North American Championship Recap

Last weekend, NOC hosted the 2012 ACA Open Canoe Slalom Nationals & North American National Championships on the Nantahala River. Open canoe paddlers from all over the country, as well as Canada flocked to the Nantahala Gorge for three days of racing on the fun and challenging Nantahala Falls Course. They competed in a variety of disciplines, encompassing various lengths of crafts, composite and plastic boats, and tandem and single classes. Many of these competitors see each other regularly on paddle trips in their hometowns. Others are old friends who see each other once yearly at only this event.

The mood was a unique mixture of serious competition--with whitewater athletes walking the course, scouting lines, and discussing runs, penalties, and strategies--and family reunion, as this tight-knit group of friends and river-family caught up on old news and shared new memories after yet another year.

Race organizer MJ Simpson found time to compete in tandem events with both of her young sons. Simpson volunteered to organize the 2012 event in part, she said, because she met her husband, David Simpson, at an Open Canoe Nationals in Carltin, MN, so she felt she owed the event a good turn. “We’re even now, OC Nationals,” Simpson joked at the awards ceremony on Saturday evening at NOC’s Pourover Pub, to the laughter and applause of her fellow-canoeists.

Open Canoe slalom is a test of speed, river-running skills, and agility, and paddlers strove to excel in all three areas over the course of the weekend. In speed, the unrivalled champion was Jordi Domenjo, a coach at Colorado’s Alexander Dawson school, and a top kayak slalom athlete from La Seu D’Urgell, Spain. Domenjo posted a top time of 129.14, seconds ahead of the second place finish by Eli Helbert of Asheville, North Carolina, who came in at 155.05 in the OC1 Open X class.

There were only a handful of clean runs posted over the course of the weekend, a rare distinction since Open Canoes are long and it takes significant skill to navigate them through the slalom course at all, not to mention the difficulty of passing through each gate without tapping (or whacking) one. Among those competitors who managed at least one clean run were Carole Westwood, Adrian Nye, Dooley Tobras, and even the C2 team of Andrew Westwood and Paul Mason, among others. Course designer David Simpson also posted a clean time on Sunday morning, much to his relief. “It would be a sad state of affairs if the course designer couldn’t clean his own course,” he said.

The location of next year’s Open Canoe Nationals has yet to be determined, but one thing is clear, this dedicated group of paddlers will make the long drive, canoe trailers in tow, ready to give it their all, once again, for that so-often-elusive clean run.


View Full Results here:

Day 1 Slalom Final

Day 2 Slalom Final

Day 3 Slalom Final

More Pumpkins Than Ever: NOCtoberfest 2012

NOCtoberfest is here! NOC celebrates fall with a beer garden at Slow Joe's Cafe every weekend in October starting at 4pm. Come enjoy the outdoors during the day and sample beers from Weihenstephaner, Bitburger and Maisel's Wesse by the river when you're finished.

The Main Event
Join us on Saturday, October 27th when we celebrate the close of the 2012 Nantahala River rafting season with a full load of fun activities*. The day's top events include the spectacular Great Pumpkin Pursuit, a fantastic five-mile trial run, free live music and a hilarious costume party and pumpkin decorating contest..

Crazy pumpkin from NOCtoberfest 2011

Why all the buzz about the Great Pumpkin Pursuit?
One of the most entertaining and fun events all year, the Great Pumpkin Pursuit--an all-out dash to collect numbered pumpkins tossed into Nantahala Falls--draws a crowd of hundreds of spectators as well as 50 to 60 paddlers. The paddlers don crazy costumes and deploy innovative pumpkin collection schemes while negotiating a massive traffic jam in the Nantahala's largest rapid.

A scene from the 2011 Great Pumkpin Pursuit

This year, we are dropping, tossing and spilling 400 mini-pumpkins into the Falls, double the haul from last year!  Paddlers are invited to collect the pumpkins any way they please, and spectators are welcome to attempt land-based collecting too. Pretty much anything goes--as long as everyone maintains a courteous attitude toward the other participants and a focus on safety.

Some techniques used to collect from last year. (Note the basket fixed to the front of this kayak.)

After the event we host an award ceremony for various honors, and we draw numbers that correspond with the numbered pumpkins. The more pumpkins participants collect the better their chances of winning a prize in the raffle! This year, some of the prizes include a $500 gift card to NOC, PFDs, helmets, and much more.

