This past Memorial Day weekend was one of the best trips I have had in a long time. My girlfriend, Jennifer, and I had a blast this weekend camping & kayaking on the Pigeon River Gorge, Tellico Ledges, Middle Ocoee, & French Broad Section IX. All of these runs were PFD for Jen and I was quite excited to lead her down each of these runs. This was also Jen’s first time camping in the great outdoors. I knew even before we started our trip that this was going to be a fun weekend and it tuned out to exceed expectations!
We started the weekend out by camping with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, & nephew at the Eastman campground at the base of Bay’s Mountain in Kingsport, TN. My mom & dad have raised both me and my sister as happy campers ever since I was three months old. So it is always fun to meet up with them to spend some R&R together. This was Jen’s first night camping and my family was excited to have her join us for this special occasion. We had a good rain storm come through during the middle of the night, but my good ole’ trusty Colman tent kept Jen and I dry.
We awoke Saturday morning well rested and treated to a tasty breakfast that my dad prepared for us. After breakfast, Jen and I broke down my tent and said goodbye to the family to head toward the Pigeon. We arrived at the Pigeon a little before noon. We quickly gear up and set shuttle. We had a great run! Jen hit all of her lines great and really enjoyed the famous wave trains that the Pigeon offers.
Next we loaded up and started heading toward Tellico to see if it might be possible for Jen to huck her first waterfall if the level was not too low. When we got to the Tellico we were delighted to see that the lines from Autoboof down to Baby Falls were good to go! So we quickly gear up again and embarked on Jen’s first ELF Creek boating run. I could tell she was quite nervous about running her fist big drops, so I showed her the line and got her lined up to run Autoboof while running boat safety for her. I watched her take a deep breath and she started paddling toward the drop. She reached for her final stroke at the lip and launched off very clean with a good 45 landing. She was pumped & quickly asked if we could do it again! So we eddied out and walked back up to do it a second time, which resulted in another great run by Jen.
We continued on down the run through the small no named stuff and Cry Baby to the eddy above Baby Falls. Jen was having a great time! Now it was time for her first big water fall… I reviewed with her the things we talked about when we scouted it on the way up to put-in. She seemed much more relaxed about this drop than she was the first one now that she knew what the sensation was like. I told her that I would see her at the bottom and I peeled out to run the drop with a good line and boof. I set up boat safety in the eddy at the bottom of the falls and gave a loud blow on my whistle to signal Jen that it was go time! Only a few seconds later she launched off of the left line with an awesome boof! I was so proud of her!!
Jen was super fired up now and wanted to run the falls again, so we hikes up and I got the camera to get a photo of her first waterfall runs. I set up safety from the bank and motioned to her that it was good to go again. She dropped over the edge, but was a little early on her boof stroke and ended up plugging the drop. She resurfaced cleanly and paddled away like a pro! After she got to the river bank I went up to run my second lap of the falls, which resulted in another good boof.
I paddled over to Jen on the bank and she said we should Blue Angel Style the falls for our last lap of it. I thought it was a great ideal, so we made up our plan and hiked back up to the top to see if we could style it! I went down and caught the river right eddy just above the drop to run the right line of the falls. I motioned to Jen and she eddied out to run the entrance drop and head for the left line. Our timing was just a little off, but we both had good lines & it was fun for sure! After we celebrated our styling Blue Angel lines on Baby Falls; I lead Jen down Diaper Wiper to finish off the run and hike back to the car above Baby Falls. Good times, good time…
Check out the rest of the photos from the day taken by Phil Lutey with this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21791&l=4bc7f&id=552848204
We spent the night camping @ River Rats close to the Ocoee and awoke the next morning for day 2 of our big kayaking adventure trip on the Middle Ocoee. We met up with Bill Cox, Bill’s little brother, and Dustin Henley for the run. Dustin’s girlfriend, Aimee, was kind enough to be our Shuttle Bunny for the day (Thanks again!). We had a great run, but it took Jen a while to get use to the pushiness of the run. She also got to flirt with some ledge holes at Broken Nose & Gonzo Shoals. But all of the incidents resulted in good bracing and paddling out away from the holes. Jen also had an awesome combat roll in Table Saw after catching an up stream edge in the big reactionary waves. But she did run the right boof line at the top of Table Saw that was beautiful! The rest of the run was nothing but clean lines and she had a blast running Hell Hole & Diamond Splitter.
Day 3 of our adventure found us meeting up with my good ole’ buddies Dan Thomas and Lou Rudolf for a run on French Broad Section IX. I guess you could consider this our cool down day… lots of flat water and scraping at a low level. However we made the most of it and enjoyed our fellowship together on the river. Jen had a great boof on Kayakers Ledge and she enjoyed that rapid better than anything on the river! Jen and I did have a fun little bump and grind session going through Frank Bell’s, because we got too close together when running the rapid halfway through. However we finished out the rapid with us both still upright and laughing, but I did smash her thumbs in between our boats when we collided. Sorry babe…
The weekend was a blast and very rewarding to me as I got to watch my lovely girlfriend up her skills while getting some more runs under her belt. Way to go babe! You rock!!!
Until next time… Keep it sexy and safe while on the river and I hope to see you out there. Peace Out!
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