I plan on taking a trip up to NC to float on the French Broad some this weekend. I’m wanting to do roughly 6-8 hour trip in the Asheville area. Does anyone have some insight they are willing to share on a trip that fits that? Also put in/ take outs?
Check out the French Broad Paddle Trail here:
Great source of information including outfitters, campsites, launch points etc.
Richard
Thanks!
Do not go up the creek that comes out at the Biltmore House. I know for a fact that they used to dump raw sewage in it. We stepped in it.
Sounds gross! Do you know what speed you averaged while you were on it?
It was a very casual trip with canoes and kayaks. No concern about speed. We were delayed a bit when a canoe got sideways on a rock and filled with water. Luckily it was in 2’ deep water.
A couple of us pulled the upstream side above the flow while a couple more pumped water with bilge pumps. We were able to float it with no more incidents that day.
Sounds nice! The only reason I was mentioning speed was for trying to map out miles and which take outs to use.
The river is fed from many sources and I’ve seen it from very low to flood. Find a river level gauge for the area you want to paddle .
Coincidentally I just crossed that river today on the way to Clemson and it looked very appealing…not at flood level but not terribly low. But according to this link it’s flowing less than 1500 cubic feet per second which ain’t a lot of flow for a river that was hundreds of yards wide where we crossed it.
https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?03451500
The link in my post above has a page that shows all of the relevant stream gages. It also has a page with suggested trips by length and difficult.
I am not related to that group or any of the companies that advertise there, I just think it is really well done.
I would like to know about other similar sites. But maybe they should each be given their own thread to make them easier to find by searching the forum.
Richard
You’re right Richard. That’s a great link with a lot of useful information.
Thanks for all the info. I did look at the paddle trail page. I was impressed with the information it had and seems well presented. The only thing was it didn’t give a rough time for the 12 mile trip, but that’s negligible. I had looked some last night and am interested in Westfeldt Park to Hominy Creek which is about 15 miles.