living in a cabin at the takeout.
The rest of the day we spent resting and gorging ourselves, and then we had a good night’s sleep. The next morning with renewed resolve, and armed with new rolls of grey tape, we took off again in separate directions to reclaim our boats and resume our journey. We told Peggy that this time we would surely make it to the end. At about Noon, we had found our boats, re-taped them, and joined up on the river. Thence began again the process of agonizing decisions - scouting almost every rapid, trying to judge what was in the realm of the possible, and trying to protect against impacting our fragile conveyances. Several times we would have to stop, wait for boats to dry, and refresh the taping job of the morning.
Still we continued on without arriving. The shadows lengthened down the walls of the gorge and dark closed in around us. We held on as long as possible to the idea that we would make to where the river slackened up, and race down the last few miles of easier river before dark. We were near to the Conley Cove Trail when we had to give it up. As soon as we got off the water and under the rhododendron, it was full night, and it was impossible to see. We could only feel the path with our feet. Several times we lost the trail and were able to find it only by building a fire. This had to be repeated several times. By the time we made it to the road at the top, it was after midnight, and by the time we hiked down the road to the take out where our van and Peggy were waiting it was nearly dawn.
This was the last time we paddled the Linville. We carried
about eight times and ran over half the distance. After this other challenges caught us up, and
the opportunity of water level and time never presented itself again. Our adrenaline habit was fed on the Upper Blackwater,