WCP Online Newsletter

Boaterjacks, the sequel. Or how the Upper Green was made runable again
by Harrison Metzger

Contributed 01/03/2006  Responses:  0

I m a boaterjack and I m OK, I sleep all night and I work all day. I paddle downstream, cut out the logs, blocking the ole stream. We made the river safer, but there s still work for thee!

It s getting dark, and I m are perched on a huge hemlock, at least 20-inches in diameter, over the top drop of Pinball, the second bigger rapids on the Upper Green (UG). Tom, standing in the river upstream of the log, has cut almost all the way through it with his 24-inch Stihl chainsaw. The saw sputters and runs out of gas. I hop back across the log and grab the gas can out of my canoe. He fills, he cranks, he cuts. The log shifts and Tom slides in.
Are you OK? No, I m pinned. Grab the saw! I grab it and turn it off.
The log has trapped, but fortunately not crushed, Tom s foot. He suggests I pull out some of the smaller branches around his foot. I reach into the frigid murky water and pull out as many as I can, as quickly as possible. He pulls his foot free.
I pack up the saw. The dusk deepens. Tom and I were both supposed to be home with our wives hours ago. But he takes another look at the 4-foot wide channel he has cut, opening up the top chute of the rapid.
Should I make one more cut?
It s up to you.
Hand me the saw.
The last cut complete, a 36-inch section of the hemlock tumbles down the drop and pops up in the pool below. Now we can at least run the rapid. But do I want to do it with 30 pounds of saws and gas in the back of my canoe instead of a rear airbag? I ve got no choice. It s getting darker by the moment and there s no way to carry the saws around the rapid. Even though we cut a slot for boaters to enter the center channel, both sides (and what was once a trail on the hillside above) remain blocked by fallen trees. I lash the two chainsaws and gas can into the canoe and shove off. Two strokes through the shallow flow and I slide down the rocky 4-foot drop, over the hump, down the 5-foot drop into the eddy below. Squinting through the dark, I see Tom running the same line, the only line, in his kayak.

Monday, Jan. 2, 2006. Tuxedo Hydro Plant running one unit at 60 percent capacity from 12 midnight to 12 midnight....Forecast: Thunderstorms.
Three folks had responded to my call for help to remove trees blocking the Upper Green (UG) above the Narrows, but two (long-time WCP members who shall remain unnamed) bailed. Something about not wanting to operate chainsaws in river during thunderstorms. But a fellow named Tom DeKay of Saluda said he would come and bring his chainsaw, if I had a canoe that could haul it. Affirmative.
The ice storm that slammed Henderson and Polk counties on Dec. 15 did a number on the UG. I had heard the river was in bad shape, with 45 riverwide strainers, soon after the storm. The first crew of boaterjacks, Brent Summerfield, Ken Weitzen and Garret Mooney (and another guy, sorry I didn t catch your name) had made two runs at it, one from shore, one from boats. They had cleared a lot. Brent said maybe five portages remained. At 60 percent, though, some of the logs you could slide over at full flow were exposed.
We meet at 10 a.m. and gear up in the heavy drizzle, then head for the put-in. The first decision of the day was a good one. Should we bring Tom s big saw, in addition to my 12-inch Homelite? His saw weighs at least 20 pounds. With my saw and gas, the weight in the back of my canoe would exceed 30 pounds. We decide to bring the big boy. Which was great, since my little saw refused to start all day.
We cleared two blockages above the power line crossing, and one right above Bayless, eliminating three mandatory portages in the first mile.
We cleared the portage/scouting trail at Bayless of at least a half dozen blockages. We cut a new trail around a mass of fallen trees too thick to cut.
We cleared another riverwide strainer a half mile or so downstream.
A quarter mile above the I-26 bridge we came across two more riverwide strainers within 50 feet of each other. We could see where the other boaterjacks had cleared a path over one and under another, but it was sketchy at 60 percent. So we cut those out too.
It was getting to be late afternoon. We decided not to mess with the mega-hemlock that s been across the river for several years, or a newer tree that fell just upstream of it from the ice storm. Quick portage on the right.
Just upstream of the I-26 bridge we encountered like three more trees that had peeled off the bank and went all the way across. Ken had said he would hike in from the bridge to get these, so we portaged on the old road bed on the left.
Round the corner, we encountered the worst blockage of all. A behemoth Hemlock had uprooted from a cliff on the right and taken down a half dozen smaller trees with it. It spanned the whole river, across to the tangled cliff on the other side. We were both beat, and hesitant to take on this monster, 24 in diameter. Tom, who builds houses for a living, informed me he was a litttle gun-shy because he had snapped his ankle in three places while logging years ago. But it was cut the trees or drag the boats up over the huge muddy rootball and through thick vines and branches. So we cut. And cut. And cut. An hour later, we floated five or six massive sections of the big boy down and rolled them up on shore, a monument to the He-Man boaterjacks. We cut up the smaller trees and heaved the tops up the steep slope, then climbed back in the boats, whipped.
It was after 5 p.m. when we encountered the second biggest blockage of the day, perched across the bedrock at the top drop of Pinball. It took us 45 minutes to cut out the monster hemlock and a smaller pine. We had no choice but to drop these logs into the river, but we cut them into sections no longer than 30 inches, so they should not block channels. Most will get stuck in the numerous riverwide (but boofable) strainers that remain downstream between Pinball and the Narrows put-in.
Dark closes in. A log extends across from the left, and I paddle under the undercut cliff on the right. Hope the other guy cleared a path because I can t see anything. They did. With every muscle aching, we paddle through the slackwater, dragging over several more riverwide strainers that loom suddenly out of the dark. The takeout surfing waves appear. We do not stop to surf!
We shoulder the saws and boats and stagger up the half-mile trail to the Gallimore Road parking lot. Exhausted. At last I see the lights of the landowers house peeping through the mist above, and in my head I hear that song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show:
There s a light...Over at the Frankenstein place...
7 p.m. we climb into the truck, barely able to move. Tom tells me this is his first ever WCP trip, that he just joined the club. I joke club should refund his membership and pay him $100.
We reduced the number of mandatory portages on the UG from at least five to two, opened up the portage/sccout trail and Bayless and made Pinball runable again. But there s still plenty more to be done. If you go, take a handsaw. There are many many places where you can improve passages by cutting smaller branches on overhanging logs. Many of these can be gotten at 100 percent, though 60 percent or off is a good flow for cutting out big stuff that remains.
Though the UG can be paddled with two portages, it is still full of strainers and not a good place for beginners. And absolutely no one should tube this run, as there is still lots of stuff under the surface that could entangle you. But we have, at least, reopened one of the region s best dam-controlled intermediate runs. Way to go, Boaterjack brothas!