Friday:Classes until 2:30 left Asheville with Drew Duval and Dave Fusilli. Looked at a waterfall on the way there, but arrived at cane creek falls just after dark. there, we met Reed Minton, Bet Adams and Taft Sibley, who said they'd help us out with safety if we wanted to do something dumb. We walked down to the overlook and scrambled around in the dark (with headlamps) for
about an hour and a half, trying to visualize where the runnable line would be, and how much water was going off the beast. we knew the left side was clean coming in, but was absolutely horrifying due to the speed at which the water launches off the lip, and immediately goes vertical. on the right side, we could see a few holes and strange currents immediately before the
main flow launched off the lip, but in effect all that looking and (mostly) listening did for us was make us toss and turn all night with thoughts of dropping off, into that blackness. No more than 8 miles away from the waterfall, we found a bed and breakfast right off the road with a huge plastic elephant out front, painted orange with a huge T on the side. the owner, BJ was nice enough to turn the pizza oven back on for us, even though it was about 9:30, and their kitchen had already closed down for the night. well fed and red eyed from rubbing our eyes while visualizing, we chatted for a bit about everything we could think of other than the fall, check the flow and saw that it hadn't yet peaked, we went to bed happy, but ill tell you right now, i was scared shitless.
Saturday:An alarm goes off at about 6 am. taft turns it off and i am terrified of the reality of the situation set in. i grunted, rolled over and went back to sleep for another half hour or so.
Drew started pacing around with nervous energy and shortly thereafter we
were all up and checking the level. didnt drop overnight! thats awesome...but really scary. dave said something along the lines of 'i dunno if thats a good thing or a bad thing'. Stopped at the gas station on the way there so drew could get some coffee. I was too scared to eat or drink anything but water and a few sips of his gas station coffee flavored water before we take this story any further, i want to take you into the past a bit. I first saw a picture of this beast when I was 14. I was in the Adventure Quest School at the time, and we were staying at the cabins over at rock
island. in one of our rooms, there was a photo of the falls from the overlook on the river left. it looked beautiful and massive, with a run in rapid. clay told me about where it was and his experiences with scouting it many times over the next few years, but i never actually made it over there to scope it out. last fall, Chris Graghtmans, Aarika Converse and i went on
a waterfall scouting tour of sorts and looked at fosters and greeter, but didn't go up to cane creek. knowing that it was a flat to vertical 80 some odd footer, i didn't have too much desire.
A few weeks ago at the ravens fork, i got to paddle with clay and a huge posse of bros, and when we got to the bottom the subject of Desoto turned to the possibilities at Cane Creek. he told me that he'd seen it flowing really really high not too long ago, and the left side looked great. he mentioned the right side being beautiful as well, but has always talked of the dangers
of the undercut wall to the right of, and behind the landing of the falls.
"it could be really bad" it's funny how sometimes situations in your life make it really easy to want to huck your meat. for example, on spring break this year, a huge rainstorm hit the northeastern part of Alabama like a ton of bricks on march 4th, the day before Daniel DeLaVergne's birthday. John Grace, Drew Duval and I drove down there in a real big hurry and knocked off the second, third and fourth descents of the monster. now, here i am, ready to huck my meat for reasons i will not go into here, standing at the river right overlook. the level looks
good.
