Nantahala Outdoor Center Guest Appreciation Festival: A river experience

Drew Nelson braces at Nantahala Falls. Photo: Barry Nichols

Take the rugged beauty of the Smoky Mountains, the raw power of the Nantahala River, hundreds of people hawking outdoor gear in a festival atmosphere, add four fearless teenagers and what do you get? Four area youths having a blast at the annual Guest Appreciation Festival (GAF) at the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) in Bryson City, N.C.

NOC is a multi-sport adventure center that offers instruction and products for recreational hobbies — kayaking, canoeing, rafting, backpacking, hiking, mountain biking, flyfishing and more. NOC is dedicated to educating and training outdoor enthusiasts of all levels by providing instruction ranging from one-day guided trips down the Nantahala to week-long paddling schools to longer experiences to exotic locales to paddle some of the world’s most beautiful and challenging rivers.

Sports mom

I’m a kayak mom. I guess I’m a backpack mom, too. Oh, and I’m a triathlon mom. I could probably add a few more sports-related titles, but with three sons, it’s just part of the job description.

The difference between a soccer mom and me is that I actually participate in the sport with the kids.

My sons are Drew, 19, Cole, 16, and Graham, 10, and they keep my husband Tom, a local veterinarian, and me on our toes.

We have taught them to appreciate and respect the outdoors, especially mountains, lakes and rivers, and there are times I would swear they were born with gills. They wear water as comfortably as a pair of their favorite faded jeans.

I have loved seeing them attempt and perfect various outdoor skills. How to keep from chopping off the end of your thumb with a pocket knife. How to train for and complete triathlons. How to roll a kayak.

They are now reveling in teaching their friends to love the sports they so enjoy. That’s why the last weekend in October, our family, along with Cole’s buddy, Austin McMillan, 16, of Talladega, piled into my old Suburban after the Friday night football game, towed a utility trailer with five kayaks and gear, and drove to the Brookside Campgrounds just west of the NOC. We arrived at the campgrounds about 2:30 a.m., quickly and quietly pitched our tents, and squeezed into our sleeping bags.

Nantahala Outdoor Center

NOC provides a wide variety of equipment for rental, and at the end of each season, they hold GAF in their multiple parking lots and sell the equipment they have rented and used throughout the season so they can make room for new gear for the following year. The hot-frenzy selling event kicks off early in the morning on Saturday and continues through Sunday evening.

In addition, NOC allows private individuals and paddling clubs to rent booths at GAF to sell outdoor gear. Bartering is allowed and even encouraged. A kayak marked for $500 may be cut to $350 by Saturday evening, and if you can wait it out, the kayak might be as low as $250 by Sunday evening. Bargains abound.

Manufacturers of the newest equipment are well represented, touting the latest play boats or most advanced technical gear. Whitewater paddlers can “demo” a boat to see if it is really what they want before they fork out the dough.

Already at the campgrounds were friends Kaye Saunders and her daughter Katie, 18, of Anniston.

Katie, Cole and Austin are all high school students at The Donoho School in Anniston. “I went rafting on the Ocoee River for the first time when I was 12-years old,” said Katie, a petite athlete who runs track all year. “And I loved the feeling of a mix of fear and excitement.”

Katie had recently completed one of the NOC’s whitewater instruction classes, the Novice Rapid Progressions Teen Clinic where she learned paddle strokes, turns, rescues, peelouts and other techniques.

This would be her first full-fledged kayaking trip down the Nantahala River, but first we all wanted to see what bargains we could discover at GAF.

Guest Appreciation Festival

“GAF is a great weekend to go to the Nantahala. You can score great deals on gear and boats and many other items,” said Drew, a pre-vet student at Auburn University. “While the river is more crowded during GAF, you get to meet people from all over, and more advanced kayakers give me tips and help coach me.”

Austin, normally quiet and shy, was pretty pumped about the whole experience. He had his list of items to haggle for at the festival — spray jacket, spray skirt, etc. Cole had spent some time teaching Austin the basics of paddling a kayak on the lake where we live on Cheaha Mountain. Drew and Cole have been kayaking since they were big enough to steer a boat.

A few weeks before, my husband had taken the boys to the Hiwassee River in Tennessee, designated as a one of America’s Scenic Rivers, to allow Austin to get some paddling time in before coming to the more intimidating Nantahala River.

The Nantahala River rolls swiftly through the Nantahala Gorge, a steep-sided valley cutting through the mountains.

The Nanty, as affectionate fans have dubbed it, is controlled by the Nantahala Lake dam, where the water is released each morning about 8 a.m. from the bottom of the dam. In the warmer months, the water is numbingly cold and takes your breath away if you should ever be expelled from your raft or have to bale from your kayak.

