Thursday, January 1, 2009

Paddling the Cape Fear

"Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe. You can't take a taxi." ~Alan Alda Every year my friends and I spend numerous hours on the river. One of our favorite river trips is going from Buckhorn Dam to Lillington. This is a two day paddle and always presents some type of challenge. We typically make this trip several times a year, but this was the first time that I had paddled this section for 2008. There were only three of us heading out for this trip: Joel, Gavin, and I.
*Google Map of Put in, Camp, and take out.....
We met at Joel's around 1:00 and after we had loaded all of our gear up we headed for the dam to put in. We put our boats in the river on the Lee County side of Buckhorn Dam at around 2:30. We agreed that we should try to make it to the fish traps before dark. This would be a challenge since we only had about 4 hours of paddling time before dark. About a mile down river we came to the first obstacle and first close call of the trip. The obstacle was a rock garden that engulfed the entire river for about a 1/4 mile. These rapids were especially hairy today because of all the rainfall over the last few days. Not to mention that our canoes were loaded down with way more gear than we needed. (Gavin had a small version of REI packed in his rucksack.) After banging a few rocks and taking on a good amount of water in the boat, we were all able to navigate through the switchbacks without capsizing. We continued paddling for the next hour or so until our shoulders burned to much to continue. We decided to pull over to one of the enormous rocks in the river and take a break, hydrate, and dump water from our canoes.
After a short break we loaded back into our boats and headed downstream, paddling as hard as we could. Our next obstacle was about 2 miles downstream. This was the largest rapid on this section of river. As we approached the rapid we all commented on the ferocious sound it made. We paddled closer to get a good look at which line we thought would give us the driest route. I had been through this section tons of times before, but during the winter months you have to be a little more careful because of the dangers of the cold weather. (I had capsized here a few years back when it was snowing outside, which makes for a miserably cold nights sleep) After a few minutes of trying to decide which line was the safest and watching Joel nearly loose his boat. Gavin and I decided to err on the side of safety and portage around this one.


We made camp just before dark and spend the last few minutes of daylight gathering enough wood to keep us warm by the fire all night. The spot we chose was amazing. It was just past a small set of rapids on a sandy island. This would make for a relaxed nights sleep on soft sand while being sung to sleep by the fast moving water.

















As the sun set over us, we unpacked and got ready for the night. We broke out our stoves and our meals and cooked them by the fire. My favorite thing about camping is all the laughs and stories told by the fire. Time flew bye as we laughed by the fire and continuously wiped our eyes from laughing hysterically at all our misadventure tales, besides its not an adventure until something goes wrong, right? We joked by the fire until we all found our eyelids becoming heavy, we had a good ways left to go before reaching our take out tomorrow, so we would need our rest. We headed to bed.
We woke up the next morning before daylight and enjoyed our breakfast by the rekindled campfire. This morning was extremely foggy, the kind of thick wet fog that would slowly dampen your clothes. As the sun rose we found it extremely hard to look forward. The rising sun's reflection beamed off of the water and seemed to set your eyes on fire in just a few seconds. The majority of the morning we spend looking straight down into the boat as we paddled down river. The fog finally lifted around lunch and the remainder of the day was perfect. As we always do, we finished the trip with smiles on our faces. It was another great river trip and another cool story to tell.