C-Forum

I've been trawling through AW posts and was wondering what Alan Singley and Allan & Robin Socemdog were paddling when they were running first descents of Overflow and Big Creek back in the day. Alan was apparently running first descents of Overflow in sections solo, with his dog on the banks of the creek (okay, whatever, it was a moutain goat dog.)

I've been on Overflow. It's my favorite run, even though I've only been on it twice. It's a tiny rowdy majesty. I'm just trying to picture running it in an 80s glass C1.

This is mostly because I recently bought a glass C1 from the 80s. And I have to go back to see my crazy conspiracy-riddled parents some time, right? Might as well schedule for the weather, yeah?

Anyone else interested in talking about harrowing escapades of early descents? Or anachronistic descents from last weekend?

What are the most dicey drops you've dingled? What trouble did you time warp yourself into? How have you pushed the envelope BACKWARDS?

I want to hear about Davey Hearn acolytes running Great Falls with their thighs strapped blue, stomachs in their mouth. The sound of glass scraping on rock at Big Splat. Blown seams on the Bear.

I've gotten into and out of trouble in a plastic boat. I just don't particularly like how it feels. Something about glass boats makes my teeth ring.

Give it to me. I want to hear about some serious hair.

Bring it on!

What got me going on this was finding that Allan (or was it Robin?) was the namesake for the last of the Five Falls on Sectioon IV of the Chattooga.

I mean really, how does one get the surname SOCEMDOG?

My father is our family's geneaologist and I don't think he has ever seen a more radical surname.

My dad put me in the front of his Perception Nantahala and ran us down Section IV at some ungodly low level in 1980.

I eventually started running it as my home run and he blanched when I told him my first run was at 2.3, and then a couple years later a highmark at 5.3

My dad would always tell me about a friend of his who swam Jawbone and went THROUGH the rock at powerhouse, or properly, Powerhouse Rock, a famously undercut hole-ridden rock filled with logs. His friend apparently never got in a boat on a river again.

Any of you's got stories like that? Terrible stories?

I'll start.

On my first run on the Narrows of the Green, I ran Sunshine backwards and walked out of the gorge without my boat or my paddle.

Nobody wants to talk about hair.

A couple good friends ran Overflow in 78 - David Benner was in a 70CM full size Hahn C1 and Lamar Hudgens was in a Prijon Sahna.

Holy nutsack, that's crazy.

Were C1s more popular with crazy people (and in the general boating community) in the 70s and 80s?

P_H

Were C1s more popular with crazy people

No, they were more readily available. The canoe was the most prevalent boat at the time. There was a culture of canoeing then that is gone now. Canoe clubs were popular and the crazy among them moved on to more extreme craft that were being imported or copied from European sources. Kayaks did exist and there were enthusiasts but they also were imported copied. The advent of plastic boats in the late 80's and early 90's swung the pendulum in favour of the kayaks as they were much easier to master and more forgiving. There's a guy named Jim Michuad from Connecticut who made a lot of first descents of class V streams here in NE in an open canoe back in the 70's and 80's. Someone needs to do a biography of him.

Jim has two rapids on different CT rivers named after him from what I understand. Michaud's Hole on the Natchaug and Michaud Falls on the Hubbard.

It's summer and the flows are low where I'm at, just please chime in and tell me some hairy stories from Way Back When and inclue some Spicy Details about Boats Nobody Paddles Nowadays.

Never thought I'd have to pull teeth to get people to tell stories.