All I want for Christmas:
Trip Jennings

Rob is a straight up guy. When he’s stoked, he’ll let you know, and when he’s not…you’ll know, so when I saw his face go from serious shit eating grin after he answered the phone, I knew we had made the right decition.

Two of my highschool buddies, Mike Stratton and Rob Tompkins as well as our 17 year old friend Van Null were heading towards Asheville NC in the pouring rain. We were hoping to paddle the Toxaway, but were thinking that was a long shot since we’d all wanted to run it for years but had missed it every other attempt. That was when Chris Graghtmans called us back to see if we’d be interested in running the Toxaway and it’s little brother, the Horsepasture in a day. Apparently, they had never been done in a day, which was funny because we were going to attempt it on the second shortest day of the year.

Van: Breakfast at 5AM

To add to the challenges, I hadn’t actually been kayaking very much recently, my last semester of college had almost been the death of me and, in the last six months, I’d only paddled 4 times. Running both rivers in a day seemed daunting, but like a great way to get back on the wagon and celebrate graduation and Christmas.

Chris Gragthmans: "The Toxaway is like totally my fave" Toxaway falls in background.

At 6am the four Richmonders met Chris at the Toxaway put in and ran shuttle as we waited for dawn. Before the sun had even come up, we were walking below the huge Toxaway falls chatting about why we’re afraid of heights…not because we’re scared of falling, but…have you ever looked over a cliff and had the overwhelming urge to just jump? With that in mind I think we were all glad that the water was a medium level, not even closer to high enough to tempt the overwhelming falls, but perfect for the run below. As always, respect to Pat Keller for running the only descent of the big one.
As we put in, I was amazed by the character of the creek. Slide, pool, huge slide, pool, even bigger slide, pool. The run starts off with a bang, seal sliding into a low angle but pretty fast slide…and the entry slide is just a small taste of the rapids down stream.

Van and Mike put in w/Toxaway falls and first rapid in the background

Mike slides in below 15 footer onto flat rock slab.

Mike slides while the sun thinks about coming up.

The sun wasn’t even poking over the trees and ridges when we reached Minigizer (which didn’t feel too mini after six months in the library). We all put in half way down the slide to avoid the face/elbow crushing rock on the right side of the slide. I looked at running the whole thing for a while, but finally put my tail between my legs and convinced myself that I was still “warming up” and used the “too much school” excuse again.

Chris slides in at Minigizer

Every rapid we reached, I had trouble believing that I was in North Carolina, not California, or…heaven. The whole creek is amazingly runnable, and the fun to fuck up ratio is maybe the best I’ve ever experienced. Whenever I run a new creek, I like to compare it to the Little White…is it more or less fun than the little white. Few creeks meet the Little White standard, and while it could have been the good-class-V-after-a-long-dry-spell, the Toxaway’s slides put almost any other one day run to shame.

Chris Portages above Energizer

The crew portages above Energizer

Chris midway through Energizer

By the time we reached Energizer, the sun had begun to poke through the trees and give us a taste of the beautiful, sunny, warm day it was about to be. The portages are almost as fun to stare at as the rapids on this run, because if it wasn’t for one rock in each of them, they would look sickeningly runnable. It just one boulder moved Energizer could maybe be connected to the side above it and would turn into one of the biggest rapid/slides ever run, but the boulder is there so we portage. The portage however, takes nothing away from Energizer itself. It’s big, fun, and super fast, and as I shot photos I did get to watch Van flip, but again he’s 17, so he bounced back just fine, and then Mike turned around in the top third of the slide and screamed through the fastest part upright and backwards which had to have been scary. When I finally went, I could tell that I was good to go about mid way down, and I’m pretty sure I started giggling it was so fun.

Lots of Robs on Energizer

In between Energizer and Land Bridge is a 15 footer, which I could tell was going to have great light so I hopped out to shoot what ended up being a mediocre photo, and then just down stream missed shooting what ended up being the highlight of the trip.
Just after the 15 footer is 40/40 a 40 foot almost vertical slide into a crazy reconnecting second 40 foot slide. It’s only been run by a handful of people, and Chris fired it off perfectly while I was drying off my hands in order to grab the camera. Suffice to say that it was a super sick very clean line. After seeing that I had to pull out the trusty “I’ve done nothing but study for 6 months and I’m out of practice” excuse while everyone waited for me to run back up the hill and grab my boat to portage.