NOC Marketing team members Lauren Dietrich and Hope Brainard, getting in the Halloween spirit

Note that the events on the water can get crazy and may not be everyone's idea of a good time. Never fear: boaters are welcome to stalk an eddy downstream of the Falls that's a bit out of the way. Sometimes following the traffic jam at a cautious distance is a good idea too. One of the reasons we toss so many pumpkins is to give everyone a reasonable chance to get something without risking life and limb. Also, note that land-based collecting is allowed, but that walking haphazardly on wet river rocks has risks too.

After the event we'll have a pumpkin decorating contest, live reggae from the Natti Love Joys and the 2012 costume contest.

We hope to see you, your friends and families out at NOC for the upcoming festivities! For a full event schedule, click here.

To finish, check out this "trailer" one of the participants made back at the first GPP in 2010. While the crowd was small for the first event, this video does capture the mood pretty well:

Continue Your Endless Summer

If you have been to the Nantahala River outpost within the past few years, I hope you hung around long enough to unwind and relax at NOC's Pourover.  Opening in 2009, The Pourover celebrated its third anniversary this summer, and for the past eight weeks the Pub has hosted a band every Friday and Saturday evening. The "Pub" also holds a different beer tasting every Saturday from 5pm-7pm, often featuring North Carolina microbrews. By hosting two bands and a beer tasting every weekend, the Pub gives visitors who are in town for the day, or perhaps the weekend, a venue to continue their fun into the night alongside the river.

Grand Opening in 2009

The Pub is a perfect venue to highlight local talent. "It is great exposure for local breweries looking to reach new customers and bands to make new fans," said Emily Michaels, Manager of The Pourover.  Offering food, drinks, live music, and riverside dancing, The Pourover is not only a local favorite, but also a reason to make your visit last for more than just a day trip. 

"This has been a busy summer for the Pourover Pub.  The biggest event of the summer at the Pub was definitely our 3rd anniversary celebration." Showcasing 5 different breweries including Bells Brewery, Stone Brewing Co., 21st Amendment Brewing Co., New Holland Brewing Co., and Left Hand Brewing Co., the Pub catered to over 200 guests. With its "uniquie location, fun atmosphere and sense of community," the Pub is always a place to go for a good time on the Nantahala River banks.

A favorite Pourover , Smoky's Farmland Band, playing at the Pub

Looking Ahead

With Fall right around the corner, Emily is very excited to start serving more seasonal beverages.  Along with beer tastings every weekend in August, The Pub has three larger events to look forward to later this fall.  The Pub will host two bands during the World Cup Finals (Sept. 7-9). Additionally, "GAF," the Guest Appreciation Festival, (Sept 28-30) and NOCtoberfest (October) are NOC's most popular events in the fall.  GAF brings vendors and guests together for a multi-act music festival filled with food, paddling and great deals on gear.  NOCtoberfest lasts more than one weekend, there will be various events every weekend, each one being different from the last. Events include raft races, relays and the popular Great Pumpkin Pursuit through Nantahala Falls that will be sure to leave guests thirsty and looking to unwind at the Pub afterwards.

Beer Tasting with French Broad Brewery

For more details and information on upcoming events, please visit The Pourover Pub's webpage!

9 Things to Know about NOC's Whitewater Raft Guide School

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NOC's version of spring break is Whitewater Raft Guide School, five days of learning the skills, techniques and know-how that form the basis for professional raft guiding everywhere. The week-long course is most popular with college students excited to be securing a fun summer job while also enjoying a "you'll never guess what I did" spring break experience.

Interested but not in college? No worries, about 25% to 35% of our guide school guests are regular working folks looking for a fun week outdoors with friends and instructors. We provide equipment, transportation, food, lodging and instruction at a 5:1 student/teacher ratio. At only $450 it's a darn good deal. Click here for Raft Guide School dates and more program details.

NOC Guide School Instructor Stephan Hart chatted guide school with me over lunch today and here are nine observations I gleamed about the program:

Sometimes guides schools get "lucky" and it rains all week. Photos in this post are from a 2011 class that "got" to run the Big Laurel Creek and French Broad combo on their travel date. They paid their dues though, running a high-water Nantahala Falls for the Fantasy Island drill. Good weather classes are more comfortable, but not quite as exciting.

