Witches' Hole

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 upstream
rapid diagram downstream
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Killer hand-surfing spot. Get in with your boat pointing to the river left, put your right hand down in the water behind your cockpit and twirl your paddle over your head with your left hand.

Hot move: Hand surf, throw your paddle into the eddy on the river left side, hand roll while staying in the hole, then exit the hole. If you flip coming out of the hole, watch the roll on the eddy line as the current is really squirrely.

When hanging in the eddies here, watch for rafts coming across to surf. A good guide can do it without crushing boats, but lazy ones like to slide the boat into that exposed flat rock face at the bottom of the eddy, and if you're there, you're toast.

If you lose the left side eddies and drop down below those rocks, ferry across right and move back upstream over there.

previous : Diamond Splitter next : Western Flyer

I love to hear from my readers, but I get a lot of mail. If you're writing to set up a rafting or other outdoor adventure trip in the southeast Tennessee area, contact the folks at OAR , my favorite outfitters.

This is a part of the Virtual Ocoee pages of Dan's Whitewater collection in the home pages of Dan Lyke , reachable at danlyke@flutterby.com