March 9, 1997 – It was at 260cfs when we first paddled the Watauga in our big open boats. The core of the trip was Steve Frazier (not his first time), Milt Aitken & Don Kinser, all in manly open canoes, and Matt “Kansas” Woltz & Jim Smolka in lowly butt boats. But the Watauga is popular, so there were cameos from many other folks like Susan Wilson, Heidi Domeison and more. Name them if you know them!<\/p>\n
Don’s Log Entry:
\nAwesome. Simply awesome! Great weather. Steve and I left the Chattooga yesterday afternoon at 5. We had dinner on the road and arrived at the Watauga about 10 PM. Milt met us there. We were suppose to meet Matt and Chris at the takeout campground. But camping is no longer allowed and we did not hook up with them until the morning. We put on about 11 and reached the takeout about 4. We spent a lot of time at Hydro and Stateline Falls. I almost flipped and rolled in a little class 3 right after the putin. I called it a brace, Milt called it a roll. Hydro is a biggie! Stateline is awesome. I had a good entrance into Hydro and ran down the left side, clipping the edge of the three holes above the final drop. The entrance is a tricky boof move before having to head left to missed a boulder. I lost my speed and just dropped over the last drop into the BIG HOLE. I made it through on a hard brace (very near a roll). This is a busy stream and I did real well. Steve was a great trip leader and guide. I had a great line through Stateline Falls, smooth and dry catching all the eddies. After all the hard stuff I got a little wet on some class 2-3 stuff and decided to keep going instead of bailing. Full of water, I got stuck on rocks (it was a little boney in spots at this level) and had a technical swim. I didn’t list it but it happened…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
March 9, 1997 – It was at 260cfs when we first paddled the Watauga in our big open boats. The core of the trip was Steve Frazier (not his first time), Milt Aitken & Don Kinser, all in manly open canoes, and Matt “Kansas” Woltz & Jim Smolka in lowly butt boats. But the Watauga […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","aiovg_categories":[14,24,17,40],"aiovg_tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","aiovg_videos","type-aiovg_videos","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","aiovg_categories-milts-raw-video","aiovg_categories-northcarolina","aiovg_categories-open-canoeing","aiovg_categories-waterfalls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_videos\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_videos"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/aiovg_videos"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"aiovg_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"aiovg_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitewatervideo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}