The Fourth of July rafting trip to the Ocoee was a success. We arrived at Thunderrock Campground late on Thursday night and secured two campsites on the mountain-side of the campground. Luckily we had two cars that were willing to leave Gainesville in the afternoon to secure two sites next to one another. The campground was filled by Friday morning and if we had waited, we would have been stuck with a more expensive camp farther away.
We woke up relatively early and were on the river by 10ish on Friday. Most of the commercial rafters were just getting off the buses when we shoved the blue raft off below the dam at full capacity (8 people). Ryan guided a perfect run, no one fell out of the boat and we were back at camp by 12:00 discussing our next descent. Our second run on Friday was more interesting, we had 6 in the blue raft and 5 in the red. Dan and Christa went for a swim on seperate occasions, but were fished out unscathed. Dan gets the record for the longest swim of the weekend for his 100 yard float on friday. Team Elmo, guided by Shaun, didn't lose anyone on this run, but after a while trying to wait for the blue raft to retrieve someone, we were forced to try out an alternate "river right" line at Double Suck that resulted in us being duly stuck. It was Fengyun's first time whitewater rafting and she did great and didn't fall out of the boat all weekend.
After the river we locked up the boats and life vests and drove up the forest road behind the campsite to scavenge for firewood. The forest around the campsite is picked over, but if you go up the gravel road for a bit there are streambeds bisecting the road that can be much more fruitful. Steep terrain necessitated the implementation of some advanced lumbering techniques. We had to descend a steep gully on the left side of the road and use two straps tied together to retrieve a large branch. Friday night we ventured into town to eat dinner and sequester necessary supplies. We stopped on 68 on the way into Copperhill to get sodas at a place that had old WWII army equipment in the yard and specialized in beer and fireworks while simultaneously being a steak and seafood restaurant, pub and laundrymat. Talk about diversifying your business. Needless to say we didn't eat there. It should be a rule to never eat seafood where you buy fireworks and do your laundry. We got dinner at the Ironhorse Bar and Grill, diagonal from the mexican restaurant. We were wary about the place, but it turned out to be a good meal. The restaurant is on the second floor of what used to be an apartment building that was built in 1920. We were able to sit in a room seperate from the rest of the restaurant, which was great for two reasons. First it was closer to the kitchen so our waitress didn't have to go far and secondly we were a bit rambunctious and probably would have offended the other patrons, which consisted of a table of old people and bikers. Our waitress was punctual and patient with us even though we had to rearrange the furniture and bombarded her with special requests from lemons, more special sauce, lemonade, sweet tea, beers and catfish filets. The lemonade was great and the all you can eat catfish special (for $8.99) was spectacular, complete with a horseradishy special sauce, garlic mash potatoes and coleslaw. This place was a bit more expensive than mexican, but overall it was pretty good.
Our big plans to raft the entire Ocoee (upper, olympic and lower sections) on Saturday were almost thwarted by some early morning rain that began at 6am, rudely awaking me from my sleep outside and subsequently lulling everyone to sleep-in until after 10. It finally stopped and we were able to motivate, cook a quick breakfast of bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches and carry the gear and everyone to the put in. The Upper Ocoee is much different than the lower. The first part is composed of minor rapids and trees sticking out of the river. The red raft, went river right and had a tough time navigating through the foilage, so in the future go down the left side. The highlight of the section is Mikey's rapid about 2/3 of the way down. There is an island in the middle of the river that diverts water to the left over a ledge and to the right over a Mikey's rapid. We scouted the rapid from the island. The rapid consists of a neckdown with a pin rock in the center and then a larger rock behind that which further divides the river into a shoot on the left of shallow fast moving water and a narrower shoot on the right that launched off of a 4 foot ledge/waterfall. We saw kayakers taking a right to left line and going down the smaller of the two sides. Ryan and Shaun agreed that the right was the way the rafts go down, much to the dismay of others. The rapid itself is a bit intimidating, but the line that you have to travel is even more intimidating. Ryan guided the blue boat down first, but those of us in the red raft could not see their fate. Shaun guided us in the