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< Sept/Oct 2005
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Whitewater Town USA What Nashville is to country, Asheville is to kayaking Joe Carberry

For a moment, nestled in a comfortable bed in Shane Benedict’s basement 20 minutes from the heart of Asheville, N.C., I almost wish there’d been no rain this week. In the past two days Benedict, an owner and designer with Liquidlogic Kayaks, has led me down the Green Narrows and into the depths of the Horsepasture, a steep, sliding creek that ends with a four-and-a-half-mile hike out to the road. My muscles ache as if I’d been tackled by an NFL linebacker.

For some, rain brings a deep, dark depression, transforming nature into a dismal and forbidding place. For paddle-crazy North Carolinians, the opposite is true. An average rainfall of 50 inches per year charges the river basins and tumbling creeks of the Great Smoky Mountains with fresh, cool whitewater. Old boaters become giddy as school children whenever an inch or more falls. Teenage girls giggle at the thought of their favorite playspot coming in, and raft company owners lick their lips in anticipation of free-spending customers. Nowhere is this rain-infused excitement more obvious than at the heart of North Carolina paddling: Asheville.

"We have a decision to make," Benedict says, sitting on the edge of my bed, wearing a crazed look. "The Linville Gorge is running. You guys wanna go for it?"

Yonton Mehler, Russell Blackhurst and I moan weakly as we get up. Even though Mehler is the only permanent resident, we’ve all been temporarily adopted into Benedict’s manic boating family, and we’re feeling the strain. Benedict is an anomaly. At 40, his energy level is through the roof. He beat all of us in the hike out of Horsepasture and now, at eight in the morning, he’s trying to coax three 20-somethings out of bed to go paddling again. He describes the Linville’s pine-covered hillsides and how the granite rises from the riverbed like a cathedral. Few southern rivers are more remote. Needless to say, we’re in.

A few hours later we’re deep in the mountains of western North Carolina, where Civil War-era people escaped the polarizing views of the day. At a time when Americans were either Unionist or Secessionist, these independent mountain folk hid in the vastness and beauty of the Smokies, just as independent paddlers now seek refuge on the rivers. Rounded and well worn, the Smokies are an old, wise range, thick with pines—mountains that Asheville resident and professional paddler Dixie Marree Pricket says, "Wrap themselves around you and make you feel at home."

North Carolina has rivers for every boater, from Class V monsters like the Green to play runs such as the Nolichucky, intermediate stretches on the Pigeon and even overnight canoe camping on the Tuckasegee—it’s all there for the taking. And the epicenter of it all is Asheville, with nearly 300 Class II-V runs within a three-hour drive. Add to this the length of the season and you get what well could be called Whitewater Town USA. "You can legitimately paddle from March through November," says Benedict. "The season is that long." For those hardy enough to handle the high cold water of winter, when the snow-thaw cycle periodically fills the mountain streams, the season never ends.

If the paddling-crazed locals are waffling about where to paddle amidst these options, they’re never at a loss of where to fuel up beforehand: the Waffle House, an institution I’d only heard of before coming to North Carolina. These ubiquitous 24-hour breakfast joints personify Southern-fried culture, the box-shaped restaurants holding strategic ground at every busy intersection and freeway exit. The four of us crowd into a small Waffle House booth, waiting for Shane’s wife Whitney Lonsdale, herself a stellar paddler. The waitress greets us with a half-toothed grin, calls us all "honey" and keeps our cups brimming with thin coffee.

"Did y’all hear about the shooting?" she asks in a deep North Carolina drawl. We look at each other in confusion. "Yeah the cops shot this lady at the gas station across the street. She was filling her car up and spilled some gas on her arm. When she lit a cigarette her arm caught fire. The cops shot her for waving a fire-arm."

The corny joke is a symptom of Asheville’s welcoming attitude. Everyone here has some helpful bit of information or advice to share. "There’s a lot of paddling that doesn’t have to do with water," says a conservative-looking older woman at the chamber of commerce. Her off-the-wall comment references the cultural diversity that has infiltrated Asheville in the last two decades. Once an industrial mountain town, Asheville—with a population of 70,000—has become a center of art, music and recreation. The combination can be a double-edged sword. It’s now a resort town with home appreciation rates the highest in North Carolina and the average house topping $200,000. Worse for those trying to settle down is the fact that low-paying service jobs outpace professional occupations. "It’s really hard to get a career-type job around here," admits Buffy Bailey-Berge, a boater who attends Western Carolina, one of four colleges in the area including UNC-Asheville, Montree College and Warren Wilson. "But the paddling makes up for it."

