The Edisto River Canoe and Kayak Trail Commission (ERCK) conducts trips on the Edisto River (duh), but for their last scheduled trip for this season they departed from their home river to do a trip on the Combahee. The Combahee is the “C” in the ACE Basin, but I had never paddled it. This looked like a great trip, so I decided to join them.
I headed down the night before and spent the night in Yemassee. The next morning I headed over to a landing simply known as “Public Landing” just east of Combahee. As usual, I was the first one of our group there, but I wasn’t the first person there by a long shot. There were lots of vehicles with boat trailers parked at the landing and one boater was already pulling out. Apparently fishing starts early around here. I went ahead and got my kayak set up for the trip, then waited for the others.
I didn’t have to wait long. A couple from Ohio who would be joining us arrived in a rather interesting camper van. They had modified a ladder rack as an easy access kayak loader. I wish I had taken a photo of it. Others soon arrived, and by 9:00 Jon Burroughs arrived with the ERCK van and rental kayaks. As we got the gear ready, we counted 20 kayaks that would be on this trip.
Some of these folks, like George, Liana, and Hugo, were friends I’d paddled with many times before. We had some newbies in the group, too. I’d soon be making friends with them, too. We ran the shuttled down to Sugar Hill Landing, then returned to our boats in the van. By 10:00ish we were on the water.
At this point the Combahee looks like many other low country rivers I’ve paddled. There are Spanish moss-draped cypress trees lining the banks. The river is fairly wide, with a good current.
Like the Edisto, the water is tea-stained from tannins.
About a mile from the put in we came to the dock for Auldbrass Plantation, one of only two Frank Lloyd Wright designed houses in South Carolina. The house itself isn’t visible from either the road or the river, but the fence around the plantation and the dock house still have design elements in common with the house. There are almost no 90ยบ angles in the construction.
There was a channel on the downstream side of the dock house that led onto the plantation property and closer to the main house. This was gated and closed off.
We regathered and headed on back downstream.
The river continued on lazily for many miles. The current was good, but we occasionally hit headwinds. There were deep curves and what appeared to be shortcuts across the oxbows. Usually those were too shallow or were blocked by fallen debris. We stuck to the main route.
There were also many side channels. On the maps these looked like they extended back quite a ways. We checked out the entrance to a couple of them, but we could be here for several days exploring channels if we weren’t careful.
In Google Earth on some of these deep bends I spotted what looked like nice sandy areas. What we encountered were sand-colored patches of grass covering a muddy bank. There wasn’t really a good place to stop for a break.
After one particularly long loop, the group decided to pull up onto a small island for a lunch break. Hugo, George, and Liana and taken a shortcut across the loop and didn’t know that the rest of the group had stopped. I paddled on down to let them know what was happening. I decided to hang out with them on another small mud island, but I stayed in my boat.
The Combahee is a tidal river, and while we were having out lunch the tide was going out. I found myself stuck in mud as the water receded. It was a struggle to get free. George was in a canoe and able to get out and give me some assistance, but I was worried there for a bit.
The rest of the group caught up with us and we continued on downstream.
The next landmark on the trip was the elaborate boathouse for Cherokee Plantation. It’s a golf club plantation with multimillion dollar homes. As with Auldbrass, the houses aren’t visible from the river and the waterways into the development are gated.
At this point the character of the river changes dramatically. Instead of cypress trees, the river is lined with salt marsh and rice plantations.
In addition to riprap, there were dikes and dams reminiscent of the old rice plantations.
A dock on the west side of the river marked our final stop along the Combahee. From here we would turn onto Sugar Hill Creek and paddle up to Sugar Hill Landing. The route took us closer to the marsh grasses. There were side channels, but with the tide out we wouldn’t be able to explore these.
Soon enough we reached the landing and the trip was over.
It was another fantastic trip with ERCK, and I was happy to explore a new river and make some great new friends. In all we paddled about 8.8 miles.
As usual, I made a time lapse from the GoPro images.