Yesterday, Bill Camp, best known in Triangle adventure circles as an avid mountain biker and the original president of TORC, shared a tale from his days as a whitewater canoeist. That trip was inadvertent; after spending three hours to find access to the Upper Meadow River in West Virginia, his party wound up paddling the last 45 minutes of Class III and IV water in the dark. Today, he tells the tale of a premeditated whitewater paddle in the dark.
"My moonlight paddle on the Lower Haw River happened in February 1998. Those days I was paddling my Redline C-1 conversion most of the time. My main paddling buddy was Richard Mann, an expert kayaker from Durham. Richard was a much more seasoned paddler than I, and we spent a couple of years paddling as many rivers throughout the southeast as we could find running. We had a particular love of creeking in the mountains of NC, TN, VA and WVa.
"With many nights around the campfire spinning paddling tales, some true and some not, we somehow got on the subject of how cool it would be to try a nighttime paddle down a river we were comfortable on with only the full moon to light the way. We decided the best option would probably be the Haw since it was close by, we could paddle a relatively short section of river and we would have little trouble walking out if things went bad.
"Now planning a night paddle isn't quite as simple as planning a night ride on a mountain bike. It almost certainly would require a full moon or very close. We would have to make the paddle during the winter so there wouldn't be any leaves to shade the water from the moonlight. And we would need a suitable water level, enough to pad the rocks of Gabriel's Bend, but not too much make a rescue too difficult if someone ended up in trouble and out of their boat. Meaning me, since I only saw Richard out of his kayak involuntarily once in all the times we paddled over the years.
"As you can imagine, having a confluence of all these circumstances doesn't really happen that often. We were lucky in that it only took a couple of months to get a night that would work. The full moon was going to be up by 9 p.m., the Haw was running at 6 inches on the old US64 bridge gauge and as an added bonus, it was going to be a relatively mild night with temps above 40 degrees.
"After setting our stealth shuttle at Robeson Creek canoe access (we weren't sure if it was illegal to be there after dark), we were ready to start. After launching we practiced some ferries below the bridge to get the feel for the water when you couldn't really see everything in it. It was amazing how well we could see by the moonlight once our eyes adjusted though. We could see all the tongues of the water, the white bubbles and even the rocks above the water. All I can remember having difficulty with was seeing anything below the water. Which happens a lot on the Haw even in broad daylight. We made it successfully through Lunch Stop, Ocean Blvd. and to the top of Gabriel's Bend without incidence.
"A funny thing happened on the way down the river that night. Somewhere between the bridge and Gabriel's I began to feel the water as I never had before. I could feel the push against the bottom of my hull, the feel as the current would push my boat across on a ferry as I adjusted my angle so that I was making moves with an ease and a grace I had never felt before. I was letting the water do the work instead of me. It was a watershed moment in my paddling career. It was as if by turning off the light, a light came on in my head that took me to the next level in my paddling skills. Confident, hooting and hollering all the way, we eddy hopped all the way down Gabriel's, through the Maze and downriver until we reached the slack waters of the lake. We paddled across the lake in the now brilliant light of the full moon that made it seem almost as if it were daylight. When we reached the takeout we loaded our boats and skedaddled before a ranger showed up to issue us a ticket for being there after dark.
"We talked of repeating this paddle as soon as we could so we could bring some more of our paddling friends along for the fun. Unfortunately, we never could seem to a night that we were in town, the river running and a full moon on a cloudless night again. As the drought tightened it's grip on the southeast I moved on to mountain biking as my main recreational pursuit and Richard took up four wheeling and caving. We've drifted apart, and I've not even spoken to him in over five years. But I will always remember our night together on the Haw. Maybe someday I'll even get a chance to paddle it again by moonlight."
