By Tim Homan
A few years ago, an old hiking buddy and I reminisced about our backcountry camps in the Southern Appalachians, some of them shared. We were sitting around the warm and well-lit comfort of a campfire near Beech Creek's headwater springs in the Southern Nantahala Wilderness (North Carolina's northern half of the wilderness), and had plenty of time to remember. Before long, we had compartmentalized noteworthy camps into categories: most memorable, most scenic, hardest-to-reach bushwhack camps, coldest, wettest, worst ever, etc. As is the backpacker's penchant, we named our most memorable camps with short descriptors, then explained and expanded if necessary. The following is the long-form story of the winner in my most memorable camp category: Double Close Call, Double Copperhead.
Charles, David, Steve, and I took parts of three days to complete our hike along a beautiful living stretch of the Chattooga-all of it national wild and scenic river, all of it trout water.** We knew what to expect from our upcoming three-day weekend (early July, 2001) and the weather. We knew the hiking would be hot and sweat soaked; the river corridor would be crowded, and the predicted thunderstorms would provide flash-and-boom- fireworks.
We set the shuttle and began backpacking Section 3 of the Chattooga River Trail (1) under a threatening sky. I was pulling up the rear, pushing a bright, industrial-orange measuring wheel and frequently stopping to take notes (2).
Conditions, both external and internal, quickly imposed a spasmodic momentum: a start-and-stop rhythm alternating between three activities, only one of which moved us up the map. We were unable to mete out breaks by any measurement of our choosing, either minutes or miles hiked. Our breaks came often, unplanned, and at irregular intervals. The first reason for halting was meteorological. Southern Appalachian July sent wave after wave of entrained summer thunderstorms, bottoms bruised and dark blue, rushing overhead. The second, was physiological: our alarm-bell-strong need to cool off in cold water.
We trudged beneath a two-tiered canopy: white pines towering, pagodalike, above all the other trees-hardwoods, hemlock, and other conifers. After managing some segment of a mile, we took quick shelter under the lean-to of a tarp as the next fast-moving formation of storm-dark and water-fat clouds opened their bomb-bay doors right above us. The tarp came back down, our packs came back up, and the sun came back out. We slogged up the rain-sloppy track through a steaming landscape on slow simmer. The lush Southern Highland canopy held the humidity in like a giant green-roofed sauna. Trail banter bet that a snail or some other form of Mollusca would crawl up our legs, slimy with body grease and sweat drench, if we stood in one place too long.
We continued to hike until the smother of sun-bright heat and the fluid heaviness of humidity pressed upon our packs and sweat-sodden clothes, which didn't take long. Then the gathered green water of the Chattooga's pools-over-our-heads deep, soothing to both body and soul-pulled us over as reliably as the offer of free hundred-dollar bills. The four of us shucked down to shorts and swam in the Chattooga's cool water, the perfect antidote to the wilting weather and the week's work stress.
Refreshed and willing to walk again, we shouldered our packs and marched through the heat before ducking under the tarp again. We made day-one camp where the river had flattened the land to narrow floodplain a few tenths of a mile short of Lick Log Falls. Our first day's distance fell short of the minimum we had hoped for, but no matter, we had proceeded as the way opened. We had taken what the day had given us, and now we had a level camp and an entire evening to sit beside the Chattooga.
Close by, a narrow strip of beach offered an open look at a long pool tailing out into the quickening water of a rock-bedded riffle. All around camp and across the river, we were surrounded by the wonderfully diverse Mountain South forest, much of it the rich year-round green of mountain laurel, hemlock, American holly, doghobble, white pine, and rosebay rhododendron, whose corsage-sized flower clusters had already begun whitening the woods.
The next morning we broke camp as daylight spread down into the river bottom. The second day's progress stuttered along like the first's-storm-tarp, slackpack-sweat, shuck-swim-except our opportunities to cool off came at longer intervals where the treadway traversed the side-wall slopes of Rock Gorge. Down there, the small but widening wedge of our view ended at the closed-in horizon of the first ridgeline across the river. Down in the gorge, the dark and roiling storm clouds coasted suddenly overhead, giving us barely enough time to pull the tarp out of its stuff sack before the next short-lived fury of thunder and lightning and torrential rain began. We walked until the two-punch combination of low-nineties heat and super-saturated air slowed our pace to a sweat-soaked and listless plodding, then we jumped into whatever suitable water the route offered.
