French Broad, North Fork

Submarine

Razorback

Sandpaper

Boxcar

Boxcar

An acrylic painting on canvas of Philip Prince running Blind Date on the North Fork of the French Broad, by Dennis Huntley

2013

'Boxcar' on a sunny winter day. The North Fork of the French Broad is a beautiful stream, and well worth the visit.

Dwight running Bird Rock Falls on the Upper North Fork French Broad

This is a shot off my gopro , about to get a nice boof in!

Roy Crimmins on the final drop of Boxcar Falls

Josh Newtown running Boxcar on the North Fork of the French Broad

Dwight running Boxcar

The Short Putin under the Power Lines after the hike down the cliff

Mike Fuller and Dwight N. at bottom of Submarine

This is the rapid before we ran it...
Mark the weiner had to have his playboat on the NFFB, trying to be a hero, he had a deep line at boxcar...
This photo was taken by Mark Hammock. It's sweet!

I've been keeping track of the correlation between the FB at Rosman and the Hwy 64 Gage for about two years. So far the correlation is:

FB@Rosman = HWY 64 Gage

313

If you run to the lower Alligator Rock takeout, beware of the rapid that has an island with a big rootball in the middle. Last time I was down there (about a month ago) there was a long in the right side making it unrunnable. The left side was sketchy at best, with a few logs. Probably not an issue normally, but GO LEFT! Otherwise, it would be bad, the log is totally across the current only about 8-10' above the water.

Also, if you hike out, this run is pretty fun albeit scrapy at 200cfs. There's a sweet left to right move at Boxcar that is more fun than either the standard line or blind date proper.

Have fun.

Boxcar. what a wonderful photo AND rapid. real fun and easy drop!

The large hemlock log that has been in the Island Rapid below Boxcar is finally gone due to the flooding. It has been taken downstream to the large uncut rock directly below submarine. Beware of this new hazard in the event of a swim out of Submarine. PS the new pictures (RM) of island rapid are not of island rapid. That rapid is Vortex.

Ran it today at 0' and had a blast but had some info to pass along. There are now strainers blocking up the right side of the island below Boxcar. Not sure where the newest one, which makes the drop up against the island impossible, came from. May be part of the old one. Looks pretty tough to get around even at higher water levels as its a pretty big tree. You can head down the left side of the island instead. One other thing is the log at Jammed Pipe is gone and apparently so is the pipe so be careful you don't end up on the left side near that undercut by accident. Trust me its not fun.

The Blind Date line at Boxcar. Start with left angle. Drive hard across the top of the falls, punching the hole at the entrance to the drop. Maintain your boat angle as you power out across the lip. Take a breath and get ready to go deep! (Rotation of your boat while in the air can be critical in order to avoid smacking your face/body into the rock walls at the base of the drop.) It's Worthy!

Still photo captured from a camcorder. Not the greatest resolution but you can at least get the idea from the pic. This was Chris's first time on North Fork and he styled it.
My first run on Boxcar. Not bad but I did catch the flake at the bottom of the slide which killed my speed going into the drop. Thank goodness for the boof stroke which saved me.

At the bottom of the run, below all of the major rapids is a small class 2 rapid that we called Crackpipe because of the steel pipe on river right lodged in the rapid. On the left of this rapid is a major undercut which receives a good bit of the flow and which was the site of two scary pins this past saturday (2/7/04). The rapid will be noticable by the pipe on right, and a dry rock in center forcing you to run left of it. To the left of that dry rock is a small rock splitting the current. Run between the large and small rocks to avoid the undercut that lies to the left of the small rock. This is a scary hazard that comes at an unexpected time on the run (just as you let your guard down post-big drops).

Goto http://filebox.vt.edu/users/cdgorman/index.html for more SE creeking videos

Hucking a railgrab over Boxcar Falls on one of the
mmost crowded days the NFFB has probably seen in
a long time
Will Van De Berg boofing the top entry drop on
Boxcar Falls
Joe Gildea boofing Boxcar Falls
Jim Millett boofs Boxcar falls on NFFB
Joe Gildea boofing the upper drop on Boxcar Falls
Jim Millett running the entry drop on Boxcar Falls
Will Van De Berg hucking a railgrab over Boxcar to please the masses
Joe Gildea giving the people what they want with a boof over Boxcar
Jim Millett throwing the Huka over the Falls

Rob Keener first time on the NFFB.

I ran this once at 225 cfs and would consider that a minumum level to get down the river below submarine. Of course there is a takeout at submarine falls that cuts all of the flatwater out of the run.

Forum: BoaterTalk

Re: Asheville boaters, will N Fork of French Broad be an option on Saturday? by roscoepwavetrain May 07 2003, 12:41 GMT New

Re: We went there last night and couldn't find the guage. It was under water! Trip report on upper Davidson... by tallman May 07 2003, 13:14 GMT New

Date: May 07 2003, 14:20 GMT

From: tcorey

A buddy and I went up there yesterday as well and ran the river.

We left Greenville around 1:15 and got to the gauge around 2:20. Not bad. It was raining hard on the way up there. I was concerned that it may be too high but the gauge was reading right at a foot. NO PROBLEM! The highest I have run it was 1'10' so I knew we would be fine.

When we got to the put in I noticed that the water was definitely higher than a foot. But surely it wasn't 10' higher so we should be fine. When we got through the first few entrance rapids I was thinking it was higher than 1'10' but Ryan is a good paddler so we should be o.k.

Boxcar was fine and we ran it with no problems. Then we hit the next stretch of rapids and I knew then that the water level was higher than I had ever been on. The routes through the rapids didn't change but rock's that you normally see where gone. The Clog was huge and Midnight hole was gone. It was just a huge wave. We walked Submarine. When I ran it at 1'10' it just pushed everyone into the undercut and it looked like it would do the same thing at the level we were at.

