Watauga

Just a story to reiterate the seriousness of the left side of the clog. My friend, who is extremely experienced, and I were showing some beginners down this run with a flow of about 250. Neither of us had ever paddled this stretch but we were trying to get some friends out before a gorge run. When we get to the clog, I help the beginners portage and he begins boat scouting down the rapid as we get to the bottom. I try to waive him off, as basically 2/3rds of the river heads left and disappears under a house sized rock with smooth faces and no slowing of flow on the way in, but it's too late. He flips in the final chute and rolls just in time to broadside the undercut divider rock. At this point I start running to get a rope as he slowly typewriters backwards into the left side sieve. I'm convinced I'm about to watch a drowning as this is one of the worst sieves anywhere (including lower Meadow, Linville, etc.). I grab a rope and start jumping on the rocks over the smaller sieves on the right side, hoping that I can get to a spot where I can throw a rope into the mouth of the sieve if for no other reason than to convince myself that I tried. About 45 seconds after initial disappearance, he pops up in the pool below, having traversed under about 30 feet of rock. His boat, paddle, and shoes never come out.

I paddle across to where he has escaped the water to give him my shoes for hiking out and he recounts his subterranean battle. Once in the sieve, he exited his boat after it had stopped downstream progress. Seeing entrance light above him, he attempted to climb back up his boat but can't come anywhere near the surface. Feeling current heading down past his feet, he decided since he was going to die anyway he might as well go with it and started kicking his way through the wood pile below him and into the darkness. Unfortunately his skirt snagged on one of the logs, but he was able to snap it and start swimming with the current and eventually for the light. Lucky.

The lead in rapid is only class III and the whole thing looks fine from above. I would have bombed it too if we didn't have beginners with us. We knew about the rapid, but just thought it was a step above the rest of the run, not completely sieved out at the bottom. The left side (where he went), completely disappears. The right side is sieved out but is paddleable with the right flow and wood conditions. Definitely worth taking a look if you've never been there.