Day 4

 8:46pm


Today, the raft school and I traveled to the French Broad River which was a few hours away from the main campus. It is one of the oldest rivers in the world. The section we ran consisted of a few class 111 rapids and two class 1V's. That may sound fun, but the river is rain dependent and was fairly low. Whenever I moved away from the flowiest part of the rapid I was immediately stuck on a rock. This happened several times as the river is very wide and it is hard to find the best line. I got to do the last class IV section. Prior to entering the rapid, there were many rocks to get stuck on which was a good thing in this case so I could scout. I managed to not get stuck on the only part it would've been good too. I did the rapid reactive rather than proactive since it was so fast. I didn't lose any crew or flip the raft so I counted it as a successful run. Tomorrow for the last day, we will be running the Nantahala Falls all day long. 

Hours:

8:00am to 7:00pm

Day: 11 hours

Total: 41 hours

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 5

Image
 8:38pm     Today was the final day of raft guide school. The leader of the school called it fantasy island after the show from the 70s. Our fantasy would be to run the biggest rapid on a river all day long which we ended up doing. We rafted Nantahala Falls over and over again. Once we guided our way through the best line on the rapid, we were challenged to catch eddies or do rock spins and still run the best line. I did a good job of this. In the end, we got to do fun runs. For the first run, we packed a bunch of people onto an upside-down raft. It went surprisingly well as no one swam. For the last fun run, we stacked two rafts together. This also went very well as it didn't end in disaster. After turning in gear and putting away rafts, we received our graduation certificate.  Hours: 9:00am to 5:00pm Day: 8 hours Total: 49 hours
Read more

Day 2

 May 9, 2023 7:37pm Today, for raft guide training, we practiced eddy moves. Eddies are the upstream-flowing parts of the river where an obstruction in the river causes water to fill the void behind it. Eddies have many uses, and navigating them is very important. Rafts are very slow, so you need to start paddling to where you want to go fairly far from the eddy. Once entering the eddy, the water turns you upstream on its own, so there is no need to paddle until turned around to stop downstream momentum. When leaving the eddy, you want to leave from the top. The top of the eddy is going to have the fastest moving water and will therefore turn you downstream the fastest. It is also where the eddy line is the most forgiving. Overall, I did a good job with all of the maneuvers. At first, it took me a little to realize how slow the rafts are and was catching the eddies low. Once I learned, I was mostly catching them all high. The idea is the same with kayaking which I am very familiar ...
Read more

Weekly Reflection 2

Image
 12:52pm     My second week here at NOC was an eventful one. I first shadowed the learn-to-kayak program. We traveled to the Tuckasegee, Chattooga, and Nantahala Rivers. They were all a bit below my pay grade except for a section of the Chattooga, but there is always more to learn on the river no matter the gradient. One of my goals for the project was to start learning to be a kayak instructor, and I found this experience very helpful. I got to see what works and doesn't when trying to teach someone how to do something. Sometimes it's hard to simplify things when the way that you think about it is complicated. It can also be hard to get thoughts into words at times. This experience has made me consider getting my ACA kayak instructor certification.      On the weekend, I participated in the Swift Water Rescue course. It taught me techniques for river safety and rescue in different river conditions. I didn't just take this course to know how to save someone...
Read more