Where the CRT closely parallels the deeply entrenched river in Rock Gorge, it provides open views of cascades where they pour over high ledges into their plunge pools. The opposite bank is frequently bluffed and bouldered and barricaded with rhododendron. We swam below a 30-foot-long slab of bedrock funneling the stream's entire flow into a powerful, log-wedged chute less than 10 feet wide. David and I knew the river ran through more of these pinch-points, where logs shredded the Chattooga to white foam before letting it pass and pool green again, some even more cinched down and wasp-waisted than the one we had just seen.
The second night out our crew camped close to a wide run of clear glide-water a short distance upstream from Big Bend Falls. Steve staked out his tent; Charles hung his jungle hammock; David and I roped up nylon tarps as our only shelter. We ate our evening meal on shelving rock worn smooth by the long work of the river. Small rainbow trout and light rain occasionally dimpled ripple-rings into the current from opposite sides of the surface. After our simple suppers, we talked, sipped a few shots of ground softener, and watched the seaward slide of the night-darkened water.
David and I told the close-calls story of our canoe trip down "Section 0" (3) of the Chattooga as dusk dissolved the edges of the shadows. On that trip, far more than any other, we had butted our Blue Hole canoes right up against that highly permeable membrane between hardy adventure and foolhardy disaster. To our surprise, Steve picked up the thread and wove his own Section 0 story into ours when we finished.
He and two buddies had braved Rock Gorge and its unknown hazards with a two-man raft and an inflatable canoe a half-dozen years before our near-midnight-long day on the river. They embarked on their trip after the movie Deliverance (4) but before the Chattooga received national wild and scenic river designation, and regulations. After the movie, the Chattooga's swift current became a free-flowing seduction, a siren song beckoning adventurous young men down dangerous rapids. It was a high-death-toll time on the river.
Steve and his friends launched into the movie-famous river blind, sight unseen. They didn't know about Big Bend Falls a little less than 3 miles downstream; they didn't know about the dangerous cascades in Rock Gorge where the topomap's contour lines rise clustered and dark brown up from the river. All they knew for certain was their desire to run the Chattooga, to test their youth and strength and testosterone-laced daring against the primal energy and power of that gloriously wild and rippling river. That and how to squeal like a pig.
Their October paddling trip was progressing smoothly, their confidence rising through the quick water and the easy-to-read inverted Vs of Class 1 and 2 rapids, until … the Chattooga disappeared from sight. Sudden fear slapped them in the face as they focused on the huge bank-to-bank break in the river's horizon line. They could see nothing of the river's downstream run below the drop-off. No standing waves. Not even spray. Sight and sound screamed danger dead ahead: a major cascade or more likely the sharp plunge of an unknown waterfall. Closer now, the rumble muffled all other sounds except their voices, now loud with alarm, as the river swept them toward the brink just like in the adventure movies.
Steve and his bowman paddled with adrenaline's burst of strength and speed to reach dry land, but the Chattooga's grip was too strong and the raft too unwieldy. When it was clear they were going over, they kept their heads and made the best of it by straightening back out and seeking the heaviest water within easy reach. As the raft approached the lip of the first pitch, they saw the river and its rocks at an uncomfortably long angle below. Time slowed to a held breath, stood still to near stalling. Pulse rates jumped up; stomachs clenched to a tight knot of dread. The raft tilted onto the slanting slide of fast water just above the first short drop. Then time, accelerating with an almost audible snap, and nervous resignation flew over the high ledge. The bow rode thin air for a couple of pounding heartbeats before falling with the water's arc-a nosedive down the final descent, a nearly 15-foot drop all at once.
