Having warmed up on the Cheoah, Sunday we were off to the Green Narrows! It would be both Druse and my first trips down, with Jose and Nate from Chattanooga, Anne from Birmingham, and Tim from Atlanta leading us down. And, by God, the Green is the real s**t. There’s about a ½ mile of class II warm up and then it’s on…starting with Bride of Frankenstein and then right after that, Frankenstein. A lot of folks told me that Frankstein is one of the hardest rapids on the narrows (if you take out the big 3, of course). I can see why. I took the right line, going through a narrow slot over a drop and then immediately turning right and boofing into an eddy in front of an undercut. I hit the bottom of the eddy, got washed against the undercut, and had to lean into it and push myself back in to the eddy. Whew. Up next were other rapids like Pin Cushion, Boof or Consequence, right line at Go Left of Die…lots of narrow slots, boofs into blind turns, crazy fun. You creekers from Arkansas would love this stuff. It’s STEEP.
We finally get out to look at Reverse Seven Foot and Zwick’s. So you’ve got to boof Reverse 7 into an eddy, peel out and then try to hit the tricky top hole at Zwick’s perfectly to set you up for a boof over the bottom hole (which is just nasty). Dru went first…I’ll let him tell you that story
. I couldn’t see anything from the eddy at Reverse 7. So I peeled out, hit the hole in the middle with a 1:00 angle and left boof stroke, cleared it!! And then headed for a nice clean boof at the bottom. Whew again. Some of us then portaged Chief. The move didn’t look too bad, but the consequences there are deadly. Then I found myself being the most scared I had been all day, when I was the only one with a rope set in between Chief and Gorilla. Good lord! But everyone ran it clean. Then I see Chris Gragtmans (Team Riot) paddle by on his way to run Gorilla…sweet!
Gorilla looks insane by the way. I just don’t see how people run that on a regular basis. So we do the seal launch at Gorilla, land flat into about 6 inches of water and then have to turn and run Nies’ Pieces which was a hell of a lot crazier than it looked from the top. Then two more big fast slides…Power Slide and Rapid Transit. Next up is Groove Tube, which is a 12 foot boof and then a must-make eddy on the right…unless you want to run Sunshine, of course. The eddy doesn’t look that hard to make from the top but I barely made it, and as I’m getting out of my boat, we seen Nate miss it and then head into the entrance of Sunshine. Oh my God! Time stood still for those few seconds until we heard the cheers at the bottom. He had made it over Sunshine clean! Wow, Nate rocks. But I still get nauseated thinking about it!
After that are quite a few technical class IV rapids and then my favorite…Hammer Factor! I will go back to the Green if only to run Hammer Factor. Like most rapids on the Green, you can’t see what’s coming. I follow Anne to boof a slot on the left and then I’m sliding fast down a shelf that’s dropping toward a huge slanted wall on the right. The wall of course makes a large diagonal hole at the bottom. Anne told me to square up to the hole and just ride it out, which is what I did. I got completely submerged (I think it gave me a hug
) and then it launched me out. It doesn’t get any better than that.So there you have it. Great times, great people. I’m so happy to have experienced it all with good people like Dru and Kaylan, and of course, leaders like Jose, Nate, Anne, and Tim, who just give you confidence and make everything lots of fun. Life is good.
Permagrinin’
-Cathy
P.S. FYI, it was running at 7 inches. And we did it in 2 hours.
cause I was chicken. After the most recent opportunity about a year ago, hearing the reality of the trip report from Jason, and the fact that I'm not getting any younger, made my inspiration of being able to one day paddle this river seem far out of reach. This time my gut told me "YES" and I really felt the desire to go. 
