CHATTOOGA RIVER ADVENTURE

STORY AND PHOTOS BY TOM POLAND

It was gray-green, very clear and yet with a certain milkiness, too; it looked as though it would turn white and foam at rocks more easily than other water … I was listening to a falls, and I got ready to die again. The sound jumped higher all at once; there was a foaming seethe in it, a hoarse desperation. We turned again. The land to the left broke away, and I looked down a set of rapids steeper—a lot steeper—than any we had been through, and longer, all stepped down toward a funnel that disappeared between two huge boulders that turned the air between them white.

— “Deliverance” by James Dickey

Ifirst heard of the wild river boring down from North Carolina after “Deliverance,” the film, debuted. That was the summer of 1972. It took a while, but I at last ran the river with its green and raging white water, and mammoth brown and gray rocks. It unnerved me to spill and find myself trapped underwater, but I escaped to return over and over to the river that divides Georgia and South Carolina.

Here we are 50 years after “Deliverance,” and the river named from the Cherokee word “Tsatu-gi” runs as fierce and free as ever, promising adventure, and if you haven’t set eyes on it you should. See how the land looked in the beginning. Witness the classic unmovable object versus the irresistible force and hear the river’s roar—for hearing of a river is one thing; seeing and hearing it quite another. A poet-novelist named James Dickey saw and heard the thunder, modeling his Cahulawassee River in his novel “Deliverance” (Houghton Mifflin, 1970) after the Chattooga.

If you seek the adrenalin rush of running an untamed river, the Chattooga waits. Georgia-Carolina’s scenic river sharpens a serrated stony edge cutting between the states’ northern border. It looks as it did when the Cherokee built fish traps from its rocks. Green milky waters still rush through sieves and strainers as they have for 250 million years. It’ll be here long after we cross a fateful river of another kind.

I was there early one morning on this river that runs northeast to southwest. Hurdling downriver between canyon walls, I pitched, jostled and bucked as light streamed, ricocheted and flared off granite and gneiss. Mica fired up and the walls shook with glitter. Asphalt-gray rocks streaked white leaned over the river, as if an earthquake had thrust highways into airy obtuse angles to remind onlookers that civilization doesn’t exist on this river steeped in myth.

Underwater, the rocks feel as if they’re immersed in virgin olive oil, slippery (but not slimy) and yet they will bruise, maim and worse. Oblivious to the rocks, nature’s early risers—blue herons, hawks and waterfowl—work the river.

Here you are in an untamed land. Nothing is safe. Deer drink its waters, often at their own peril. An ill-fated deer one summer ended up in a keeper hydraulic where it tumbled for a week before the river spat it out, piece by piece.

Upstream, above the South Carolina Highway 28 bridge, a thick canopy cools the water. Cascades enrich oxygen levels, and man’s developments are buffered out of sight beyond the banks. The romantic image of a fly fisherman at dawn lives here. Standing in riffles arcing casts against a deep-green mountain laurel backdrop, he sets his hand-tied fly upon swift water.

PAGES 42–43

Nantahala Outdoor Center rafts plunge through Bull Sluice.

ON LEFT

A kayaker swirls back upriver from near the Highway 76 bridge. Mountain laurel, Kalmialatifolia, brings its spring beauty to the river and its trails.

Chattooga ferns.

The Cherokee fished here. They drove fish into a lengthy weir. You can see it still in Section IV: structured piles of rocks, wet and glistening with purpose long unfulfilled. Sliding sideways upon the current, avoiding boulders and imagining Native Americans upon these difficult waters, syllable by syllable, I say “Nan-ta-ha-la.” This Cherokee word resounds off these unforgiving walls that brighten as the sun climbs. Though I am not on the Nantahala River, I’m nonetheless in its meaning: “Land of the Noonday Sun.”