The left side is what i start out thinking i would run. the decision was already made up in my head that i was going to run it...i felt good about the whole scenario, and my gut was telling me good things. I was surprisingly relaxed. when i climbed down to the lip on river right, I saw a
whole new way of running the falls. the right side would be more difficult due to the entrance holes, one of which was a 'v' hole, within about ten feet of where that locomotive of water flow went launching off into the abyss. i remember thinking that it didn't look all that big from there. funny how standing on the edge can warp your sense of depth in a major way. I saw three options as far as entering into the fall. i would love to go into detail about what i saw here, but i will not. i have too much respect for that waterfall to give away any of her secrets she was nice enough to show me. that waterfall could hurt someone really bad. I'd made my decision on running the right side. i didn't want to think about the wall at the bottom. it wasn't until I'd looked at it from the classic overlook I'd seen in the picture (on the left, up high on the wall) that i made my final decision on running the holes on the far right coming in, as opposed to a weird, bubbly boiling curler move at the lip, which could have sent me on my head or towards the wall. if the holes went well on the right, i would be on the flow moving right to left, away from the wall...but just to the right next to a scary kicker at the lip. i wanted to have my left
edge about eight inches to the right of said kicker. Reed and Bett at the bottom, Reed on photo and extra support duty, Bett on safety in boat, in case of a problem with the wall. taft was holding my camera at the classic overlook on river left, drew and dave on river right,
drew holding his camera. all was ready. When i was putting in, there was a couple that gave me a bit of a strange look as i ferried out into the main flow, and around the corner. one more eddy, one more chance to scout. i took it. one more chance for a slight line change. asked gut. did it. decided to hit the final v hole with a bit of right angle. In my kayak, put a little water in...not too much! didn't want to peel out and leave the safety of the eddy. cleared my mind, and peeled out. no way to back down now. coming in, i hit the first hole on the left corner. good. dropping into the v hole, i was terrified to see how big it was, and how hard it was actually kicking left,
right towards the kicker. went right through it and had only enough time for a back tap into a low brace before i was rolling over the edge. couldn't have asked for better placement. i went to vertical and pulled slightly on my right blade to set my angle at vert, then it felt natural to continue paddling down the waterfall. finishing on a left about half way down, i locked it up with my right blade forward and waited for the hit, kayak dead vertical. BOOM. one of those crumpling impacts where your mind has to reset. i felt pain in my hand, which I'd injured about a week and a half ago on my mountain bike, i felt pain in my neck, back, and ribs as well. once my mind had reset and i realized i was back on the surface, i rolled up
to find that i was exiting the falls out in the middle, far away from the horrifying nightmares that lurk in the cave. i looked back at the giant banner of brown and put my arms up to the sky, yelling and screaming as i soaked in the moment. it was only about 9 am.
By about 11:00, we were at the rock island rapid, the great falls of the caney fork. it was running at a massive 30,000 cfs. the falls was out of question, but the rapid looked awesome! that is, if you could make the ferry to get into the main flow. as we were all hiking down, they shut off a few of the gates up top and the flow dropped down to a runnable 15,000. Drew, Dave and I fired on out above the falls, and immediately got lost in the water. funny, coming from asheville and a basis of creeks, to be all of the sudden in a mess of 15 grand, going off what is now a river-wide15 footer. luckily, we spotted the tree that i was trying to line up with, went around it and headed for the good line off the falls. around I'd say 300 feet to the left of the spout line, theres a huge cap rock. we ran just to the left of this, off a really cool sloping kicker line, away from a really horrible hole far to our left. all landed and came out fine, so we headed down. there was an amazing moment when we were all floating down that mass of water in a line, and we were all
getting doused by a trickle waterfall that was coming in parallel to the flow. i looked back at the boys to see if anyone wanted to stop, or if we were bombing. 'lets do this' was drews comment. coming into the rapid, i was again lost. i actually led us all into the middle of the top hole. from
there, we were all in our own worlds, dealing with the 300 yards or so massive curler waves, that progressively got bigger and bigger! AOW! hiked up for a second run. this time is was dave, taft, and myself. reed was filming with my camera and drew and bett were holding ropes in the rapid. again we bombed off the falls, this time to a crowd of locals. again under
the falls. again through the massive curlers in the rapid. AOW! from there, the 'clay wright's local park and huck tour' continued with a peek at greeter falls. at approx 50 feet, this is one of the most classic examples of what the plateau has to offer. flat, moving water above, then the water arcs off a 90 degree transition to vertical, into a pool which i know from a the low water visual on the trip (with aarika and chris), there ARE rocks in the landing. i remembered there was one big one one either side of where you'd land if you chose the left line, and the right of center
being moderately deep, but the most dramatic transition. hoping for high water, i geared up and caught up to the rest of the boys at the falls. drew greeted me with something along the lines of, 'how big of a hit do you want to take?' it was low. I witnessed the first three descents of greeter falls when i was 15. Harry Fields, Dave Grove, and Seth Warren all fired off that big daddy on the left, with varying success. one line started with a scrape, and ended on his head. another was a twisting scare, another good. i was scared of the left side. At the last minute, I chose the right of center. I knew the lip scared the crap out of me, but i was confident. couldn't remember how deep it would really be, but i was fired up anyway. paddling in, I got really scared about boofing. i was staring at the knife's edge of a lip. I could even see where the water turned white from about six feet upstream of the fall. took a few backstrokes above the lip cause i did not want too much speed, then pitched off. right stroke left stroke...not really planned that way ahead of time, but as with cane creek, its what felt right at the time. landing with a big WHAP, i was stoked to not hit the rocks at the bottom, and to have landed just a hair over vert, tucked. all fine except my hand (the previous mtn biking injury), which was pretty lit up after taking that hit. wrapped it
up, took some ibuprofen and drove home.
Stay tuned to LVM and LVM TV for
footage covering the tour.
Pat Keller
Team SR
Sam Fulbright goes for the Clean blunt.
