So I get this email from Brian Pickett about midway through February that says something like “what do you think about putting together a team for TVF in March?”. Well, being the responsible guy that I am, I replied with something like - ‘let me check with Tonya to make sure she’s OK with me paddling a bit more in March’. For those of you unfamiliar with TVF, here’s the cliff notes and a link: TVF stands for Total Vertical Feet. It is a creeking competition dreamed up by Ben where teams of boaters keep track of the vertical feet that they drop on rivers during the month of March. There are some rules but the basics are: Teams of 6 or less; Sum up your best 8 days during March; No more than 2 days on any given river; must have at least two team members running the river together and the rivers must be run as if a baton were handed off (i.e. no putting on as soon as the other pair takes out 5 miles away…). For more info, check out www.steepcreeks.com/tvf and/or search for SteepCreeks or TVF on Facebook.
Anyhow, Tonya said “Sure, I guess so.” and the rest is history!
I tell Brian I’m in and he tells me that the rest of the team would be Josh Dalton, Alan Wilson, and Natalie Matthews. I’m cool with that because I’ve paddled with each of them a time or two and they’re all good boaters. I ask if he’s got a name for the team cause I’ve got some ideas and he kinda dodges the question… A few days later, I’m looking over the TVF website and the teams that have registered and find out that I’m paddling on a team called the Sexy Kayaking Beasts!?!
The first of March comes in like a lion with a huge thunderstorm that really gets everything in the Smokies cranking. I take Friday off and head to the mountains with Brian and Josh and so it began…
3/2/07 - Greenbrier: 4 laps, 1280 ft.
We had intended to run some laps on Lower Big Creek but it was too high for us and looked to have some poorly placed wood so we decided to check out the Greenbrier/Middle fork of the Little Pigeon below the class V run at Ramsey’s Cascades.
We ended up reading through the brief write-up in Leland Davis’s NCCR book and hit the water. Four laps and 1280 vertical feet later we were exhausted but thrilled with the great day we’d had on a completely new river!
March 2, 2007 - Team SKB’s first day on the water:
The Beasts at the put in - Stuart, Brian, Josh
Josh fires up the first boof of the run
Brian goes big, boofing the right side of this retentive ledge that has already had its way with Josh and Stuart
Stuart drops the ledges before the takeout for the fourth lap - 1280 feet!
3/10/07 - Watauga: 2 laps at 120 cfs, 1012 ft.
It had been more than a week since the blessed rains of March 1st and the rivers of east Tennessee and western North Carolina were feeling it. Team SKB had an honorary member in from England who was eager for some Appalachian creekin and we did not want to disappoint. Unfortunately, the only options were looking like a -7″ Wilson Creek, 1000 cfs Nolichucky, 3 to 4 hour drives for some marginal Plateau runs, or a 500-600 cfs Russell Fork that frankly sounded pretty nasty to us. Andy (our Appalachian englishman) mentions how sad it is that the Watauga isn’t running since he was really hoping he might be able to show me down my first Watauga trip and that gets the wheels rolling. Being from the Tri-Cities, we’ve all heard stories of how some of the ELF (extra low flow) nuts claim the big W is runnable down to something like 80 cfs - so we start making some phone calls. After a couple of interviews, we decide to give it a go.
The Sexy Kayaking Beasts at Guys Ford (the Watauga put-in)
Stuart and his mentor, Andy C. (honorary SKB for the day)
In hindsight, all we can say is that we’re glad we did! Saturday was a beautiful day and, while the river lacked some punch, almost all of the main lines were runnable (including Stateline Falls) and a great time was had by all. First lap was smooth - I was all grins and big eyes as we kept blasting through one rapid after another. Hydro was boat scouted and smoothed by all.
Brian getting it done at Hydro
Stuart MegaRocking Hydro
We had a bit of excitement when the lead boater realized about halfway through Heavy Water/Anaconda that we were halfway into HW/Anaconda and started waving me into the RL eddy at the bend - no problems though. At Stateline, Alan and Brian decided to fire up the falls while Andy and I seal launched into photo/safety positions. Alan’s line was clean but he went pretty deep, while Brian’s boof was textbook and unphotographed (dead camera batteries). Brian explored the river left channel at Rewind/Boof Ledge and we do not recommend it.
Alan fires up Stateline Falls at 120 cfs
Lap 2 went much faster as we barely let up at all till the bottom of Hydro. I had a nice clutch roll in the midst of Split Decision. Brian had an even better one right above the big drop/hole in Heavy Water. Everyone ran the falls on the second lap and good landings were had by all!
The group’s consensus was that the Watauga at 120cfs felt alot like a -6″ Wilson Creek but with much more excitement per mile. What a great way to rack up 1012 total vertical feet!
Over the next two weeks, Team SKB racked up plenty more vertical feet on the Doe, Wilson Creek, and Watauga but I wasn’t able to make those runs. You can read all about them at www.sexykayakingbeasts.blogspot.com … Brian’s shoulder dislocation story on the Watauga is more than worth the price of admission! (You’ll probably notice that these write ups were excerpted from that blog as well)
3/30/07 - Pigeon: 6 laps at no release, 978 ft. and 28 miles
With our Wilson Creek days (2) already used and nothing much else running, we had to come up with a plan to try to maximize our score over the last two days. This wasn’t so easy because our team captain was out of commission and only pairs of the remaining quartet were going to be able to paddle on Friday and Saturday. With a plan to try and rack up a big day on Wilson Creek Saturday, we needed to run some other river on Friday and score enough gradient to replace the 875 WC day from earlier in the month.
