French Broad, North Fork

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.