Swift Water Rescue Incident Report
Haw River, NC (150 to Troxler Mill)
Summer 2009

Trip Report: Yes, Class I can be Dangerous
By Miss Kayaker X and Y

Our planned two hour Haw River paddle on Saturday that ended up being TWO DAYS. Yep. That's right, we had to emergency camp on the bank of the Haw River. We got this great new book called Paddling Eastern North Carolina Rivers and mistakenly took what he wrote as the gospel. Well, he will be getting an email from me for sure. Not sure why I keep getting in such extreme paddling expeditions and GOING BACK FOR MORE BEATINGS, BUT it was worth it. The SEWAGE, the THOUSANDS of downed trees that just about broke my spirit in two, when the river finally opened up it was GORGEOUS.

But no sooner than we conquered all the damn trees we had to deal the freakin' boulders and rocks. Millions of rocks. It was gorgeous. But they sure are rough to walk through. So now when I read: " some downed trees in this stretch, I will know he really means there are thousands of downed trees that makes the river impassable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

We tried to take some very bad pics from her camera phone, OH SPEAKING OF PHONES, both batteries died Sat. night, and my husband called 911 and went to the Sheriff's office by Sunday afternoon at 4pm when we were supposed to return Saturday evening. (We spoke with him Sun. morning but thought surely we would be home by noon, I mean how many trees and rocks could there beeee?? 6.7 miles turned into 11 hours of paddling time and a three/four hour trip turned into 24 hours!!!!!! Because we hardly paddled! Last week we did 10 miles in 3 hours so we weren't expecting this! But that was on Lake Townsend. I have a healthy----very healthy respect for ....RIVERS. We had been on the Dan before but that is no comparison. You don't even have to paddle on the Dan! All you need is a tube for cryin' out loud and just float. Who needs paddles?????

Soo.....the state of the HAW between the HWY 150 BRIDGE near Osceola and Troxler Mill Road Bridge OH HELL AND SPEAKING OF BRIDGES, THAT ____HOLE THAT WROTE THE BOOK failed to mention that the take-out at Troxler Bridge required a DEATH STOMACH CRAWL UP A SHEER CLIFF AND I HAD TO USE MY JEEP TO PULL THE KAYAKS UP THE EMBANKMENT. Miss Y went into shock that night and I am on antibiotics from getting sick from exhaustion...........and believe it or not I am grinning ear to ear writing this because it actually (besides the thousands of downed trees) was quite an adventure and that is what we crave. I think we are ready for that ROLL class and some whitewater but I need a few weeks to recover b/c you couldn't PAY me enough money to kayak a river right this minute. But I'll get over it. And go back for more.

I did report the pollution (major sewage smell and pockets of chemical slicks) and the absence of fish to Save our Rivers and Adopt your Watershed. Are you guys affiliated with any of these groups? We did see one stealthy beaver (very cool dude he was), a deer who snorted louder than any I'd ever heard, heard some super cool owls, one blue heron, a hawk and hmmmmm, spent a LOT OF TIME praying to God that the snakes were already hibernated since WE WALKED MOST OF THE FRIGGIN' RIVER and were stepping over dead trees where snakes love to hang out. So......what do you do when your GUIDEBOOK THAT I BOUGHT TO GUIDE ME gives you not enough information????????????????? :)))

Thanks a lot for giving us the KAYAKING CRAZY BUG.
We are truly crazy for kayaking.

Happy Paddling!


p.s.-did I mention we had exactly TWO waterproof matches, and TWO emergency blankets. I will never underestimate those two items again. They saved us.

p.s.s.-We now really appreciate GUIDES. With prior knowledge of the trip. We will proceed very carefully on our own from here on out. Obviously you cannot trust a book even if it is the latest, most updated version. And when the small print says: "this river is hard to paddle when low", we need to find out IF IN FACT IT IS LOW. I just read in Wildlife in NC that Fall is one of the lowest times for water flow. Go figure. Obviously we did not know that. It was hell. The Haw River will be forever the Hell River in our book. It is branded. We almost used those pages of the guidebok to start our precious fire (btw we only used one of our two matches damn we are good and kept the fire going all night), but I couldn't burn pages from a book when it came down to it even though it was the Hell River pages, so we used our only toilet paper to help start the fire. That sucked. LOL