paddling in Tennessee

[David]

Trip to Tennessee May 2009

Thanks to Richard’s annual Southern Rivers Trip (a Monocacy Canoe Club production) I enjoyed three days on some of Tennessee’s premier whitewater streams.

I met the group at Tellico Plains to run the river of that name. After the recent rains by Monday May 11 it had come down to 780 cfs or 2.7’. I had run the Middle Tellico three times before, but never above 1.7’. The group figured this to be the time to run the “Top Tellico,” which I had never even seen. We caught it at the perfect level. It is class 2/3 for about 6 miles, with a big-time class 4 series culminating in an eight foot drop. Everyone carried that, but the two Michaels did put in to catch the eight foot slide ride on the last drop. The Top Tellico is maybe a quarter class easier than the Middle (except the class 4) but it is still some continuous fun whitewater and I recommend it.

Tuesday the level had come down to 600 cfs or 2.4’ and the Middle Tellico was the trip. Pushy and fast but we got used to it. The waves were big but either avoidable or punchable. The advantage was the lack of rocks banging on boats. Eddies were numerous and easier to catch with enough water to swing the boat around.

Credit to Jon for leading, scouting, spotting, and marking strainers on these runs. Jon used to be an economist for the World Bank and if he had been in charge I have no doubt the economy would not have gone into this big-time recession. But he decided outdoor recreation was a more worthy endeavor and what is the global economy anyway compared to a good river trip? We did some sawing and removed portions of a couple of strainers but you all know to beware. There were a couple of river-wide strainers that were too big and too inaccessible for us to deal with on this trip.

Between these two sections is the Upper Tellico, sometimes called the Ledges. It is about two miles long with a series of five to seven foot ledge drops leading up to the class 4 series of Baby Falls, Diaper Wiper, and Jared’s Knee. On the other side of the road the magnificent Bald River Falls come pouring over a 100 foot cliff. With all this water they were spectacular! Bald River Falls is why the twelve foot Baby Falls is the baby. Below the Middle the Lower Tellico is class 2 and would be fun but you want a lot of water because it is wide and it takes a lot of water to cover the long ledgy rapids. It was OK-looking at 2.7’ but not so as I drove away after Tuesday’s run at 2.4.’

The Tellico River is one of America’s premier whitewater and trout streams. Aside from the road and a few dozen river shacks near the putin for the Top, there is almost no development and water quality is superb. Even with high water the river was running clear. I heard of the Tellico years ago before whitewater was on the agenda. The Tennessee River Authority (TVA) wanted to build a dam at Tellico Plains and make a big lake. The obstacle to their plans was a rare fish called the snail darter and the recently enacted Endangered Species Act. Thanks to the snail darter and many folks who fought on its’ and the Tellico River’s behalf, we have what we have today.

Next up – the Obed. 100 miles north of Tellico Plains or about 75 miles from Knoxville to Frozen Head State Park. “A campground as it should be!” according to Richard, and I agree. In the town of Wartburg the National Park Service has turned a bank into a pleasant and informative visitor center, which provides along with maps a daily printout of water levels in the Obed Wild & Scenic River watershed. The windy but paved roads lead to well set-up putins and takeouts. Today Wednesday May 13 we are running ten miles, from Jett Bridge on Clear Creek into the Obed River and a last mile on the Emory. The level was 5.9’ and 300 cfs on Clear Creek at Lilly Bridge and 6’ and 1800 cfs on the Emory River at Oakdale.

The first two miles of the aptly named Clear Creek are a steady warmup diet of class 2 amid a beautiful undeveloped view from the water. Then after Lilly Bridge (where a couple of folks took off) come, in quick succession, the three hardest rapids of the trip. Richard scouted and picked a straightforward line down Jack Rock Falls, a ten foot descent over forty horizontal feet. You line up on a visible tongue and follow the “flake” to the most downstream part of the falls, missing a rocky landing on the right and a munchy hole on the left.

Then came Camel Rock Rapid. Jon and Richard had us eddy right and then a technical but not overly pushy line on the right led to the bottom, where you could look back and see the sieves and undercuts center and left.