red raft down the center of the channel and turned the boat so that our nose was pointed to the right of the pin rock, then called for "all forward." It was close, but we we able to get to river right in time to miss the rock, the current pulled our nose from right to center and we hit the drop head on. There was a weighless feeling and a moment when everything got dead silent, then we came up out of the water, everyone still in the raft and saw that the blue raft had also made it down with everyone in the boat. It was too soon to celebrate though, since for the next 30 yards the rapid extended in a series of holes, rollers and rocks that had all of us clamoring to right the boat and not fall in. There were a couple of other nice rapids after Mikey's, but they seemed minor in comparison. We then got to the Olympic section which consists of a 1/4 mile of constant, hand shaped whitewater, rapid after rapid, hole after hole. Shaun, hit the biggest section of every rapid, and all of us in the red raft weren't complaining, because we felt near invincible after nailing the descent of Mikey's. We did good until we floated right down the center of a rapid named "humongous." We went down the rapid and we going up the wave on the other side, when our boat stalled, Shaun called for all forward and we sensed that we were being dragged back into the rapid. We started to paddle, but were losing ground. The boat swung to the left and Shaun called for everyone to get on the right side of the boat, no one in the raft heard it, before we knew it the current caught the left side of the boat and four of us were in the water. After a short, reflective ride underwater I surfaced and looked back to see Shaun, the only one in the boat. Luckily this section is flanked by kayakers and spectators that are nice enough to save the people that they get to laugh at when they fall out of the boat. Everyone was thrown ropes and we were pulled to shore and congratulated for putting on such an entertaining show. The rapid doesn't look so bad, definetly not bad enought to be called humongous, but the reason its called that is because the volume of water rolling through there is pretty impressive and the tractor beam-like pull of the hydraulic does have a "humongous" amount of power. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e__bXdCPeDc for a video of the humongous rapid, it is rapid that the second, third and fourth rafts on the video are going down. We then did the rest of the section on down to the bridge that crosses the river to Thunderrock. Right after the bridge we were suprised to find the End of the World rapid, which was a lot of fun. It consists of a 3 foot ledge that empties into the canal on the backside of the campground. In retrospect it would be a great place to take a picture or video of folks coming down.
We then ate lunch at the campground, reran the shuttle to the lower takeout and headed on to do the lower for our last run. The water was higher than on Friday which made for bigger rapids. Dan, ever eager to go swimming, fell out twice on this run, so he also gets the award for most times falling out of the boat. It made things interesting and miraculously he did not hurt himself. We did have a hairy moment when we got pinned on "oh shit" rock in the middle of flipper (i think). We were thinking we would bounce off of the rock and scoot down the right side, but the boat hit the rock and the left side slide up the rock and the right side of the boat was sucked underwater. The five of us clamored up on the left side of the raft like ants in a flood. Ben got out of the raft on the backside of the rock in a very precarious location. Mark, Shaun, Me and Dan shifted to the front of the raft and felt the back end coming around, before we knew it we were floating away and Ben had to lunge for the raft, luckily we were able to get him in and hit the ledge at the end of flipper, knocking another raft out of the hydraulic they were stuck in and getting away ourselves.
Satuday night we had a good time cooking burgers, the rain held off until after midnight and we slept soundly. There was an indian flute, a makeshift olympic torch, and some other random things/events involved in the nights festivities, but a good time was had by all.
On the way back a few of us went by Stone Mountain, GA. It is an interesting place which consists of a bucsh gardens like tourist trap and a big stone rock mountain with Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee and Stonewall jackson escribed on a huge stone rock face. It is $8 a car to get in and definitly a sight to behold.
Overall the trip was great, it was a good, small crew. And we were able to raft a lot since we didn't have duckies to chase down. The only bad part was the gas, but it takes a lot of gas to get to cool places, so that is just how it goes.
The upper section was cool, but not for the faint of heart and I don't think I would recommend taking a bunch of duckies there.
Jake