Linc Stallings running Class IV+ dueling waterfalls. See the full gallery. Photo: Jeremy Rogers
“I’ve got a 50/50 success rate with that drop. About half the time, I swim,” Linc Stallings tells me after he negotiates our boat over a 10-foot waterfall into a deep pool flanked by massive boulders. We’re running the North Fork of the French Broad, a small stream that drops off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Western North Carolina. It’s a rain-dependent creek with class IV+ vertical drops, deep pools, and technical boulder gardens scattered throughout a two-mile stretch that’s popular with creek boaters. We’re running it in a small two-person raft called an R-2. Across the Southern Appalachians, a handful of boaters are beginning to take these small, 10-foot rafts down narrow, class IV-V creeks that have previously only been run in kayaks and the occasional canoe. It’s a niche sport that even some creek boaters think is a little crazy.
“People freak out when they see rubber coming down a creek,” Stallings says. “There are only a few people who would take a raft down these narrow rivers, so people still think it’s wild.”
Of those few R-2 boaters, Linc Stallings is easily one of the most experienced. The 36 year old has been guiding rafts down class V rivers for 15 years, working the biggest rivers in the South and Colorado depending on the year. He’s a rare breed: a professional raft guide, someone who’s committed to this as a career, not just something to do between college and “the real world.”
“I always thought I’d do it and move on. But I just kept doing it,” Stallings says. “I love it. I love taking people out on the river. I love hanging out with other boaters. I love the water.”
R-2 creeking is essentially what raft guides do on their day off. They borrow a small two-person raft from their bosses and push it, scrape it, and paddle like hell through tight rain-dependent creeks in the mountains. The North Fork of the French Broad is one of Stallings’ favorites. He first learned to creek boat here while attending Brevard College’s wilderness immersion program. He knows the nuances of every significant rapid the way a tween girl knows the lyrics to a Justin Bieber song.
“A ton of people have run this creek in a kayak,” he tells me as we begin to paddle toward the first class III rapid, just 50 yards from the put-in. “But running it in a raft has a completely different dynamic. Running tight drops in this big boat is fun, but there are some logistical things you have to work out. It’s like doing a math problem.”
We hit our first complex “math problem” at Boxcar, a 12-foot waterfall with a technical, burly entry and another waterfall coming in on the left side of the boat exactly when it’s time to go vertical and drop into the pool below. It’s a formidable class IV+ drop in a kayak. In an R-2, it’s advanced calculus. You have to ride the bedrock seam between the two waterfalls while carrying enough momentum to boof the lip of the drop. You’ve got to get enough momentum through the launch so you carry an angle through the descent. If the nose of the boat hits the water vertically, you swim. Meanwhile, the second waterfall is pounding the left side of the boat, trying to pull the left-side paddler out of the raft. That paddler has to crank out two big forward strokes just before the lip of the falls while trying not to get sucked out of the raft.
It happens so fast that before you know it, you’re either swimming downstream or you’re sitting at the base of the falls inside a crazy-steep gorge celebrating before you realize it’s all over.
The North Fork of the French Broad is a classic Southern creek surrounded by mossy gorge walls and steep forested banks. It’s remote and beautiful and there are hundreds just like it throughout the Southern Appalachians. The obvious question that arises when you see a bulbous rubber boat dropping over a tight, vertical waterfall in the middle of a pristine creek gorge like this is: “Why would anyone do that?”
“I always tell people I like to R-2 because you can’t fit a cooler in a kayak,” Stallings says, smiling at the end of the North Fork run. “It’s just a different craft to get it done. It’s like driving a scenic highway in a Cadillac instead of a Porsche. It has its ups and downs.”
One aspect of R-2 that’s unique is the tandem nature of the boat. Two paddlers have to work together to get the raft down the river. One paddler has to take the lead and the other has to follow. It can be difficult, particularly when you’ve got two headstrong raft guides in the same raft, both of whom are typically used to being the leader on the water, but Stallings likes the relationships that evolve inside that tiny piece of rubber.
“There’s a social aspect to R-2 unlike any other kind of boating. You build a trust that’s completely unique,” he says, as we catch our breath after hauling the heavy rubber from the river to our cars parked on the side of Highway 215. Then he spins around and yells, “Gettin’ naked!” before changing back into his street clothes. “These poor unsuspecting mountain folk have seen more bare asses on this road than they’d care to admit.”
That’s Stallings, the perpetual guide, always thinking of others.
Are You R-2 Worthy?
The fickle rain-dependent nature of creeks makes it hard for commercial outfits to plan trips, and most paying customers don’t want to schlep a heavy rubber boat half a mile through rhododendron to the put in. But if you want to give it a go, you’ve got two options in the South and Mid-Atlantic.
Precision Rafting in Maryland offers “Extreme River Trips” on the Top Yough in R-2 boats. At low water, the Chattooga, on the Georgia/South Carolina border, turns into a technical creek with big drops.