A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.
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I’ll admit it – I have a yard full of kayaks. I’ve got three Perception Torrent sit-on-top whitewater boats that I’ve had for over ten years now. In the past year I’ve bought two decked recreational kayaks, and have been storing my nephew, Chip’s boats, as well. I’ve been paddling the Old Town Dirigo 120 and the Wilderness Systems Pungo 120 for about a year now, and have come to some conclusions about them. Ultimately, I think I like the Dirigo better, and here’s why…
It was the second Saturday of the month, which means it was time for another adventure with the guys from Lowcountry Unfiltered. For this trip we were headed to the Beaufort area, where we would be doing some fossil hunting on the north end of Lady Island, along the Intracoastal Waterway.
I headed down Friday evening, taking off a few minutes early from work so it wouldn’t be too dark when I got into town. I found a place to stay in Beaufort, had a so-so seafood dinner, then crashed after the long drive.
Early Saturday morning I drove over to Lady Island and to our meeting spot at Brickyard Creek Landing. While I was waiting for the rest of the guys, a man walked up and started chatting. He had lived on the island his entire life, and declared it to be the one remaining bit of paradise left on the Carolina coast. He was happy to see that I had a kayak, and not one of those noisy motor boats.
The weekend didn’t turn out exactly as I had planned. I had a meeting in Columbia on Friday, so Thursday night I loaded up the boat on top of my car. The plan was to drive down for the meeting, then continue southward to Lake Marion and Sparkleberry Swamp. Unfortunately, our cat Percy decided to get his paw hurt, so I had to drive back from my meeting earlier than expected to get him to the vet. He’s OK – just a small cut and possible sprain, but nothing broken.
I really didn’t want to drive back down I-26 again, but I still had the kayak on top of the car and still wanted to go paddling somewhere. All of my paddling partners were otherwise occupied, so I was on my own. I finally decided on Lake Jocassee as a reasonable target.
Last time I was here I had just gotten my Old Town Dirigo, and was wanting to see as many waterfalls as I could. This time I had the Pungo, but wasn’t really sure where I wanted to paddle. There was one waterfall from the last trip that I didn’t get to see because some bozo parked a pontoon boat right in front of it and showed no signs of moving. I decided to make that my first target. From there I wasn’t sure where I’d wind up.
The air temperatures were OK, but the water was quite chilly as I unloaded the boat and got set to head out. There was a little activity at the boat ramp, but nowhere near as much as my last visit. A boy and his son were taking a canoe out, and one pontoon boat launched. Another trio was spending lots of time fussing over a tandem rec boat. I talked with them, and one man and his brother were planning to paddle the entire length of the Savannah River, but not all at once. On today’s trip they were heading up to the North Carolina River. I hated to tell them that they weren’t on the Savannah, and wouldn’t be for quite awhile. However, I’m sure they knew that.
Edistoing (verb) – kayaking down the river, fun, rope swings, lots of fun, owls, loads of fun, funny side up, fossils, funtatious, sun burn, funtastic,endless oxbows, a heapin good time of fun, firecrackers, funsational, swimming with the gators, having fun, cypress knees, funasoric, beer, too much fun, and the Lowcountry Unfiltered Guys. (reference, John Ring)
Edisto (noun) – a state of blissful near-perfection brought on by the act of Edistoing; also the name of a blackwater river in the lowcountry of South Carolina.
I had my choice of paddling venues today. I could have joined the throngs in Spartanburg County for the Tame the Tyger river race, or I could join the Lowcountry Unfiltered gang for another trek on the Edisto River. I chose the latter. It turned out to be of paddling nirvana, with incredibly blue skies, cypress cathedrals, and camaraderie all around.