Bam! Sudden deceleration syndrome. The raft's impact slammed Steve into his paddling partner, his motorcycle-helmet headgear punching into the bowman's back. The raft threw them out as it flipped over, remained motionless for a few seconds, then floated downstream, leaving them behind-cold and dazed, but still buzzing with adrenaline-in the plunge pool below Big Bend Falls. Steve was shaken but otherwise uninjured; the bowman's elbow had slammed into rock when he hit the water.
The solo paddler had reached shore in time. He quickly carried around the falls, chased down the runaway raft, then waded it back to its traumatized riders, who had just been chucked into the toughest stretch of the trip.
The expedition regrouped and continued down the wild green river, mostly because there was no way to go back. The bowman's injured elbow left his left arm numb, limp, and useless. Working hard in the stern, Steve steered over short-drop ledges and between boulders as they ran a series of Rock Gorge rapids. The voyageurs regained a small measure of momentum and confidence as they moved downriver and remained upright. But less than a half hour later the Chattooga wiped all their psychological gains away. A curving line of quickening current carried the raft into a sweeper at the base of an outside-bend bluff. The deadfall sweeper caught and held the small raft. Steve and his paddling partner were pinned: rock to the right, sweeper in front, river to the left and below.
Everything happened fast. The river poured over the bow. The water's weight in the front and the current's push from the back drove the bow under. The bowman disappeared below the surface, gone from sight. The biochemical cavalry garrisoned in his adrenal gland charged for air and light. His working arm, the right one, found purchase on an above-water branch. Kicking underwater for all he was worth and hoisting with his one good hand, he pulled his head and shoulders above drowning and death-a real-life deliverance.
After resting and regrouping from their second close call, Steve and his companions continued down the Chattooga hyper-vigilant to the sounds and sights of potential peril. They heard the same dull roar of problematic rapids David and I had heard. They landed and scouted a series of Rock Gorge rapids. The most obvious and immediately dangerous one-the one I still remember vividly-was an absolute skull-and-crossbones suicide run: carry around or die. Rock squeezed the entire river into a 6-foot-wide drop with parts of dead trees wedged and crisscrossed just above waterline.
They made long and rough portages around the most dangerous whitewater-boulders, steep rock, and rhododendron always in the way. They worked their way through the gorge to much safer water and lower banks, but ran out of daylight. The dog-tired paddlers cached their watercraft close to dark, then bushwhacked straight up the steep and brush-tangled slope on river-right until they found an old logging road. The three of them followed the woods road for maybe an hour before seeing flashlight beams and hearing male voices on the single-track near its junction with Hwy 28.
They had found the dozen-strong search party making preparations to look for them. Earlier that morning, the young adventurers had helped make camp with their three girlfriends near Hwy 28. They told their girlfriends where they were putting in, Burrells Ford Road, before they drove toward their long and arduous day on the Chattooga. When their boyfriends had not appeared by dark, the young women became worried and called search and rescue. One of the would-be rescuers told Steve, "When we found out you three were attempting to paddle through Rock Gorge, we wondered if we should go back for body bags."
Next morning, while David and I were eating our morning mush, bloatmeal, we heard Charles call out, "there's two copperheads over here, and they're heading your way." We stood up, took a cautious step or two toward Charles, and looked in the direction he was pointing from the sag of his hammock. Sure enough, a brace of copperheads-both identically slender and a little less than 30 inches long-were weaving their unhurried way through the low vegetation toward the circle of black and bare soil surrounding the fire ring. Giving them leave to roam where they would, we stood by and admired the interlocking patterns of their hourglass-shaped, copper-brown crossbands. Their colors were particularly vibrant and glossy, like they had been freshly dipped in varnish, evidence they both had shed their old scuffed-up and scaly skins recently. The twin copperheads were aesthetically pleasing creatures, wet and glistening in the early morning sun, and not at all harmful from our safe and sensible distance.