We hiked out and decided to hit it again. I had put a mark on the bank at the put in to get an idea of how much the water would rise in case we did do a second run. It had risen over 6' in under an hour and it was still rising. We didn't have any trouble the first time so we decided to hit it again at this level. Let me tell you. 6' makes a HUGE difference on that river. We eddied out high above Boxcar and walked down to it. It was a monster. The swells would push you back into the hole at the bottom and the water was bubbling up 10' past the end of the drop. We opted to walk that and we were wondering what the rest of the river was going to look like. We blinked twice and we were at the Clog. It was amazing how fast that water was. We entered the clog in the center (like normal) and headed left. We hugged the left bank and again, there was no hole, just a huge wave at the bottom.

We walked Submarine again. I think at these levels that is the worst rapid on the river. We hiked out and stopped by the guage on the way out. The top of the gauge was under the water. I'm guessing it was in the 2'6' range.

Great water level! About 550cfs on USGS.

Jan 1,2003 - The strainers in Submarine seem to be all gone as of today. Great job Canoeman!

Caution further downstream a riverwide strainer still exsits! You can eddy on river right and butt slide down some rocks into a class II/III current. Be careful please!

I noticed a lot of long logs still in the river, just waiting for the next flush of rain to move them around.

From Canoeman on Boatertalk:

To everyone who boats the North Fork of the French Broad near Brevard, N.C., the big strainers just below Submarine Falls have been removed.

Submarine is the 8-9 foot drop toward the end of the gorge against a rock cliff on the left. A very large tree with about four trunks peeled off the cliff a while back and was blocking the whole river about 50 feet below the falls. Yesterday we spent more than three hours hiking in and cutting the trees out. This involved hanging off the cliff with a chainsaw to cut the trunks, ferrying people to a gravel bar on the far side of the river in my Super Fly rodeo play canoe, and cutting and dragging the trunks to the gravel bar using a come-along and ropes. I spent about 2 1/2 hours on the slippery rocks in my underwear, polartech and bare feet cutting the trees and tying off the ropes so the rest of the group could haul them ashore. At one point I was cutting through a trunk when it broke sending my 12-inch Homelite chainsaw to the bottom of the river. Amazingly, after spending about 90 seconds 3 feet down on the ice cold river bottom, it started right up. I almost froze my ass off, but we got the job done.

As we were getting ready to haul all our gear 1/2 mile straight up to the top of the gorge, I cut a 12-inch tree that was stuck between the large undercut rock in the center of the river and the right shore about 100 feet down from Submarine. Both ends are still there, but you can get around. Beware there are still some logs below the surface against the river-left cliff just downstream of the 'Closet of Doom' at the base of the falls. There are also some other strainers left in the easy stuff downstream that we didn't get to for lack of time.

So the next time you paddle the N. Fork you may notice these nasty strainers are gone, and thank your lumberjack boating friends: Lee Belknap and his 14-year-old daughter Liz, Mike Lewis, and yours truly, Canoeman.

At lower flows the right line of boxcar gets really bony. The water barely goes around the rock just before the boof so you will probably end up getting dropped into the meat of the hole. The left line is a little shadier but looks better than the right line at lower flows. When you enter the top of the left line, drive straight down the tongue with lots of speed aiming at the rooster tail so you can get a good boof over the far side of the drop (try and drive out onto the rock face if you can). Oh yeah, and get a good breath before you land because if you don't get far enough out you'll go deep.

Peace, Eli

The first slide on the North Fork of the French Broad.

Will Reeves cruising thru the boogie water on the North Fork.

Photo courtesy of and copyright by Julie Keller.

Nice rainbow at bottom

On this day, Peter Horne was the only open boater in our group to sucessfully run Box Car. I won't mention what the other swimmer..... er.... um..... I mean, open boater did.
Sean Thompson running a nice line at Box Car.
Jennifer McDonald running Sand Paper
The Hwy 64 paddler's gage is on the upstream center pilon. It isn't the easiest gage to read. So, here's a quick lesson: The bottom of the 0 is 0', the bottom of the 1 is 1', the bottom of the 2 is 2'. The marks are 3' apart, so the first mark above the bottom of the 1 would be 1'3', the next mark 1'6', and so on....
Jim Kelley running Diagra Slide.
Jim Kelley running Island Rapid
Here's most of my paddling partners eddie hopping thier way down the top part of The Clog.
Most paddlers take out at Alligator Rock. This is the view of the take-out, looking upstream and standing next to Alligator Rock. That bright patch in the woods (photo left) is the take-out beach. So its very easy to find from the river.
Most paddlers take out at Alligator Rock instead of the Hwy 64 bridge. This unique rock formation is hard to miss from the road! Maybe it should have been named 'Crocodile Rock'.
This is Kirk Duchow running Diagra Slide. What you don't see is the boulder I am standing on to shoot the photo. The boulder blocks most of the right side of the drop and is slightly undercut. Its not hard to avoid, but could become an issue at higher levels.
This is Jim Leutenegger running the final drop of Island Rapid.
This is Amy Conger and Jim Leutenegger running the top section of Island Rapid. Look at the center top of the photo and you can see the boulder (island) that gives the rapid its name.
Here is Kirk Duchow about to run the final drop in Island Rapid. If you look over Kirk's left shoulder you can see the boulder (island) that gives the rapid its name. One note: this shot makes the bottom hole look much larger than it actually is.
Jim Leutenegger running Sandpaper.

Although the NF is more famous for its 22' water fall named 'Boxcar' it is full of fun and challenging rapids which require a boaters full attention. This picture is the entrance to a rapid called 'Water Cannon'. Strap on your seat belt when you get ready to run this one!