In the winter months, the water in the river is actually warmer due to thermaclines in the lake above the dam that flip-flop the colder water from the bottom to the surface, allowing the warmer water on the bottom to be released when the river is “cut on” each morning. The water is “cut off” each afternoon around 5 p.m. By 7 p.m., the powerful Nantahala is reduced to little more than a gurgling brook.

We awoke to heavy frost on our tents and warm breath clouds bursting forth each time we opened our mouths to speak. Our sleeping bags felt way too good to even think of climbing out into the frigid air, but hey, there were bargains to be had, and somebody else might get to take home our gear if we didn’t arrive first. The call of the “unbelievable deal” got us up and moving.

A constant hum of excitement emanated from the crowd as we made our way through the flea market of junk and treasures.

Where else could you find an obsolete eight-track tape player laid out next to slightly used, but not abused, state-of-the-art Ipods? Besides the myriad of pre-owned gear, GAF offers costume contests and face painting for younger kids, canned goods and local honey, pumpkin carving exhibits, trick-or-treating from booth to booth and delectable food, some for free with a purchase of $10 or more.

GAF includes live music, complete with a deejay who narrates and updates the crowd about current and upcoming events. The deejay directed our attention to two mountain bike aficionados who were balanced on top of stacked picnic tables. A father and son show, they would jump from table to table while teetering on their nubby back tires. Bouncing on the back tire, each would take a turn doing his best tricks, to the delight of the spectators.

Drew, Cole and Graham decided they would try their luck at the apple bobbing.

The core of selected apples had been injected with various colors of food coloring. Each color represented a different prize.

They had to practically go scuba diving to retrieve the apples, but each son came up with one. The deejay cut the apples open to see if they won anything. Graham — nothing. Cole — nada.

Drew — red coloring! Drew won a really nice hydration pack made by Salomon. A real treat, and he got to eat the apple!

Local kayakers pose for a group photo before descending the Nantahala River. Photo: Barry Nichols

Drew had his heart set on purchasing a new boat, a Pyranha S:6, but throughout the day, the ones he found were priced beyond his self-imposed limit of $250. At the end of the day, as he was leaving the festival, there sat his boat.

The young man selling it was trying to line his purse before traveling to Colorado to work at a snow ski resort. After a few minutes of haggling, and the realization that all he had in his pockets after a few small purchases was $239, Drew had his new boat on his shoulder and a satisfied smile on his face.

“My cousin has this same boat,” said Drew, “and when I borrowed it, I loved it. It turns well. It has a wide front and back which allows it to catch water easily and do enders and stern squirts.” Enders are when you dip the front of your boat into the rapid, and the end of the boat is up in the air. With stern squirts you dip the back of your boat into the rapid, and it shoots the front of your boat up. Cartwheels are when you force your boat end-over-end.

All the teenagers were off to the surfing rapids to try out the new boat and all the new gear. We parked slightly off the side of the slender, curving mountain road that winds its way through the gorge, directly up from the popular surfing rapids. Paddlers congregate at these rapids to practice ferrying across the river, eddying out of the main current to the still water behind large boulders along the edge of the river, and surfing the cascading rapids.

To “surf” a rapid means that you paddle your boat upstream, against a strong current, as hard as you can and dip the nose of your boat directly into the rapid, which will grab and hold your boat there with minimal effort on your part. Once positioned, the paddler is supposed to lift his paddle in both hands directly over his head, sort of a victory signal for defeating the rapid. Most paddlers have the opportunity to practice their rolls at surfing rapids, too. A lot of them end up having to “swim.”

Swim means that you have had to bale out of your boat after flipping upside down. This means you didn’t have a successful roll, and you had to pop your spray skirt and push out of the boat. A spray skirt is the rubbery, neoprene lid that tucks over the lip of the kayak and seals the paddler in the kayak and the water out, allowing them to roll.

To roll a kayak is to flip upside down, head in the water, and then with a hip-snap motion, roll your kayak back upright. A consistent roll is the mainstay of experienced kayakers. It is generally the first thing a new paddler learns, even before all the paddling strokes and braces.

Mimicking the movements of a roll as he talks, Cole says when you have to swim, “At first you feel relieved to get out of the situation, then you’re embarrassed.”

“Swimming is just part of it,” Cole continued seriously. “Kayaking etiquette is such that you watch each other’s back. You help each other out. Everybody swims at some point.”

“I love the feel of being upside down in a rapid,” said Drew laughing, his black afro-curls bouncing.

“The only way I can describe it is it’s like being upside down in a washing machine, not that I’d know what that’s like.”

Continued …