http://www.vimeo.com/1648150
For at least a year now Andy Hobson and I have had an eye on Chewacla state park falls, and its probability of successfully running it in our kayaks. Its a 25 to




Brittany and I met Andy at about 8:30 Sunday, August 24 2008 with intentions of going straight to Chewacla. The state park has lots of cool features, including class 5 park andhuck.... the catch, a $3 entry fee on the weekends and $2 on the weekdays and a two hundred yard walk from the truck.Upon our arrival we could hear the water from the parking lot and suddenly a great feeling came over us. We quickly suited up and hiked the 1/8 mile trail down hill to the falls. Walking straight to the upper falls, we had high hopes of a large enough flow to run it. And it was BIG.
The highest I've ever seen it. But that's what we needed to see, honestly. We ran the lower falls at the highest flow it's ever been run, I'm willing to bet. Andy fired it up first and it was amazing, flawless. With a class four plus lead in, this drop falls about 6 feet vertically before driving over a super fun auto boof/launch dropping about ten to twelve feet into a large hole. Then about a ten foot pool into the last lead out hole, also beefy(lower falls shown here with Andy standing by). We each ran it several times with all smiles.
Pumped from our good lines, we had to go take a second look at the notorious upper falls. This time thoroughly scouting out the river right line. The landing was actually more shallow, but all other aspects of the line where much more inviting than the river left one. After rigging up a sweet little boat saving system we launched Andy's boat, filled with about 15 gallons of water, off the drop for a test run. As soon as we saw how well it took the drop we both knew it was on......And so we ran the shit.

I ran it first, and Andy soon there after, and it was all goooooood.
The following photos were caught by an Auburn/Opelika news photographer, William White. He happened to be at the park on his own account, and this is what was in the newspaper. More to come he says on a CD he plans on mailing me.....For some reason i couldn't load the video straight to the blog so...

Make sure to Check out the video here: http://www.vimeo.com/1648150
-charlie simmons
No comments:
Post a Comment