Van really wants to make this boof

The whole way down, I found myself thinking that the river was just designed for kayakers. It starts out kinda mellow, then gets bigger and bigger until you run Land Bridge and then climax at Wintergreen. These two last drops are super close to each other, big, and fun. Land Bridge is an amazing formation that also requires a portage around a pretty clean, HUGE slide/waterfall that lands in a sieve created by none other than the slab of rock called the land bridge. Even with out the top portage, the slide is the biggest yet. Also the fastest, longest, and must fun…until Wintergreen.

Mike: Land Bridge

Rob: Land Slide

Wintergreen is a perfect cherry on top of an amazing run because, it’s pretty hard to scout and you can’t really see any of it from a boat, just the horizon line. The line is more or less down the middle, so we just opted to blue angel it, four of us running it for the first time. I’m not sure I’ve giggled as much on any other creek. It starts out with a 20 foot boof into a low angle slide, into an almost vertical slide, into a reconnect with the rock just before hitting the pool, and smiling real big.
After the short run out we reached the take out, hiked the 3.5 miles to the car, ate lunch and headed to the Horsepasture.
By the time we reached the Horsepasture, the drops that usually look pretty steep and pretty big seemed like class IV now that we were wearing Toxaway goggles. We didn’t scout anything or shoot any photos on the next run because we didn’t really stop. Rob seemed to remember a line around the one sieve rapid on the run, “just drive really hard left and boof.” We all drove hard and boofed and in ended up just fine, but it was obvious that we were getting tired and a bit loose. The next thing we knew, all we could see was Rob’s head sticking out of the sieve. I started to jump out of my boat and run towards him, but he made eye contact with me, smiled and patted his helmet, giving me the “I’m OK” signal. He didn’t look very OK. Thankfully I was wrong and he just put his hands on either side of the rocks that he was wedged in between and did a huge push up. He then rolled his body under his boat, more or less walking on his hands out of the sieve. To say the least we were impressed, worried, and relieved.

An hour after putting in, we were tired, hungry, and really happy. Endorphins oozing out of my ears, I shouldered by boat for the steep 4 mile hike out back to the parking lot where we had food, water and warm cloths. The hike usually isn’t too bad, but after the Toxaway, the hike out of the Toxaway, the hike into the Horsepasture, and running the Horsepasture, we were exhausted. Van actually mentioned (more than once) that it had been the most physically strenuous thing he had ever done.

Just after dark we reached the parking lot tired and happy and feeling very back on the wagon.

Van being tired, Chris in the background being fired up

Somewhat accurately estimated stats:
- 3000 vertical feet descended
- 8 Miles hiked with boats
- 2000 vertical feet ascended with boats
- Way too much driving

Thanks for reading this far!

Trip

 

Monday, November 27, 2006

Well, now that it’s finally raining we’ve begun to do a bit of creeking. Now this was the first or second time much of the crew had been in creek boats this fall which is very unusual. Boofing felt soooo good.

We headed to Sweet Creek, the Eugene Classic which is actually much closer to the coast and Florence than Eugene, but it’s close, runs on only a little rain, and is very steep. The section that we run is actually only a quarter mile or so, but it includes some really fun drops, slides, even a hole that’s forced more that one good kayaker to pull his or her skirt. This weekend was a perfect example as one of the best kayakers I’ve ever met, Andy Maser, got stuck at the end, out of breath, upside down, and “had” to pull his skirt. So after a few more successful runs, as the tradition goes, Andy filled his right bootie with beer and chugged.

I hope you enjoy the photos!

Trip

 

Sunday, November 12, 2006:

All right, here's our first update on the new web site. The EP crew is, as usual, split up all over the world right now. LJ and Karl are in Mexico teaching high school at World Class Kayak Academy, Andy, Lane, and I are in Eugene working our asses off in school, and it FINALLY started raining in Oregon. I’m getting ready to graduate in December (FINALLY!) with a Spanish degree, and then it’s EP full time. We’ve got some cool stuff in the works. First Karl and I are working on a playboating instructional video that will be out in late winter called: Amplify and then we’re beginning filming for our next kayak porn (by that I mean music style video like Bigger Than Rodeo or Mission: Epicocity, not anything like actual porn). It will be called The One, because unlike BTR or M:E, it’s going to be perfect. We have more resources, time, and skills; this one’s gonna be good.

Just finished a video segment of footage from the past few years of LJ. Check it out: LJ Video Segment

So stay tuned for cool new stuff from EP and, since it looks like we’re about to have a great water year, be sure to check back for more updates, video, photos, that sort of thing, and if you find a big new runnable waterfall, feel free to let us know!

- Trip