Injury

Whitewater rafting on the Nantahala is not particularly dangerous. Every trip NOC runs carries a med kit, but these kits are rarely opened. Helmets are only worn by the Boy Scouts, because the organization requires it. Generally speaking, the bus ride up to the put-in is far more dangerous than the raft trip down. Still, as I learned last week, injuries do happen.

Not all the rapids on the Nantahala are particularly exciting, so guides do various maneuvers to spice things up. For example, there is a relatively mild rapid called Spin Cycle. Most guides spin their rafts through the length of the rapid, and this has given rise to the nickname Seven Spins. The goal is to complete seven full rotations of the raft from the first wave through the end of the rapid, which is marked by a large rock. Sometimes, my competitive nature overpowers my instincts for self-preservation, and my rafts float dangerously close to that rock.

Last week I finally hit the rock. Hard. So hard, and with so much angle, that the boat spun off it at high speed, and I was nearly flung out of the boat. In fact, it may have been better if I was flung out of the boat. As it was, my right ankle was tucked in the raft so tightly that I wound up staying in the boat and spraining it instead of swimming.

At the moment of impact, the pain was so sharp that it nearly brought tears to my eyes, but my guests were clueless. The trip continued normally, albeit with me dragging my right leg in the cold water beside the raft. Back on shore, I tried limping around for a few minutes before I couldn’t take the pain anymore. Another guide hauled me into the guide lounge in a gear cart, cracked open a med kit to tape up my ankle, and I filled out an accident/injury report.

My ankle is feeling much better now, but my ego is still slightly bruised from being momentarily crippled by the Nantahala. Regardless, I learned my lesson and have not hit that rock again. Now I am willing to settle for six spins.

Stupid Questions

In celebration of the start of the new school year, I aim to debunk the oft-repeated myth that there is no such thing as a stupid question. The teachers who perpetuate such falsehoods have clearly never been raft guides. These are just a small sampling of the questions guests have asked me in the last few months.

Are there alligators in the river?

Are there sharks in the river?

Is this saltwater or freshwater?

Are we going in a circle?

When do deer turn into elk?

As one of my guests said, these questions only make sense if you’re dumb.

Wild Women

The shoulder season began when the guests and some of the guides started going back to school. Since then, the gender ratio of guides, never exactly equal, has become increasingly skewed towards men. Turns out, few women make their year-round careers outdoors. In any case, since few of us remain, we have really banded together. It’s nice to have a couple friends to gossip with and discuss matters incomprehensible to young adult males, like how to persevere through misery-inducing cramps when your job involves both hard physical labor and perpetual cheerfulness.

One night, a female friend and I were lounging around my shed, enjoying a girl-bonding session, when a male friend of ours wandered up and knocked on the door. “You can come in,” said my female friend, “But it’s pretty girly in here.”

He came in. “It’s not girly in here,” he said, glancing at my boat. “There’s a kayak.”

While his comment wasn’t intended to be offensive, it is indicative of an interesting phenomenon. Female participation in predominantly male activities, like whitewater boating, doesn’t dissociate the activity from the male gender. Rather, the sport retains its male associations while the women who participate in it are dissociated from their own gender.

Kayaking isn’t girly. My friend and I aren’t really girls.

Small wonder more women aren’t employed outdoors. It’s such a welcoming environment.

Boat Buying

You may be wondering what I do in my free time. For the first couple months of my employment with NOC, I couldn’t really answer that question because I simply didn’t have any free time. I worked six or even seven days a week. Rare was the day in which I did not go rafting. All the paddling for work made the only real hobby available in the Nantahala Gorge (paddling) rather unappealing. If I had an opportunity to spend a few hours high and dry on shore, I took it. But as the season went on, I started to envy my friends who could boat to work. Finally, I too started kayaking the Nantahala.

The season winding down has been a mixed bag for my new hobby. On the bright side, I have more free time and am far less exhausted after work. However, boats are harder to borrow because so few people are still around. Thus, in order to maximize what time I have left living on-river, I decided to buy my very own boat.

At first, I thought it would be easy. I heard plenty of stories of people dropping a hundred or two hundred dollars on a big bucket of plastic for a first boat. I went online and searched around for used boats. I found plenty available, but when I started asking more knowledgeable boaters about which ones would be good beginner boats for me, I faced a crushing reality. Whitewater kayaking is not a sport popular with small people. Boats are built primarily for men who weigh at least fifty pounds more than I do. While I didn’t think that was such a big deal, I assumed I could outfit any boat to fit me, my friends warned me that paddling a boat that was too big was a quick way to guarantee I would not enjoy the sport.

So I searched and I searched for a small boat. In the beginning, I was very insistent about staying in my price range (low), and I took a long time to research a boat before contacting the seller. Of course, this limited my options, and I saw a lot of boats sold before I even had a chance to make an offer.

Finally, while browsing the used boat ads online, I found the perfect boat. Without going into too much detail, it’s a very popular design used by paddling instruction schools. The boat I found is the smallest manufactured, designed for youths and smaller paddlers. It was being sold by a paddler moving out West who had never really gotten into the sport, only taking the boat out a dozen or so times. It had a few battle scars from close encounters with rocks, but nothing significant. It was also $600.

