Brad’s First Chattooga Trip

May 23, 2006

Here is a little clip of Brad running his first Class IV (Windows Media Player, 1.4 MB). On May 2nd, we went over for a later afternoon run of Thrifts to Woodall on the Chattooga, SC. Brad has been doing great and can roll anywhere on the Nanty. So, it was time for a step up. It may not be clear in the pics, but Brad is using hand paddles. He is working on rolling with a paddle now, but is still a few weeks away from making the switch to a "stick" full time.

Checked the gauges and it was running right below 1.2 on the bridge. Nice level for a first run. Brad was having a blast as we went down the top part. Ran down to the Entrance of Bull Sluice and we talked about it. It was too low to run the far river left side sneak, but he was paddling strong and I thought he’d be able to punch into the eddy. I wanted him to run the easy single drop, not the main double drop – his first time.

We took another stop as we were running the entrance rapid, before running the last little bit down to the set up eddy and I told him – again, if he flipped, just roll up and stay in his boat until he reached the bottom if anything went wrong.

As the clip shows, he came floating down the last of entrance and never dug in and didn’t punch the eddy line. So, he got flushed over double drop backwards. It was an "OH NO" moment, but he did what we talked about. Stayed in his boat and rolled up, no worse for the wear.

Thought you might get a kick out of it. Brad ran the whole way from Thrifts to the bottom of Woodall with no swims, so he was ready. We did the slide to avoid the hole at Woodall, but he ran all the little ledges and did great!!! We’re having fun and hope you are as well.

Take care.

Milton

PS: Brad took his sister’s pink Fun1 to Nanty this past weekend. He did bow stalls and stern squirts till I was tired of watching him. Also got a few "combat rolls" due to it being a little edger than his Fun1.5, so that was great too. He usually doesn’t roll, unless he is trying to playboat in his Fun1.5. I think we’re going to try the Pigeon, TN this weekend.