Boone's Cave Dwellers- 801 to Pump Station Run

Saturday was a lot of (fun. The river was at "Full Pond" . Our stream flow was still "cooking "
at 2530 cubic feet per second. We were able to take the "Express Run" to Boone's Cave and the Salisbury Pump Station Access.

Our run from "801 to Boone's Cave" only took 50 minutes and the entire 8.8 mile run to the Pump Station only took 2 hrs and 5 minutes. The GPS showed us moving along at 4 mph and that was without paddling. This 4 mph was our GPS reading just before Boone's Cave. The river flattened out a little after after Boone's Cave.

Yesterday's paddle down the Yadkin was a great ride and made for a really wonderful time . It's amazing how much different this run was from the 10.9 miles we paddled from the Shallowford Road Access to Tanglewood. That Saturday our group paddled a historical low flow. There were plenty of rocks to dodge along the way. It took us 6 hrs to paddle the 10.9 miles to Tanglewood. Today we felt like we actually needed to paddle another 4 hrs to even feel like a paddle. A lot rain sure does make a difference in how a river paddle.

Presently there is no excursion planned for next week. We did toss up some ideas of paddling the Uwharrie or Dan Rivers. The only plans we all agreed upon was to do some more self rescue drills and have a" low country boil" afterwards, with a little fishing thrown in. This should happen sometime before some of our paddlers head out to Hunting Island, State Park in the next few weeks.

We have a group of paddlers now, that have no boundaries. My dreams of camping out under the lighthouse at Cape Lookout are fast becoming a reality. Hopefully the Hunting Island Trip, will be a start of a lot of great excursions in the years to come. I hope our group will be able to paddle the Cape Lookout/Harker's Island area sometime in the Spring or early summer of 2009. During the winter months we will sit down and make plans on where we might want to go and what we want to accomplish as a group in 2009, while having a lot of fun in the process. We've accomplished a lot in our first year, so next year can only be better.

Fast Ride Today

Image by wabberjocky via Flickr The CFS is 2530 as of 6:30 AM, this should make for a quick paddle trip today for our group. Weather should not be a factor. ETA at Boones Cave should be 10:15 am and ETA for Salisbury Pump Station should be 1:00 PM

While we are paddling enjoy the video Mike composed from last Saturday's Paddle.

Click Here

Hwy 801 Access in Davie Countie- To Salisbury Pump Station is a Go

This is going to be fun run. We will probably reach Boone's Cave in a little over an hr. This same run was at 1900 CFS in April when Fran took the trip with the Land Trust. We may very well may be in that range we launch Saturday morning from the 801 access. Below is a map of our run for Saturday. Launch time is 9:00 am, but shuttle time will be 8:00 am. Please read the prior post about shuttling. The blue arrows on the map below give you direction of the shuttle route, there is a lot quicker way to go by back roads. The red arrows mark the direction of the shuttle for those going the distance to the Pump Station. "Click on Map for larger view"


Current Stream Flow as of 8:00 am this morning.

Current Stream Flows- the river is still cooking

Are We There Yet? Terry's reflection of Saturday's Run

Image via Wikipedia
"This is not Terry,
it's just an image
I used to go with
the captionI have taken the opportunity to reflect back on Saturdays run and think that perhaps it could be summed up in one four letter word, “GRIT”, and if you just ran a variety of alternative words through your mind then you should be ashamed of yourself.

Thanks to a half-wit navigation engineer, we had what could only be described as a comical transit to the 421 park to meet our group for the launch. It was great to welcome aboard Mike, Butch and Deborah for their first encounter with HRL Paddlers. These guys will surely add some additional flavor to our recipe for fun on the water. My food reference here is mainly due to the culinary chat between several of us during one of our stops. Deborah chatted up some mighty fine southern eatin’, unfortunately I ended up attempting to bed down a might fricish appetite with a ham sandwich instead of some ham hocks. This newcomer trio and Montie opted to pull-out after the first 5.4 mile segment and exited at the Huntsville Access area. I hope to paddle with this bunch again soon.

We did however manage to keep the roster healthy with the fashionable entrance of two more brave souls that were willing to endure the remaining mileage with us. Kay and Jan joined the convoy of paddlers that were scattered among the ever present rocky protrusions on the water starved Yadkin.

Things were going well under the circumstances and we encountered several consecutive mild rapids that we used to slingshot us down stream. This pace would soon prove to be short-lived and we soon began to paddle nearly stagnant water. After several miles of seemingly endless flat-water stretches, I apparently began hearing mirages of traffic that I perceived to be to the nearing of I40.After rounding numerous bends and discovering nothing but more river, I finally quit attempting to use my instinctive gauge to determine our position and subsided from my promising alarms that were meant to encourage some of the weary paddlers among us.

We did eventually capture a glimpse of the I40 bridge and took view of the finish line. I noticed that I actually felt pretty good after this monumental trek for our group. I am proud to say that our regular attendees handled this journey really well. I would guess that this is due in part to the conditioning that we receive from regular runs on a weekly basis.

Make no mistake about it, this was not “easy” by no means and any paddler among us that experienced some discomfort should hold their head high for even having the guts to attempt such an adventure. Neal himself even discovered limits to what an individual can endure on a long paddle, especially under historical conditions.

This was not the longest paddle for me as an individual but, it did remind me of just what it takes to hold a moderate pace when distance becomes your enemy. I enjoyed meeting new paddlers and hope they tag along again soon as we continue exploring new waters.

HRL Paddler
Terry

Old 421to Tanglewood- Terry's Photos

Old 421 Park Access to Tanglewood- Video Clips

These aren't the best videos clips, but they give the viewer an idea of what we paddled.