Linville River

Linville Trip Report (in 80+ degree weather) & new rapid rating system New

Forum: BoaterTalk

Date: Jun 11 2003, 12:33 GMT

From: paddleman m

Yesterday, three of us put in at Conley Cove and ran the 3rd Narrows of Linville out to the lake. I was in my OC1, Dennis in a C1, and Mike in a K1. Dennis has done Linville around 20 times, so he made a good leader to show us the lines.

What a beautiful place! The leaves were on the trees, flowers were out, clear water, beautiful cliffs towering over us and cool looking rapids.

What a wreck I feel today!

First off, the carry in took 50 minutes and was a huge pain carrying a 14 foot canoe. But, Mike was just as slow with his kayak. Some people carry out here, but why they would do that is beyond me.

The river started out with easy eddy hopping until we came to a more significant drop with a big hemlock blocking it. That was our only carry of the day. It was also the beginning of the sieves.

This section of the river has more sieves that the Lower Meadow. In every significant drop, a portion of the river was going under some boulder! I've run much harder rapids on other rivers, but I don't think I've run any rivers that have so many sieves.

As we got to the real rapids, our leader described and rated the rapids for our benefit. As you know, we usually use a I-VI classification. Some rivers, like the Grand Canyon have a 1-10 rating system. Well, apparently Linville has it's own system. The first rapid he described was rated 'Nasty Sonofabitch'. As we moved downstream, we were taught the rest of the rating system. As near as I can tell, here's how it related to the I-VI system:

III = Ain't Shit

IV = Sorry Little Bastard

V = Nasty Sonofabitch

V+ = MF

V++ = Nasty MF

Many of these rapids came with a history of something that happened there, such as 'That's the rock I pulled Bill and his boat out from under' or 'We lost a boat into that seive once' or even 'Stay away from there, I almost died there once'.

The water level when we put on was 1.65. That's as low as I'd ever like to see it. In the narrows, there was enough water, but the wider parts of the river were painfully shallow.

We scouted, set safety as necessary, and videoed a lot, so we were slow. But, even after the 50 minute walk in, the river took us 6 hours to run out. This is not your ordinary run, this is an expedition. And today, I am more sore than I have ever been from a paddling trip. I shall continue a treatment of cold beer application this afternoon. I'm sure that will help.