Jeff Nelson and I were the only ones from NOC. Being my first time down Overflow, I did not know whether to sigh with relief that the water was not pushy or groan with misery at all the bare rocks to broach on. Minimum water levels for running Overflow in kayaks are 2.5 feet on the Chattooga River gauge, with 3.0 a maximum for open boaters. The water level appeared low, but there was still plenty to paddle. It was too early in the year, however, for venomous reptiles. I looked about for water moccasins, half expecting those poisonous snakes to drop out of the jungle and wrap around my neck. The sun felt warm, but the water was icy. We snaked down a steep but short trail and slid off into a large eddy. Little did I know that by the end of the trip I was ready to throw that damn camera away. I imagined myself bobbing peacefully in an eddy shooting glorious waterfall dramas. It was my intention to take lots of pictures. And this time, unlike my earlier adventure down Slickrock Creek, I carried my camera. Hell, I like a good adrenalin buzz anyway. I remember how terrified I’d been on my first steep creek descents last spring and wondered how long I could keep fear at bay this time. I was surprised how calm I was unloading my boat and dressing for the trip. “Most folks put in below that drop, but the rest of it’s pretty steep, too.” He was the only one who had run Overflow before and only once at that. “Wow! Do people run that? Gosh, I’ve heard all kinds of horror stories about Overflow, but, man, does the whole goddamn creek look like that?” “Is that it?” the three of us who had never seen Overflow Creek before asked. The creek dropped about 15 feet onto an enormous boulder jutting from dense jungle on the left. Overflow gushed from a large culvert beneath a bend in the road to plunge over an ugly waterfall. We rumbled up Three Forks (FSR-86B), a rough dirt road, and finally, we saw it. It took almost an hour and a half to drive there from the NOC Chattooga Outpost and set up shuttle. Rhododendrons thicket the banks like iron octopi. Lower Overflow is supposed to be a beautiful, mellow run for beginner paddlers, but the Upper section drops 158 feet per mile for four miles through narrow, boulder-choked gorges with steep, lovely walls. It flows through the mountains into the West Fork of the Chattooga River, which in turn runs into Section I, a mythical hair run which is illegal to boat, or was back then. Though one zigzags back and forth along the Georgia-South Carolina border to get there, Overflow Creek lies entirely in Rabun County, Georgia. So off into the wilderness of North Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest we went. As much as we enjoyed partying with the Soviets and Costa Ricans, when it came down to the water, we were seekers of solitude. Truth be told, we mainly wanted relief from rowdy crowds congregating along Section III that day for the recent International Peace Rally hosted by the Nantahala Outdoor Center. We were just more on the spiritually cool side of gonzo. Though we were much more of a humble and calm team. In the end we figured we were indeed bored with Section IV and probably not quite all there in the head, either. Such crazy madness was the predicament the four of us found ourselves in one sunny, warm afternoon: were we really all that bored with Section IV? Heck, after all, the Chattooga was at a romping 2.8 feet on the gauge. In the pages of North Carolina Canoeing, Bob Sehlinger and Don Otey write of the notoriously wild Chattooga River, “If Section IV bores you, try Overflow Creek.” They declared it was for “boaters with…a little insanity.” We just had no idea our party of four kayakers would get stuck in a confrontation with the Grim Reaper deep in a remote Appalachian gorge as the Sun slid down behind the tallest trees. We knew we were all skilled paddlers, climbers, and hikers and could handle ourselves in the wilderness. Jeff going “singless” running Singley’s Falls.
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