Today’s 90-Second Escape: Green River Narrows

As we wrap up our first year of exploring North Carolina’s Classic Hikes, our thoughts turned to other iconic adventure spots in the state. That took us back to 2012, when we tagged along on a hike out of Asheville to the Green River gorge. The hike itself was great; the cherry on top was watching some elite kayakers tackle some of the gnarliest whitewater in the East, a series of rapids through the gorge, including the Class V Gorilla.

Here’s a flashback to that day and a reminder of North Carolina’s impressive adventure resume.

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Tonight, proponents of the Falls Whitewater Park will go before the Raleigh City Council in hopes of adding the proposed park to an upcoming Raleigh parks bond referendum. The council should unanimously approve the request. A little background, then the “why?”
The effort to create a modest whitewater park at the base of Falls Lake dam began more than a decade ago. It was spurred in part by efforts to lure the headquarters of USA Canoe/Kayak, the governing body of Olympic paddling. (USA Canoe/Kayak ended up going to Charlotte, which had a shinier thing in the U.S. National Whitewater Center. In 2011, USA Canoe/Kayak abandoned Charlotte for Oklahoma City.)
Herein lies part of the beauty of the Falls Whitewater Park: unlike the 500-acre, $38 million National Whitewater Center, which offers everything from mountain biking trail to a climbing tower to whitewater paddling on a half-mile man-made river, the Falls Whitewater Park epitomizes simplicity. Utilizing the existing rock structure at the base of the dam with minor channeling tweaks, the Falls Whitewater Park could offer whitewater paddling on release from the dam near its minimum of 150 cubic feet per second; thus, nearly guaranteed recreation year-round. Approximately $345,000 has already been allocated by Raleigh and Wake County toward the project; the overall cost has not been determined, but the investment would be overshadowed by the ultimate return.
The Falls Whitewater Park would be at the heart of a rapidly-emerging outdoors playground; it’s addition could establish the area as a regional adventure destination. Consider:

• Neuse River Trail. This summer, the 27.5-mile Neuse River Trail (with another five miles extending into Clayton) will be complete. The paved greenway in itself has become a destination for road cyclists tired of dealing with traffic. There’s the overall 32 miles of Neuse River greenway itself, there’s also the connecting 15-mile Walnut Creek Trail,  a paved greenway spanning south Raleigh, and the soon-to-be finished Crabtree Creek Trail, which will also run about 15 miles along its namesake creek. With a combined 58 miles of connected greenway, the Raleigh network is one of the most complete secondary transportation networks around, making it a destination in itself.
• Mountains-to-Sea Trail. From the parking lot at the base of Falls Lake Dam, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail disappears into the woods and doesn’t end, currently, for about 72 miles, in Orange County. It’s one of the longest natural surface trails in an urban area in the country. Although it’s closed to mountain biking, it’s an ideal escape for hikers, the perfect training ground for runners.
• Forest Ridge Park. Construction is scheduled to begin early next year on Forest Ridge Park, a 600-acre City of Raleigh nature park nearby on Falls Lake. Initially, the park will include five miles of mountain bike trail, hiking trail, ropes courses and more.
• Neuse River. Raleigh has five access points on the Neuse River, making it a convenient and popular escape for urban paddlers.
• Falls Lake. The 12,500-acre lake is popular with a range of outdoors types, from paddlers and fishermen, to sailors and water skiers. Oh, and stand-up paddleboarders, too.

Already, at least two outfitters run paddling trips exclusively on the Neuse and a new bike shop has opened near the base of the dam. It won’t be long before bike shuttle service and guided trips, a la the Virginia Creeper Trail, are added. Restaurants will benefit even more from the throngs of famished hikers, runners, cyclists and paddlers. Properly promoted, the local lodging industry should prosper as well as outsiders come for a broad sampling of adventure in the capital city. Raleigh Parks & Rec’s own Adventure Program would be able to up its offering of paddling-related classes.
The Falls Whitewater Park is one of the best investments the city and, hopefully, local voters, can make. Here’s hoping the City Council will act to include it in the next park bond.

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Update: The Raleigh City Council will vote at its June 17 meeting whether to include $2.8 million for the Falls Whitewater Park in its next park bond referendum. That meeting will begin at 1 p.m.

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Twice in the last week I ran into active types with a common dilemma: I have relatives I need to entertain, they aren’t all that active, but I’d like to do something adventurous with them. In both cases, the relatives were teenagers and in both cases the person with the entertainment dilemma was pretty sure their charges had adventure gene — it just hadn’t had a chance to flourish. And, surprisingly, in both cases neither person had experienced the obvious option: the National Whitewater Center usnwc.org in Charlotte.

As I’ve mentioned in this space, the NWC is about more than whitewater. That is, however, the obvious place to start, on the closed-circuit concrete river that offers class II and III fun. There’s also mountain biking, a climbing wall, 18 miles of trail, flat-water paddling, stand up paddleboarding, zip lines, canopy tours — everything you could want to jump-start your well-meaning but sluggish kin.

With that in mind, we revisit a previous trip to the NWC. Feel free to tag along — and don’t forget to hang on!

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Today’s 90-Second Escape: The Gorilla

I’ve been working on the whitewater section of a book I’m writing on adventure sports in the Carolinas (tentatively titled “Adventure Carolinas,” scheduled for publication by UNC Press in Spring 2014 — provided I finish it by the 15th of this month), when I came across this video from early summer. I was on a hike into the Narrows section of the Green River south of Asheville when we discovered a legion of whitewater kayakers attempting what I have since learned, from the Benners Bob and David in their “A Canoeing & Kayaking Guide to the Carolinas,” “is generally considered the most bodacious rapid every run by the elite eastern hair-heads. It is a runnable, legitimate Class VI rapid.”

Class VI, btw, is the hardest there is and is usually considered unrunnable. Until someone runs it.

Anyway, I was re-wowed by the clip and thought I would share it again. Enjoy.

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Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.

Today’s 90-Second Escape: Green River Narrows.

As we descended down, nearly straight down in spots, into the Green River Narrows, I couldn’t help but think this was one of the craziest places to hike I’d ever seen: the last half mile into the canyon was a rope assist that we all gladly accepted. When we reached bottom, though, I realized hiking was a breeze considering what else was going on in the canyon.

I’d call the 75 or so whitewater paddlers we watched crazy except the look in their eyes wasn’t that of the deranged. It was the look of intense focus. Of athletic artists standing on the house size boulders past which the Green River squeezes, studying the river, plotting their moves, then getting in their creek boats and executing a dance that couldn’t exhibit even the slightest misstep, or else.

Spend 90 seconds and enjoy the waltz of the whitewater kayaker.

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