1) "The Weird Middle Dimension." Our guide school guests see NOC from a very unique perspective because many of them are training for future employment. This means they have to carry their own gear and rafts and listen to directions and feedback from their instructors. This leads to an interesting dynamic: our guide school instructors make the students do all the work, so this time the onus is on the guest to impress the guide.

2) The food is delicious. The folks at River's End Restaurant always make good grub, but for guide school they break out a custom, family-style meal plan. It's delicious in its own right, but the daily eight hours of raft guide training and the sometimes chilly weather work up impressive appetites. And food never tastes better than on an empty stomach.

3) It's a cool crowd. Let's face it, guiding rafts isn't for everyone, so the people who show up for guide school are usually pretty fun-loving. Stephan says "the kind of person who is seizing this opportunity to come out and play is just energetic and exciting."

The Fantasy Island drill at Nantahala Falls where guides practice running the Class III rapid over and over. No problems on this run, but not everyone was so fortunate.

4) The "Spring Break Effect." So maybe the folks who come to guide school are adventurous go-getters by nature, but we think there's a spring break effect going on too. By this time of the year, people are so happy to be outside and on the water that they're pretty enthusiastic no matter what mother nature throws at them.

5) 70 Years Old. That's right, we've graduated septuagenarians from guide school. Everyone gets pushed a bit in raft guide school, but most folks can handle everything we throw at them. We'll toss in extra challenges to our more aggressive students to see if they're prospects for guiding some of our harder rivers, but usually everyone finds a comfortable challenge level in the course.

6) Travel Day. Usually on Thursday we roadtrip to another river so guide students can test their skills in a new environment. Usually we go to the French Broad, which can be really interesting if it's been raining. Last year the water was pretty high, and we got a highlight reel of epic "learning" moments.

7) It's not all about NOC. We're well aware that students may head out West for the summer (or something like that), so we give every guide school guide a certificate of completion. We try not to belabor NOC processes and logistics, sticking instead to universal whitewater guide skills. In fact, guide school graduates that we hire go through a "grad school" when they come to work at NOC. This is where they learn all the NOC-specific systems and protocols.

Guide School isn't exactly "full service." Up and coming guides still have to earn their stripes.

8) The dreaded swim drill. Many students are anxious about the aggressive swim drill. While this takes place on relatively calm water right here at NOC, students know it's going to be cold. The swim drill is often the elephant in the room until it's over, but it often serves as the test that binds the guide school classes together. You're never "green" again after the swim drill!

9) My favorite part of Guide School was the Fantasy Island drill, where raft crews navigate Nantahala Falls over and over again, rotating so each student gets to guide through the falls a few times. The easier you make it look, the bigger the challenge Stephan and the other instructors will throw at you next time.

Notice the difference? This group has been challenged to run the rapid with upside down paddles. Can you hear the "Getting Stronger" refrain from the Rocky theme?

Does raft guide school sound perfect for someone you know? Either get them professional counseling or send them the link to the guide school webpage at noc.com. Spring break will be here before you know it!

Three Generations of Nantahala Paddling

While working on a company history board for Slow Joe's Cafe last week, one of my favorite NOC questions came up: what NOCer has the earliest run of the Nantahala? Here's what I know.

The earliest confirmed run was by Aurelia Kennedy, namesake of Relia's Garden and one of three company co-founders. (The other two being her husband Payson Kennedy and their friend Horace Holden.) Relia first paddled the Nantahala in 1954 with a group of fellow counselors from Camp Merrie-Woode and other counselors from nearby Camp Mondamin. The trip was a wedding present from her friend Ramon Eaton.

Relia and Ramon ran the river in a wood and canvas canoe, and Relia remembers being impressed by Ramon's ability to stand in the boat and scout the rapids. According to Ramon, Relia was the second woman to ever run the river behind one of Frank Bell's relatives. (Frank Bell or "Chief" was the founder of Camp Mondamin and the early pioneer of Western North Carolina whitewater. Frank Bell's, the Class IV on the French Broad is named after him.) Relia was 19 on her first Nantahala trip, and she would marry Payson in September of the same year.

This isn't the earliest NOC first descent of Nantahala Falls,
but it may be the "youngest". Just shy of her first birthday
Jennifer Holcombe runs the Falls with her brother Andrew
and mother Cathy in 1984.