Enter the Dirty Bird. It had the basic ingredients we were looking for: water and gradient (not much of either, but beggars can’t be choosers). At 163 feet per lap from the power plant to Hartford, we figured six pigeon laps would replace the Wilson Creek day with a few extra feet to boot.
Josh and I headed out from the Tri-cities just before dawn and slid into the waters of the mighty Pigeon for lap one at 9 am. The ~1500 cfs flow was fantastic and in less than 90 minutes we had finished the lap, set our own shuttle, and were sliding in for lap two. That’s when we noticed the dark bands on the rocks and the river bank… the power plant had quit generating and the level was dropping. Laps two and three were completed before a quick lunch break. Four, five and six knocked out by 6pm. As the flow dropped from 1500 cfs to 250 cfs, the lap times increased from 90 minutes to 120 minutes. Some of this increase was due in part to the fact that our heroes began goofing off more and more as the day progressed and enjoying every minute of it (maybe not every minute we were paddling through the elongated flatwater sections…but all the rest for sure).
By the end of the day, we’d dropped 978 feet (ON THE PIGEON), paddled 28 miles, and driven 96 miles (both cars combined) of self shuttle from the power plant to Hartford or vice versa.
It wasn’t hairboating, but it was a day we owe entirely to TVF - no way it would have happened otherwise!
3/31/07 - Wilson Creek: 6 laps at -6 inches, 1650 ft. and a dislocated shoulder
I think I speak for all those sexy kayaking beasts out there when I say that this TVF season has been a blast.That being said, it sure can be rough on boats and shoulders! Alan and I hit the waters of Wilson Creek this morning at 9:00 am and -6 inches with the goal of getting in 10 laps in order to put our team total for the competition over 10 grand. While the lines weren’t always beautiful, every lap was a blast and we were cruising toward an early completion of our goal. Our fearless but sidelined team captain, Brian, was running a great shuttle and photo service - and doing it all with his arm immobilized due to last weekend’s shoulder dislocation and clavicle fracture. The Jackson 5 team was out there as well and they were tearing it up - TVF style. J5 already had 3 laps when we got there and they passed us three times as we paddled through our laps (we were pacing ourselves pretty conservatively because we had no one to rotate laps with). Even with our slow and steady pace, Alan still managed to crack his H3 somewhere on lap 1, 2, or 3. Luckily we had two extra boats with us, so he saddled up the Jefe for the rest of the laps.
Here are some of the best shots Brian snapped during the day:
Alan’s nice boof into Boatbuster
Stuart launching the second drop of Triple Drop
Alan and Stuart lapping their way down to Razorback…
As we climbed the take-out steps for the sixth time, we decided that after lap seven we would scarf down a quick lunch and then polish off the last three laps. Unfortunately, lap seven was to be the lap where our plans were changed…
As Alan and I were approaching Little Woodall, the RL slide before the entrance to 10 foot, the J5 boys were closing in on us. I suggested to Alan that we do something goofy as we dropped over the lip of the slide - for their entertainment before they lapped us again.
(Please don’t try this at home… this man is some kind of professional something…)
Alan does some kinda rail grabby thing and I go all out with a rail grab and paddle twirl - grinning ear to ear - until my boat kicks left at the bottom and all of the sudden I’m side surfing in a really rententive hole. As I’m riding a pretty good brace, I see Brad (from the Jackson 5 team) peek over the lip and I try to give him a somewhat sheepish look because my foolishness had me side surfing right across his line. About the time he went around me though, the hole surged and my shoulder popped - OUCH - I flipped and managed to roll back up wondering why my arm wasn’t working right. I managed to get both hands down near the left blade with my right blade way out in the outflow, but I couldn’t move myself to either side because my right arm refused to extend away from my body. As I’m wondering “what do I do now” Brad from J5 paddles up into the hole in his Mega Rocker and bulldozes me out of it while enjoying a pretty good rodeo ride himself (MANY THANKS BRAD!). Once I was out of the hole, I flipped, punched out, and climbed out on a midstream rock where I explained that my shoulder was dislocated. After about 30 seconds of hearing how to twist my arm around in an extremely painful series of positions (to get it back in joint) I suggested that I’d probably just tweaked it really badly. At our suggestion and, after seeing that we seemed to be in a safe place, the J5 guys headed downstream and sent our shuttle man back up to find us. While Alan was getting my boat back across to the roadside bank, I remembered an article that explained how to fix (reduce) a dislocated shoulder:
(check it out at: http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/2000/11_00/joy.htm)
Thankfully, this technique worked like a charm and, at least from my perspective, the situation improved greatly.
Our shuttle pulled up before we had even climbed up to the road and as we accepted the sad realization that we would not make our 10 lap goal we did the only thing respectable boaters can do in such a situation…
we drove back to civilization and ate mexican!
Peace, love, and TVF -
Stuart out.
