If you’ve ever attended a Gauley Festival or Ocoee Rodeo you will have seen and quite possibly met Nancy Gilbert. Nancy, along with her husband and AW board of director Joe Greiner, has been a tireless volunteer at both events. You’ll ususally find Nancy at the entrance to Gauley Fest and handling registration and scoring at the Ocoee Rodeo, so be sure to say hello.
A lover of the outdoors, Nancy first got into paddling after her fiftieth birthday to have another way to be outside.
Her first river trip was on the Middle Haw River near Chapel Hill NC in
Dec 1992. A number of friends brought their spare cold weather gear, spread
it out on the bridge railing and Nancy suited for her first trip with some of
this and and some of that. She got by “with a little help from her
friends”.
Despite a broken cheekbone on her first Ocoee trip, she has held in there
and boats about 25-50 days a year. Her favorite runs are anything in the
Cumberland Plateau especialyy the Tiny Piney of Rhea County, and also the
Little River Of Tennessee (in the Smokies), the Tellico, section III of
the Chattooga (at about 2.2) and the Lower Yough (at about 2.0). Nancy has
been to Guatemala twice, and Nepal and Bhutan once each. And she has gone
forth from her favorite SE rivers to New York, Quebec, Washington State,
and California to boat in those areas.
Now retired from a computer software (NOT a dot.com) company, she has
always wanted to give something back to the sport that helps her get to places
she otherwise might not go.