The music helps too. Every type and sound drifts from the hip bars and eateries, filling the night air Monday through Sunday. Wafting among Victorian lamp posts and European architecture, Irish music blares from a small pizza place, a Dave Mathews-sounding band rocks Barley’s Taproom and open mikes with Natalie Merchant-esque voices echo from every corner. And they’re not your dive-variety cover bands. In this retro city, musicians are as hard on each other as freestylers training at Secret Spot on the Nolichucky. Original music, like original lines through nearby Tallulah Gorge, abounds.

Originals thrive in Asheville’s boating community as well. The T-Dub Crew—Tommy Hilleke, Daniel DeLaVergne, John Grace, Nate Elliot, Pat Keller and Toby McDermott—comprises just a handful of the faithful who thrive on flows from the Green River Dam. "Because the paddling is so good around Asheville, you paddle year-round and form a cohesive unit with other boaters," says Hilleke. "You can find as high quality of runs here as you would traveling halfway around the world."

Hilleke and DeLaVergne were living in a trailer on the Little River outside Asheville, working and kayaking every day when DeLaVergne came up with an idea for a video magazine. He and Spencer Cooke modeled Lunch Video Magazine after the skateboarding video magazine 411, and nurtured it into an icon of Southeast paddling culture. They launched the quarterly video with the creation of the IR Triple Crown in 2000, a three-event series meant to push the limits of whitewater kayaking with a $15,000 purse. The video magazine has outlasted the event. "We wanted to do something besides a feature film," says DeLaVergne. "The idea is nothing new but it was something kayaking needed at the time." The cultishly cool Lunch Video has risen from the splashes of boofing hardcores who now leave their mark around the globe.

Today, the only mark I want to leave on the Linville Gorge is a few—hopefully minor—plastic scrapings on rocks. We’re all exhausted when we reach the last big drop after 12 miles of Class V. We choose to continue downstream to James Lake rather than endure an optional hike out. The river has been classic all day, pouring over granite inside a deep, forested canyon near the Tennessee border. The put-in road traversed a picturesque ridge—North Carolina to the east, Tennessee to the west. While Mehler and I discuss whether we have the energy to tackle the final drop, Shane slips into his boat, glides past us in the current, smoothly braces off a right-hand pillow and boofs out of sight. He makes it look easy, and we follow as the sun sets on a beautiful Carolina day.

Benedict developed his fluent technique the same place many southern paddlers learned the whitewater ropes: summer camp. He grew up in Knoxville, Tenn., and spent summers at a camp called The Mountain in Highlands, N.C., near the headwaters of the Chattooga. "You go through the different levels [of paddling] and work your way up," he says. "It’s amazing for your fundamentals." Some 80 camps operate in Henderson County alone. "There are people all over the country who started paddling at camps in western North Carolina," adds Lonsdale.

And the whitewater education is well-rounded. "I hate to see kids just learn to kayak," says Frank Bell Jr., who took over Camp Mondamin from his father Frank Sr. in the 1970s. "Here they learn the basics of all types of paddling. Learning all these different skills boosts their confidence and improves their lives in general. And that’s our main goal." Bell’s son Andrew has been a member of the US OC1 freestyle team and recently returned to Mondamin to run the camp’s paddling program. "Most of our staff is returning campers," says Frank Jr.

Camps like Mondamin create paddling tradition, a commodity in which western North Carolina is extremely rich. Open boaters were the first to run many of the region’s more moderate drainages (Frank Sr. first ran Section Nine of the French Broad in the 1920s, and a rapid there still bears his name). In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, kayakers began to knock off steeper rivers like the Toxaway, Horsepasture and Thompson. Joe Cassy, Russ Kullmar and Kent Wigington were all at the forefront of the steep revolution in North Carolina. Their antics were captured in kayaking films like Southern Fried Creekin’ and Plunge, produced by Wayne Gentry, another local legend. "We run stuff in little boats and people get pummeled," says Al Gregory, a steep creeker from Asheville who has put his signature on several first descents. "Those guys were running super-committing rivers in huge boats. They definitely fired it up."

"Fire it up"—the phrase is a mainstay of Southeast paddling vernacular, and closely linked to the Green, perhaps the state’s single most important river in the evolution of whitewater boating. My first run was like a baptism, in which I "fired up the monkey"—meaning I ran Gorilla Falls. The Green is ridiculously steep, 365 feet per mile at its steepest, but as clean as a freshly mopped floor. There is very little wood and other than Sunshine—which, out of respect, I chose to walk on my second trip—the rapids all have definitive lines. "The Green nurtures all of these awesome boaters," says DeLaVergne. "Listening to the dam report over the phone starts a lot of people’s mornings off."