The only current NOCer boasting a descent in the 50's is NOC CFO John Burton, who ran the river in 1959 with his buddy Frank Shell. The tandem was on a canoe trip led by John Delabar, the namesake of Delabar's Rock rapid about midway down the Nantahala. Unlike Ramon's wood and canvas canoe, John was in a tougher aluminum Grummun canoe. It is rumored that Delebar's Rock is so named because Delabar destroyed two wood and canvas canoes on the rock in one trip. If that's true, it's understandable that Camp Mondamin would have been early adopters of the more durable aluminum boats.

Cathy guides Payson's Godmother Teresa Greenfield down
Nantahala Falls in 1993. The trip was to celebrate Teresa's 80th
birthday. Teresa wanted to do something special, as her mother
flew in an open biplane to celebrate her 80th.

Payson's first Nantahala run came five or six years after John's. He and Relia were in the area and they ran into their old friend Ramon embarking on a trip with a camp group. They asked if Payson could tag along with the group in a one-person canoe. Ramon obliged and that was the first of countless Nantahala runs for Payson. By 1971 he would be quitting his "day job" as a librarian at Georgia Tech and running rafting trips and paddling instruction on the Nantahala and the Chattooga.

Payson and Andrew compete in open boat nationals in 1992.
This is not a first, but it's a good homage to the
canoe—the original Nantahala watercraft.

Payson and Relia's daughter Cathy (our current Director of Rafting Operations and likely the Nantahala's all time leader in river trips) first ran the Nantahala sometime in the late sixties with Payson. She also was in an aluminum Grummun canoe, and her trip was memorable because it was raining on the Nantahala. As it often does, the river fogged up in the rain, and Cathy remembers her father—who was wearing glasses—having to ask her where to go. Cathy remembers thinking: "Shouldn't dad know where we're supposed to go?"

In the summer of 1981 Cathy's very young son Andrew Holcombe (the third family generation on the Nantahala) rafted the river with his mom and dad. Cathy recalls Andrew sleeping through most of the trip. Cathy's second daughter Jennifer would also log her first trip before her first birthday. Unlike their mother and grandparents, Jennifer and Andrew were in a raft, not a canoe, but they wouldn't have been able to make the trip at such an early age in a canoe. Note that on commercial trips the youngest permitted age is seven, but there are no rules on private family trips.

After hearing all these stories I'm reminded of why there's a tandem canoe in the NOC logo. It's such a central part of how the Nantahala was first run and even today it's likely the best canoeing whitewater in the Southeast, especially in a tandem boat.

By special request Andrew Holcombe guides Wendell through
Nantahala Falls on his first run after years of driving buses by the rapid.

While the Kennedy's family paddling history is impressive, by now there are probably many NOC guests who have had three generations of family run one of our rivers. Let us know with a comment or an email (media@noc.com) if your family is one of these. We're always interested in getting our guests' stories on paper and meeting other paddlers.

My first run of the Nantahala was in 1999, and it's not terribly romantic. I had already paddled the Ocoee and a few other rivers closer to my home, so while I was impressed with the river, it wasn't a totally new experience for me. To be honest, I was really excited I could get a club sandwich at River's End and do another lap on the river in the afternoon.

I've grown up a bit since then, and now I really enjoy sharing the Nantahala with guests on their first whitewater trip. Hopefully they'll share it with their friends and families and start their own whitewater traditions.

Test Paddling The Z.One & Biscuit at Nantahala Falls

by Robert Bone, NOC Boat Buyer

This week, the weather was too incredible to pass up a chance to test new boats we recently stocked in the store. Tommy Yon and I took out the new Pyranha Z.One, while the Store’s Daniel Dutton took the LiquidLogic Biscuit out for a run. Check out these pics!







“The Biscuit is a boat that plays every feature the river has to offer. Its user-friendly performance design puts you into the driver's seat to make play moves look like gravy. On big waves, small waves, in a hole or just flatwater paddling you’ll be comfortable at all times in this boat.”—Daniel Dutton

And we can’t get over Tommy’s sick loop in the 8.5-foot Z.One. Incredible!



Speaking of the Z.One, we've been having a REALLY fun time with this boat. It paddles like an old-school retro kayak, but it's really stable for surfing, spinning and river running in general. Plus, it has modern outfitting. The bow of the Z.One scoops the water for huge enders and pirouettes.

I think this boat is going to be a huge hit for those paddlers that like down river play but don’t want to sacrifice the speed of a traditional river runner.

See both of these boats in-person at NOC's Outfitter's Store, or check out the specs online.