I almost passed it up completely. That’s quite the chunk of change to spend on a toy, but I talked it over with the local boaters who unanimously declared that it was a great boat and a bargain at that price. I contacted the seller, figuring they could be talked down.

They could not. I very nearly wound up in a bidding war. The seller had another interested buyer. I could drive over to TN that day and see the boat, but the seller threatened that it would only be worth my time if I was prepared to offer more than $600. I checked in with the staff of the Outfitters’ Store at NOC. They confirmed that $600 was a bargain, but warned not to go above $750. I told the seller that I had cash and could come immediately. The seller agreed to meet in two hours, I hopped in a friend’s car, and we were off like a rocket.

After a few stops at various ATMs to acquire the necessary cash, we arrived at the designated parking lot to await the arrival of the seller and the boat. Turns out, the seller was a girl almost exactly my size, which was a very good sign. The boat was slightly more used than I initially anticipated, but still in near-perfect condition. Most importantly, it fit like a dream. I was ready to buy it, but scared to open negotiations, afraid the only direction they would go was up. Instead, I just whipped out a pre-counted stack of bills and handed it to her.

Instead of counting it, she just asked how much it was. I told her it was six hundred, she nodded and asked me if I wanted a skirt as well. I did. The skirt doesn’t fit me, but I plan to sell it. She also gave me some extra foam to use in outfitting the boat. Could I have driven a harder bargain? Possibly, the other buyer may have been a myth. But far more importantly, I finally have a boat of my own.

At the time of writing, she has not yet been paddled, but she has been thoroughly admired by the locals. People here are so nuts about boats that one neighbor identified the boat with his eyes closed, just by feeling the hull. A few tried to get in the boat themselves, but none of them could fit comfortably. Currently, she’s sitting in my shed, and tonight she was utilized as overflow seating (when the bed and hammock were both in use). I’m still suffering a bit of sticker shock. It’s tough to spend that kind of money when you earn minimum wage, but I am beyond excited to join my friends “goin’ boatin’”.

For the curious, my new boat is a 2013 Dagger Mamba 7.6.

Guide Pride

Experienced guides like to say, “You’re only ever between swims.” Still, though all guides expect to swim at some point, we pride ourselves on sticking with our rafts and not having unintentional out-of-boat experiences. Unfortunately, today several NOC guides on the Nantahala took a serious hit to their collective pride, myself included.

Six guides were assigned to two ducky (inflatable kayak) trips, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. These were my very first ducky trips, and odds were high that I would swim. A duck is a far cry from a raft in terms of stability. The trip leader was certainly not expecting me to make it upright all the way down. At the put-in, he had the entire group wish me, “Happy Sailing!” The kids probably did not pick up on the sarcasm. While I did end up in the water, I was not the only one. Three guides went swimming, and one even did it twice. Thankfully, I did not swim twice, but I did swim the Falls for the very first time.

The first guide swim was at Quarry Rapid. There used to be a very big wave there, but it was eventually washed out. Disgruntled kayakers then re-built the wave this season, and though it is a fun hit in a raft, it has rightfully earned the nickname, “Ducky Slayer.” Indeed, today it was the site of quite the train wreck on the morning ducky trip. Two ducks flipped and were stuck in the wave, a guide then attempted to knock the boats free but instead wound up flipped herself. I followed, and luckily coasted over the flipped boats, straight over to the headmaster of the school group who arranged the trip, who was swimming about twenty yards down the rapid. I rescued him and moved on, thankful to rescue someone else instead of myself.

That was the only guide swim on the first trip. I ran the Falls just fine my very first time in a ducky. It was the second time that got me, but it was the second time that got quite a few of us.

Quarry Rapid was, once again, troublesome. Another guide flipped in a similar manner to before, with boats stuck in the wave preventing the guide from hitting a good line. But the real problem on the second trip was the Falls. The guide who had first swum at Quarry swam a second time at the Falls (but did just fine through Quarry during round two), and so did I.

Ever since I started guiding, I have been petrified of swimming the Falls. People have died there. Not often, of course, but it is possible. The water is freezing, and everyone who knows me knows how much I dislike being underwater. Swimming the Falls has been a nightmare hanging over my head for months, and finally it happened.

At first, I thought everything was fine. I hit the Green Tongue and rode it down to Bottom Hole. In a raft, hitting the Tongue is hardest part. After that, Bottom Hole is usually gravy. But in a ducky, that’s where it all went wrong. I lost my angle, waited too long (a fraction of a second) to correct, and then the boat flipped and I was swimming.

It wasn’t terrible. It was shallower and rockier than I expected, which was a little nerve-wracking in terms of making sure I didn’t get too banged up or, you know, drown, but I held onto my paddle, clambered back into my raft, and went on. Still, I got an earful of laughter from the trip leader. As soon as I went in, I heard him shout, “Better start swimming! We don’t throw ropes to guides!”

It was a tough day on the river for guides, and while we did not get ropes thrown to us, at least another whitewater tradition was dispensed with. Typically, when a guide swims, they owe the rest of the guides on the trip a “Swim Beer.” But since swimmers are so common on ducky trips, the swim beers are often foregone. Too bad for the three guides who did manage to come through today with their pride intact!