Indeed, there is nothing quite like the Green, from the river itself to the way water flow is reported. Instead of a standard CFS rating, volume is measured as the percentage the turbines are open and releasing. "Today, the Green River Dam is releasing at 150 percent for 24 hours," the recording drawled when I called the flow phone on the morning of my Green initiation. With a little rain, locals estimated the level was about 175 percent. Definitely respectable. Two hundred is considered beefy. Benedict gave me quick directions as we worked our way down river with lots of boofs and quick turns before we eddied out to scout Gorilla. Ten kayakers moved through as I checked the steepest drop of the legendary run. An 18-foot sliding waterfall leads into a punchy, narrow speed trap followed quickly by a ten-foot drop terminating in a hole. I watched as Andrew Holcombe fired up the monkey, followed by Mehler, Benedict and Polk Dieters. I decided to run it after careful deliberation. I barely stroked off the lip and stayed forward through the speed trap. Everything went smoothly, and after a clean run through Sunshine I was ready to celebrate.

Celebrations are a big part of the Green River. Every fall, the Green River Race attracts boaters from throughout the South. They come to test their mettle against each other on their favorite river. Just as Lance Armstrong has dominated the Tour de France, Tommy Hilleke has ruled the Green River Race, taking home the coveted Green Glass Trophy four years in a row with five titles overall. "People just get into this run," says Gregory, who won the 2000 race. "It’s a culture all its own. People boat it every day and develop an extremely good skill set."

And locals take it seriously. Feeling good after my second successful day on the Green, I give my hosts grief about their obsession with the Green. They don’t think I’m funny. "Have you ever gotten beat up at a take out," asks Nate Elliot, only half joking. Note to future visitors: Respect on the Green is earned not given.

"A lot of people center their boating around this river," says Gregory. It’s like Mavericks in surfing. Locals don’t want to see an inexperienced boater get hurt on their gem. Bailey-Berge broke her jaw in the bottom of Gorilla. Four years ago, a Nantahala guide knocked his front teeth out in Sunshine. These were locals. There’s a reason the Green is taken seriously.

Something else to be taken seriously around here is the number of women paddlers who base in Asheville and push the envelope just as hard as the guys. Aside from fantastic local boaters like Bailey-Berge, Pricket, Lonsdale, Katie Hilleke and Christie Dobson, Canadian Freestyle Team member and Girls at Play innovator Anna Levesque and Kiwi Maria Noakes also base out of this hip city. Noakes slid down Horsepasture with us—hardly worth mentioning had she not been two months pregnant. Before the birth of her first child, Dominique, she could be seen throwing loops on the Nantahala with a huge bulge in her spray skirt. And it wasn’t a beach ball. "As a woman, you look for more in a place than just paddling, and Asheville offers so much more," says Levesque. Adds Pricket, "It’s a nurturing atmosphere and we all sort of feed off that."

It’s six in the evening and a steady stream of whitewater junkies are filing into Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company, a boater hangout so core that a giant gorilla gripping a kayak is painted on the wall of the pub’s front entrance—a tribute to the Green’s Gorilla Falls. The excitement in the air is just as pulsating. DeLaVergne and Cooke are about to premiere an installment of Lunch Video Magazine and everyone who’s anyone is here to catch the show in a theater attached to the restaurant. Astral Buoyancy is in the house, as is Pyranha and Liquidlogic—all companies based in Asheville and the surrounding area. Other whitewater companies in the area include Watershed, Stahlsac and now even Confluence, which recently announced plans to move nine major paddlesports brands to Easley, S.C., an hour or two away. "It’s just an awesome paddling town," says Pyranha’s Jim Hager. "You can work hard and then paddle hard right in your backyard." The party goes late into the night in typical Lunch Video fashion. Company reps—all of them boaters—pass out swag, and most everyone goes home stuffed, buzzed and well informed on the happenings in the upper echelons of the boating world.

Before I fly out I’m lucky enough to hit a release on the Tallulah, where I catch a serious buzz running Oceana Falls, a 100-foot sliding rapid culminating in a gigantic hole. I watch Dieters hit the left line, go airborne, and roll quickly. I follow suit and catch the same lip, rolling in similar fashion.

It’s been an incredible boating week—the Green, Horsepasture, Linville and Tallulah—typical, I suspect, by local standards. With all of the area’s whitewater, it’s hard not to think for a moment of relocating to this boating Mecca. I was in Asheville during the spring, when the rains are consistent and rivers full. I think of the fall and how beautiful the colors would be, carrying as many shades and hues as there are waterways to paddle. The Smoky Mountains have definitely wrapped themselves around me and made me feel at home.