To run the river in early light is to navigate the edge of night. The water runs dark while rocky cliffs to the west radiate day’s first light. All this glancing, dancing light airbrushes the river, giving it an airy, treacherous essence. If you run the Chattooga, you must be an unerring judge of depths, colors and shadows. Geological processes 250 million years old perfected death traps that can— and have—devoured kaleidoscopic kayakers like M&Ms. In fabled Section IV, the Chattooga saves its strongest, rock-hard muscle for its last 7 miles, where boulders and ledges beget rapids, sieves and hydraulics. Five falls call Section IV home. A quarter-mile run dropping more than 75 feet puts nerves on high alert with fall names that ring familiar to those who seek adventure: Entrance, Corkscrew, Crack-In-the-Rock, Jawbone and Sock’em Dog. Lesser falls will get you, too, as I found out. Entering Seven Foot Falls as fast as a pencil point breaks mid-sentence, I was thrown out. Beneath the river, I tossed, tumbled, spun, and beat against rocks. I rose against the raft bottom. Once, twice, thrice—inflated air—just what I needed held me underwater. Trapped. I breathed in river water. On my fourth try, I shot into daylight, strangling and throwing up the Chattooga. I had survived the spin cycle of the state’s biggest washer.

River guide Wallace, with his 18-inch brown mane and Nazarene beard, looked like Jesus but he couldn’t walk on water. He, too, went under at Seven Foot Falls, but he’s used to that. Wallace likes to run the river in his ducky, a one-man, inflatable kayak. He has seen the river in all her moods, and seen her quirks, too. He points to shaky spindles of rocks piled atop each other. They’re everywhere. “Hippies think those will bring them good luck,” he says. Everyone needs some luck on the Chattooga—the good kind.

Early light, Wallace tells me, provides a spectacle on this vestige of America. “At daybreak, beams of light shoot above narrow areas, shining onto Georgia foliage,” he says. “When the light makes it to the water in wider, open areas, flakes of mica light up.”

It’s a study in contrast, this early morning river. The shady water runs dark but the white water shines bright. It’s all about speed and depth.

“In shallows,” Wallace adds, “long flowing trails of algae turn neon green when the light strikes them.” I had seen the trails of fluorescent green pointing downstream. I wasn’t sure at the time what I had seen. Algae floats on ponds and lakes. Light up here is a jester, always playing tricks. Hard to believe algae clings to bedrock in this pell-mell, gushing whitewater—but cling it does. Such tenacity holds a lesson for man, ever the sojourner with his brief span.

As we shot clean between brown rocks, I glimpsed a pattern traced in a boulder, the imprint of a fossil, a small fish—or was it an ancient leaf? Whatever it was, it had been there forever. Me? My name is Sojourner. I am just passing through these canyon walls. But what a passage, what an adventure

It’s beautiful but perilous. Respect the river. After the movie “Deliverance” came out, 22 people drowned, most of them at treacherous Woodall Shoals. Many lacked the equipment or skill needed to run the Chattooga safely. The river grants no mercy. It has claimed many lives since the U.S. Forest Service began keeping records in 1970. Most have been paddlers, some accomplished paddlers. The river has taken swimmers as well. The Forest Service manages the Chattooga—designated as a National Wild and Scenic River—by limiting outfitters to three, by limiting the number of river launches, and by limiting the number of people on the river. Put another way, you wouldn’t want to visit the Chattooga and see 1,000 people in a never-ending flotilla.

If you want a Chattooga outing, plan ahead and get your hands on John Lane’s “Chattooga: Descending Into the Myth of Deliverance River” (University of Georgia Press, 2005). Come to know the river and the people along it. Lane chose favored words from James Dickey’s closing that capture the river and its essence.

THE CHATTOOGA

This legendary whitewater river’s headwaters form near North Carolina’s Whiteside Mountain. The Chattooga’s 51-mile winding descent takes it through three states and Ellicott Rock Wilderness. The river’s furious rapids stem from a half-mile drop over the course of its descent. The river trails off into Lake Tugalo, which straddles the South Carolina–Georgia border. Unlike most rivers, the Chattooga is a free-flowing river, so no dams corral it.

According to the Genealogy Trails History Group, the Cherokee word “Tsatu-gi,” from which the Chattooga River is named, means “has crossed the river” and “drank by sips,” or “he sips.”

Note, too, that Georgia has another Chattooga River. It’s on the western border where it runs into Weiss Lake near Alabama. OUTFITTERS

Several outfitters can take you on a Chattooga River rafting adventure. The websites below provide information on the intensity of experience desired, minimum ages, trip lengths, season, packages and prices. Other attractions include waterfalls, ziplining-canopy tours, distilleries, the Chattahoochee National Forest and The Dillard House, a restaurant known for its family-style menu. Nantahala Outdoor Center: noc.com Wildwater: wildwaterrafting.com Southeastern Expeditions: southeasternexpeditions.com