The biggest and baddest is called Wooten’s Folly. The theory here was to come over an easy drop and wave on the right and then quickly turn left, as the right contained, in order, a shallow and unnavigable boulder garden, a rock pile above the next drop with squirrelly water above and below, and lastly a slanting flat boulder wedged into a massive undercut. I saw a couple of highly-respected boaters fail to get left fast enough and experience awkward if ultimately alright runs. Reason is: Not only does the runout on the right push right, but you also have to cross a strong current coming from left of a dividing rock at the entrance that also pushes right. My choice was to run that left drop, even if it was about four feet rather than the two foot drop on the right. On landing I kept my eye on the prize and forward-stroked to the left drop that keeps you away from the trouble on the right. Eddying behind the undercut I saw the considerable flow coming from beneath it. Wooten’s Folly had its’ moments but all were OK and we proceeded to enjoy more than a dozen class 3’s and strong 2’s as we made our way to the confluence with the Obed River. The Obed at this juncture is about the same size as Clear Creek but now we were in a wide river. The rapids were big ledges with some monster waves.

I spoke with two young men who were running what we were in tube-rafts designed for that purpose. They had no helmets, shoes, or PFD’s. I asked them the secret of their success. “It’s all in the cross-grip. With a strong cross-grip you can float anything.”

The Obed was fun and still scenic (We saw a bald eagle, and it has many a sandy beach.) but about miles 8 and 9 the pools were getting longer and the rapids smaller. We paused to refresh at the Emory confluence and on a small bluff we had a panoramic view of what looked like a water-skiing lake. The Emory here is much smaller than the Obed whose water it now claims as its’ own. In fact the Emory upstream was not even runnable. We pressed on across the “lake” and down a long and strong class 2 and then were delighted to see the takeout bridge come into view.

The group was heading north to the Big South Fork of the Cumberland next day. I left the campground early going south, on another mission. On my way to Frozen Head S.P. on Tuesday I dined at a restaurant in Harriman, TN that does not feature organic tofu on its’ menu. I asked a young gentleman with a strong grip on his toddler for directions to Frozen Head and to the massive coal ash spill from a nearby TVA power plant. After changing his son’s diaper he was happy to oblige on both counts.

He grew up on Swan Pond Road, which he described as “Ground Zero.” He had built a house by his parents for the benefit of his own family. The family owns 17 waterfront acres on the TVA lake on Emory River that received the spill, property which he regards as spoiled beyond measure. On December 22, 2008, 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash burst out of its’ dam. 3 million of that went into the Emory River.
Thursday morning I drove into and around the Kingston Steam Plant, passing an array of construction trailers, one marked as cleanup headquarters. The Knoxville paper had an article about EPA officially taking over the cleanup from TVA. The article said expected cost was close to a billion not including lawsuits. Cleanup was going slow, especially on that portion of the spill that was in the lake. “These dredges are too small,” said Anda Ray, TVA official in charge of the cleanup, as quoted in the Roane County paper. The same Emory gauge at Oakdale that had been at 1800 cfs for Wednesday’s trip had been at 80,000 cfs May 2 and the ash pile is slipping downstream.

I started around Swan Pond Road. One track hoe was pulling wet coal ash from a deep ditch and piling it on the sloping bank, where water could drain from it. 200 yards away another track hoe was loading drier coal ash on dump trucks, which were all around Swan Pond Road taking it to I don’t know where. In the distance the enormous ash pile that had not washed away loomed, piled about 100 feet above the flood plain. Swan Pond Road swings around the shore of “Lake Emory” and has no shortage of high dollar homes.

Coming around the loop I passed the upper end of the spill in a wetland just below a meadow. Farther along I saw two amphibious track hoes, which had enormous bases for their extra large and tall tracks and to enable them to have some buoyancy in the vast muck pile. One was pulling back coal ash from the edge of the wetland and another was being serviced by a smaller amphibious tracked vehicle.

Most of you will wonder why someone would pass up Big South Fork for this but for a coal ash aficionado this was all a sight to behold. I will get to Big South Fork yet, preferably not right after three straight days of hard paddling.

[Eskimo Toast]

helluva interesting trip....thanks for the report!

[Barb]

Thanks, David, for taking the time to write this. It was a perfect mix of information about the rivers and the coal ash spill. I'd love to go down there sometime!