I got up early Saturday morning and drove down to Clinton to pick up Bob Donnan. By 6:30 we were on our way to the river. I set up my Nikon S50 on the dashboard and had it taking 10 second time-lapse photos to produce the video below:
The weather forecast was for unseasonably warm weather with clear skies – perfect weather for paddling. My friend Tim Taylor joined me, and we headed for a new paddling venue. This time we were headed to Piedmont, SC, and to the Saluda River.
I was aware of this stretch from creating my Paddling Guide, but I hadn’t scouted it. The Greenville Canoe and Kayak Meetup did a paddle along this stretch last November, so I had seen their photographs. Since it was close and a section I hadn’t paddled, I decided to give it a try.
Tim and I loaded up the boats and drove on down to Piedmont. The town is a mill village with a dam on the Saluda River. It’s possible to put in above the dam and paddle upstream against the slight current, then return. Most of the trek is lake-like flat water paddling.
The put-in was a rather steep dirt road that led down to a public river access. The road was rough, and I wouldn’t recommend it for nice cars. Unfortunately, the area was very trashy. There was the detritus that normally washes down rivers, but it looked like people had been using the area as a dumping ground. Both the river and especially the mud at the put-in absolutely stunk. I was starting to have second thoughts about this trip.
Alan and I both are on spring break this week, so we decided we needed to get some kayaking done. Monday morning we loaded up the boats and headed toward Lake Oolenoy in Table Rock State Park. Lake Oolenoy is a small lake, only 36 acres or so. Scenic Highway 11 runs across it’s upper … Read More “Paddling Lake Oolenoy” »
I hate that I missed the paddling trip down Ebenezer Creek with Lowcountry Unfiltered a couple of weeks ago. I really wanted to get on the water. So, when the Greenville Canoe and Kayak Meetup group sent out an e-mail notice of a trip down the Tugaloo River, I decided to join them.
Alan decided to come along, and I was happy to have at least one person I knew along on the trip. We set out from Greenville and met the group at an Ingles parking lot in Westminster. 22 had signed up for the trip, and the collection of vehicles with boats on top indicated that this would be a large group.
A skeptical policeman dropped by and questioned our sanity for wanting to paddle in such cold weather.
The other day I was going through photos of our various paddling trips and itching to get back on the water. As I was looking at the pictures, for some reason the theme song from The Incredibles by Michael Giacchino kept running through my mind. I started collecting some of the shots, and wound up … Read More “Lowcountry Incredible” »
File – Paddling South Carolina Rivers (KMZ, 1.5 MB)
Google Earth has been one of the best resources for planning river kayaking trips, especially on new routes with which I’m not familiar. I’ll scan the route, locate put-in and take-out points, and put placemarks for certain landmarks such as rapids, powerlines, bridges, tributaries, or other interesting locations along the way. I would then use GPS Babel to convert my Google Earth files to GPX files then upload the data to my GPS so I would have it with me on the paddling trip.
Pretty soon I had a nice little collection of river trips in Google Earth. I began to wonder if anyone else was doing this. It seemed like it would be an excellent resource. There are some excellent books out there, such as Able and Horman’s Paddling South Carolina, and while the maps in these resources are fine for giving driving directions, there is no GPS information. SCTrails.net has started putting Lat/Long coordinates for some of their paddling trails, but not for all of them. So, I decided to make my own collection.
Kayakers – 3
Weatherman – 0
This makes three trips in a row where there was an iffy weather forecast. In each case, if we had followed The Weather Channel’s advice and canceled the trip, we would have missed out on a fantastic day of paddling. You’ve got to pay attention to the weather, but a 60% chance of rain doesn’t necessarily mean a bad day on the river.
Following on the heels of our last successful Enoree trip, David and Rick wanted to paddle another stretch of the river. They had done some scouting, and found a stretch starting at Whitmire that had great river access points. Add to that the fact that David had a new kayak to try out, and we had to put together another trip.
This was going to be a much smaller group than last time. Since the paddle route was longer, this just made sense. We would be joined by Dave W, a good friend of Rick and David’s, bringing our number to four.
