Asheville, Day Three

On Sunday, we missed our B&B's breakfast again to leave early for a whitewater rafting trip on the French Broad river. The French Broad is generally believed to be one of the three oldest rivers in the world and is one of the few in the Northern hemisphere that flows North.

This was my first time rafting, and J.'s first as an adult (she had done some decades ago as a Girl Scout). On J.'s cousin's recommendation, we booked a trip with the Nantahala Outdoor Center. One of the larger outfits in the area, they offer trips around the entire Western North Carolina and Tennessee. We were the first to arrive, but by the time everyone gathered our group was sizeable. A church group of teenagers from Alabama with their two chaperoning adults, another couple a few years older than ourselves, and two twenty-something women in high-tech REI gear. The morning was cool, and most people, including J., availed themselves of wetsuits. Citing my heritage, I passed. Wisely, it turned out – the day grew very warm quite quickly and J. had to peel hers off on our first stop. The water was very low, about 40% below its average level for the season, so the lead guide offered people an option of what he called duckies – one-person inflatable kayaks that are more maneuverable in shallow water. A few of the teens, one of their chaperons, and one REI woman took him up. After a not particularly confidence-inspiring safety video, we piled into an old school bus and headed for the put-in. Once assembled, we ended up with a half-dozen duckies, two guides in kayaks, and three rafts. The raft J. and I were in brought up the rear, and we were the only ones with two guides on board, Brandon and Spitzer (got to be a nickname). Both college-age, they were unfailingly nice and friendly. Spitzer was the more experienced one and quieter, while Brandon was still learning the more advanced skills, called out the paddling commands, and narrated the river lore as we floated down the slow sections between rapids.

Rafters and kayakers classify the rapids' difficulty using numbers from one to six, but the procedure for assigning a class to a rapid is a bit of a black science. It seems to have less to do with the height, width or the speed of the current and more with how many people got killed trying to paddle it. A class six rapid is one that has never been successfully negotiated, successful in this case meaning alive and still in the boat. Once a rapid is successfully negotiated, it is downgraded to a five-point-something. According to our guides, we were going to go through several class two rapids and two class-threes. I am not sure I was ever able to tell the difference. Some of the class-twos sure seemed more exciting. Overall, the experience was fun. The water was indeed low, and we scraped a lot of rocks. Several times, Brandon had to get out of the raft (the river was shallow enough in most places) and push us off. On the bigger rapids, however, it was quite a bit of fun. The excitement lasts only a second or two, but it's intense while it's there. Towards the end, a couple of times our guides would purposely point the raft into the rapid backwards and we would not only tumble but also spin through the roaring water. The biggest challenge in terms of technique was having to paddle as fast and furiously as we could manage. Most of the time, we floated along with only an occasional paddle to keep the raft on course, but once we reached a rapid, there was usually several in succession, and we had to steer the raft quickly from one to the other and keep it pointed in exactly the right direction to avoid allowing the current to drive us onto a rock. We did ok for the most part, no doubt due to the fact that the professional-to-amateur ration in our raft was the highest of our entire expedition. Brandon mentioned at one point that the worst kind of customer is a raft full of guys. Apparently, as a species we tend to convince ourselves quickly that we know what we're doing and stop following commands. “I'll take a raft full of Girl Scouts over a raft of grown men any day” were his exact words.

After the trip was over I contemplated a bit the extreme nature of the sport, and how much further I would be willing to go, if at all, before I decided that the risk was too high. Having an admittedly low tolerance for risk (hence my fascination-trepidation relationship with motorcycles), I decided that I would not want to go much further than what we did on Sunday. Class two and three were fun, but anything much past that, I think I my mind would go into a survival mode and I would miss out on the fun. But you never know.

We had only one truly hair-raising moment during the trip. At one point, we switched positions with the lead raft and propped ourselves up against a big rock so we could spot the duckies coming through a series of rapids and help them stay on course by pushing them – the turn was too sharp for beginner paddlers to negotiate on their own. Spitzer got out of the raft, and while bracing himself against the rock in about four feet of water, got pulled under. He was under for a good three or four seconds, and the rest of us, including Brandon, were completely petrified. The safety video must not have been for naught, however, since following instruction both J. and I extended our paddles for him to grab onto. He managed to pull himself up just as we did that.

The views along the river were breathtaking. On the section we paddled both banks were high, another unusual feature of the French Broad, and covered with vibrant early-summer greenery. There was no evidence of civilization on the banks until at one point we rounded a turn and saw a clear-cut patch on top of a mountain with a mansion at the very summit. The land is private in that section, and open to development. There were other similar houses in the vicinity, according to our guides, but this one was the only one visible from the river. Needless to say, the universal feeling among river people was to lament any evidence of human activity and to badmouth the owners if the house. I certainly understood the sentiment and wanted to agree, but to be perfectly honest I failed to be deeply offended by the house. The house, while probably large, at least made an effort at not being vulgar. It was no Frank Lloyd Wright, but being low to the ground and built of unpainted wood, it seemed somehow appropriate for its site. It could have been much worse. Besides, even without the house, there was plenty of evidence of human presence just then – twenty people in a bunch of rubber boats floating down the river. I suppose that if I was there completely alone, I would have probably felt differently.

We stopped along the way a couple of time, once to go swimming (lovely water, invigorating but not at all cold), and once to have lunch. Having covered five miles of river, we were back at NOC's post by early afternoon, where we changed into dry clothes, tipped our guides and headed to Hendersonville to pay a visit to J.'s elderly aunt. We spent about an hour at the aunt's house, she and J. catching up on family gossip, me not doing much of anything other than petting the extremely friendly and boisterous dog, then drove back to Asheville for dinner.

We had planned to eat dinner at Tupelo Honey where we had breakfast the previous day, but as luck would have it they were not open for dinner on Sundays. Ravenous and out of research, we defaulted to a New Orleans-themed place next door called Mayfel's. For a shot in the dark, it proved to be quite good. I had local trout, or at least it claimed to be local, with a maple-butter sauce. The fish was excellent – fresh, tender, and seared with a nice crust. The sauce was cloyingly sweet, but most of it was pooled in a corner of the plate away from the trout. The fish came with the dreaded vegetable and starch of the day, but on this occasion they turned out to be roasted sweet potatoes and grilled asparagus, both delicious and the asparagus even somewhat seasonal. J. went with jumbalaya, which she was less excited about, but I didn't think it was bad. Excellent beer selection, too. Still in a local mood, I had the Kashmir IPA from Highland Brewing, the only local brewery that bottles, from what I understand. Good stuff, hoppy but balanced and an excellent food beer. The service left a lot to be desired – our waitress had a deer-in-the-headlights look about her, kept trying to give us other people's food while taking ours to someone else, and everything took forever to show up, but for once we didn't mind. Mellowed out on the patio and tired after the river trip, we were happy to order another beer and chill. Thankfully, the kitchen was apparently lagging behind to match the servers, so when our food did eventually show up, it was reasonably warm and tasted very fresh.

Unfortunately, I felt that I was coming down with a cold by this time, and we were exhausted after the long day of adventure anyway, so after a short stroll through downtown, we walked back to the inn and collapsed into bed.