Hiwassee AR 2006

Hiwassee was not our best race. It was on the other end of the scale but we mostly had fun anyway. Our teammate from Blue Ridge, Mark Bell joined us again for this unsupported race. Mark has been our teammate for both races where we had to paddle the canoe in whitewater. The canoe has taken quite a beating on the rocks and so have we. We will not be taking the canoe in whitewater anymore.

The night before the race we stayed at the Lake Ocoee Inn which was an adventure in itself. The rooms were the size of postage stamps with TVs that received only one channel. Ice could be obtained from the restaurant when open but it had been closed for many years.

The race legs were trekking, paddling, and biking. Early in the trekking leg Zach made a dumb map reading error that cost us about an hour and a half. We were never able to recover from the error but we continued racing anyway. The last four miles of the 13-mile trek (15 miles for us) were on railroad tracks which we hated since there was no way to take a proper step. It took us about six hours for the trek.

Then we had to cross the river. It was easily 300 yards wide where we had to cross. We had to find a path on the rocks, so to speak, to walk as the current was too strong to swim.
Our first stop on the river crossing was an island with CP 6. It was hard to reach as the CP was hanging over the river on a tree branch and the river was moving fast.. A passing canoe helped us punch the CP otherwise Zach would have been on a journey downstream.

We were able to slowly work our way across the river by walking until a short distance from the shore. At that point we had to swim. Zach and Cathy immediately we pushed down river and it was only Zach grabbing a rock ledge and pulling us up that kept us from a fast trip downriver.

 

We were doing the paddle with our beat up canoe that had two large holes patched with a fiberglass repair kit. The Hiwassee has lots more rapids than the Toccoa River that we paddled at Blue Ridge. One patch held. The other didn’t. The first set of rapids pretty much took the patch away and put the big dent back in the canoe and we were taking on water. The water was not deep at the rapids but was moving fast and we had to be very careful to avoid foot entrapment when we got out of the boat to push or pull it over rocks. We ended up out of the boat four times because of the water we were taking on and the loss of the aerodynamics of the canoe not to mention our lack of paddling skills in whitewater. It got so bad that we hitched a ride with three guys in a raft and towed the canoe behind us.

By the time we arrived back at the TA we were 10 hours into the race. By that time there was no way we could finish the 35-mile bike so we rode our bikes for an hour then packed it up. We definitely will not use our canoe in whitewater again.