Our unworried but watchful tracking of the pair's progress through camp, their sinuous movements a continuous and muscular flowing, suddenly switched to mild alarm. The lead pit viper had just ricocheted off the fire ring and was now crawling directly toward Steve's tent. A night owl far more familiar with midnight than early morning, Steve was somewhat awake and still inside. His front-door flap was down but unzipped. The snake's unwavering trajectory left no doubt its intent; it was going to take cover either under or inside the tent.
We told Steve a copperhead was slithering toward the front of his tent, but all we received in return was an incoherent mumble. He probably thought we were crying wolf to get him up and out of his fart sack. But it didn't matter, there wasn't anymore time for talking. I grabbed my close-to-hand hiking stick-basswood, light and long-then moved parallel to and past the venomous snake. Now set up somewhat like a hockey goalie a long stride outside the net, I leaned over and tapped an L-shaped configuration alongside the first foot of his body then in front of the ophidian's incoming head, gently deflecting the easily wrangled reptile around the tent.
The unaggressive copperhead never came to coil; it just changed course and continued its slow and legless low-crawl though camp. After its twin cleared the downstream edge of our encampment, Charles said he thought both of them had sought shelter from the night's rain under his hammock. He had wrapped his pack in a tarp and stowed it beneath his hammock for the night. And he had just pulled the tarp out from under the hammock when he first spotted the two pit vipers.
I quickly thought of the obvious what-if: what-if the copperheads had cozied up to David or me during the night. But without an actual close call, the what-if was weak and easily dismissed. Half a mile down the trail, what could have happened but didn't was largely forgotten, and what did happen was remembered with gratitude and good cheer. I had quickly come around to my normal way of thinking about nonthreatening venomous snakes.
Highland Dixie is a land tamed of its large carnivores, cougars and wolves. Omnivorous black bears and venomous snakes are remaining proof that we have not entirely neutered all threat and potential danger from the forest, that we have not brought the land to heel so thoroughly that the only remaining danger is falling on our faces.
Like rain and rhododendron, whitewater rivers and brook trout, bears and wildflowers and big trees, rattlesnakes and copperheads come with the country. They are essential components, living symbols, of the Earth's ancient wilderness. They still live largely secret lives beyond our ken and control.
Seen from a safe distance, pit vipers pep up a hike with their beauty and novelty, their potential danger and big-stick physical presence. Their slithering glide makes what is left of the eastern wilderness wilder. They force you to realize that the Southern Appalachian forest still has a few fangs. They make you more alert, more awake.
Notes
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act became Public Law 90-542 on October 2, 1968. In addition to the "instant eight" rivers designated by the act, the U.S. Congress listed the Chattooga and twenty-six other rivers to be studied for possible inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The U.S. Forest Service study recommended the river for membership in the system. On May 10, 1974, Public Law 93-279 designated approximately 57 miles of the Chattooga and the West Fork of the Chattooga as a National Wild and Scenic River. A blue-blazed corridor of approximately 15,432 acres helps protect the river. The Chattooga's selection was the first of its kind in the South, and the first addition to the system after the original act.
**Steve is Steve Craven and David is David Brown.
(1) Section 3 of the Chattooga River Trail, 12.8 miles long, roughly parallels its namesake stream on the South Carolina side from Highway 28 near Russell Bridge to Burrells Ford Road (Oconee County, Sumter National Forest, approximately 368,000 acres over three disjunct ranger districts).
(2) Hiking Trails of the Southern Nantahala Wilderness Ellicott Rock Wilderness Chattooga National Wild and Scenic River
(3) Our Section 0 of the Chattooga flowed down the watershed from Burrells Ford Road just south of the Ellicott Rock Wilderness to Russell Bridge (Hwy 28) along the Georgia-South Carolina line. Boating that section was strictly against the rules when David and I paddled and portaged our Blue Hole canoes through Rock Gorge all those years ago. We knew that nearly 11-mile stretch of the Chattooga is dangerous, but like others before and after us, we were young and easily lured by that wild run of forbidden river.
(4) The movie Deliverance, starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, came to life on the big screens in the summer of 1972. The movie was based upon the James Dickey novel (1970) with the same title. Most of the movie's calmer canoeing scenes were filmed on the Chattooga River.
