Kelsey's Rock

A trip down the Nantahala takes about two-and-a-half hours. During that time, in addition to yelling paddling commands, I tell little anecdotes about different points of interest along the river. There’s an old railroad, a portion of the Trail of Tears, a rock quarry, a fancy new housing development, the Nantahala National Forest, and Delebar’s Rock.

Delebar, as I tell my guests, was a kayaking instructor. One day, he decided to take a canoe out on the Nantahala. He went along just fine, until he hit a particularly tricky rapid around a sharp turn of the river. Instead of cutting the corner, he slammed into a rock. His canoe, naturally, was wrecked. Undefeated, Delebar returned to the canoe rental agency for a second canoe. They gave it to him. Everyone deserves a second chance, right? Well, maybe not Delebar. On his second trip down the Nantahala, Delebar wrapped his canoe around the same rock as before. Determined to get it right, Delebar went back to rent another canoe. His third time down the river, Delebar was once again foiled by the same rock. Not one to give up without a fight, Delebar retreated to the rental agency for a fourth canoe. Though Delebar may not have learned his lesson, the rental agency certainly had. Having lost three canoes, they refused to give Delebar a fourth. Instead, the rock that gave Delebar such difficulty is now named for him.

“Well, Kelsey,” my crew joked, “Where’s your rock?” At the time, I didn’t have one. But by the end of that trip I did.

The largest commercially-rafted rapid on the river, Nantahala Falls, is at the very end of the trip. It is so close to the end, in fact, that you can see the take-out from the falls. This can be problematic. It gives both myself and my guests a false sense of security.

“Ok, we made it through the falls! There’s nothing left in our way!”

That is a dangerous lie. There are some serious obstacles between the falls and the take-out, which I learned when I hit one dead-on.

It was a great trip. I had two couples and two young children. No one went for a swim,  we hit good lines on the rapids, and everyone got along well. There were no problems. I had been a bit nervous, as I always am, with two young children in the front of the boat, but they did just fine. Coming out of the falls with everyone still in the boat, I was busy sighing with relief while the crew was busy celebrating. We were all too busy doing something to notice the giant, flat rock spread across the river in front of us. By the time I noticed it, it was too late to gather the crew into paddling mode. We had just enough momentum going to glide half the raft over the top of the rock and get firmly pinned on top. Ironically, this particular rock is known as Celebration. People get stuck after celebrating their falls run.

Normally, getting off a rock is fairly easy. You can back-paddle, shift weight around, bounce off it, or even get out of the boat and push. None of the usual tricks worked in this case. We were pinned, stuck seemingly indefinitely. My raft was one of the first over the falls, the rest of the trip passed us while we were stuck. Another guide tried to bump into us and slide us off. It didn’t work. The trip leader passed me and just smiled. Frankly, I think there a little bit of a smirk in there somewhere.

Minutes passed. They felt like hours. Days. The wives in the boat were getting a little nervous, looking back at me while I rapidly ran out of ideas. I could see the outline of the rock in the floor of the boat, right in the center. I moved everyone to the back, to the front, to the left, to the right. We bounced, we pushed, we pulled, we paddled. Nothing worked. Until, finally, something did. We slid off the rock, I praised Heaven, and we promptly ran into another rock.

I kid you not. Immediately after unpinning my boat, I re-pinned it. This time, it only took a few seconds to get back in the current and on our way. It was only another minute or two until we reached the take-out. I almost wanted to keep going on the river, rather than deal with the shame of being “that guide” who hit some of the most obvious rocks on the river. Not once. Twice. At least my crew handled the situation with humor. “Well, looks like we found Kelsey’s Rock!”

But did we? I actually hit two. Maybe they should be Kelsey’s Rocks.