Drive to Deliverance River

April 7, 2013 

After a delicious breakfast and fond farewell with Christin and Sydney, we headed off for the next leg of our trip, trout fishing in Cashiers, NC. This little mountain resort town is about a 4-hour drive south and west of Boone; it's in a spot where three states join--North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina. The Chattooga River begins near Cashiers and flows south, forming the border between GA and SC. It's on the Top 100 Trout Streams list for the U.S. and Jack had tried to fish it several years ago. However, the water was very high and muddy at that time and Jack failed to catch a trout; since his personal rules don't allow him to cross a river off his list unless he's caught at least one trout, we needed to return and avenge getting skunked.

Many of you may already be familiar with the Chattooga, as it was the setting for the movie Deliverance: a big, bold river filled with awesome rapids. It's not such a good idea to remind the folks around here about that movie, however, as the locals weren't portrayed too favorably and they're not the type to forgive and forget. We're not going to mention it to anybody, except you, our loyal blog readers!

We made it to Cashiers just fine, but ran into trouble trying to find the outfitters that Jack had used the last time we were here. There's apparently been a lot of new construction (condos, golf courses, and such) and the outfitter was nowhere to be seen. Nothing looks familiar. We decided to boldly set off into the wilderness and try to find a place to camp and a good place for Jack to access the river for fishing tomorrow. Our GPS located the back road we were looking for and it started off being a pretty good road. It quickly degenerated into a winding, steep and narrow gravel road that seemed to go on forever. We found a small stream and were beginning to think that it was the Chattooga and it had merely shrunk since our last visit, but we finally encountered a hiker who set us straight and shared his excellent, detailed National Geographic map with us. We were in the Pisgah National Forest next to a designated Wilderness Area for hiking/camping only; we just hadn't gone far enough yet.

We kept driving, up a mountain, and then down the mountain, and finally got to a bridge over the big river--big and beautiful, all right! Looks like one of the places in Deliverance where the guys almost drowned! (We must have been stunned by the sight of it, because neither one of us remembered to take photos--we'll get pics tomorrow...) We scouted it a bit for fishing  potential and it will do just fine. A couple of trails near the bridge allow access to the river banks and some rocks suitable for fishing from, and it looks like Jack might be able to wade upstream a ways.

We decided to drive back up the mountain to a promising-looking campsite, spend the night, then drive out tomorrow morning toward town far enough to get a decent cell signal, so Jack can get a fishing license online, then drive back down here to fish. A long drive on the winding gravel road, but that's OK.  (When we get into cell range in the morning, I'll also post this blog and what pics we did get today. BTW, for any of you who might be reading this blog every day, don't worry if we miss a day here and there--it's likely that we ended up having to camp out of cell signal range and couldn't post using our MyFi. I guess we COULD have fallen off a mountain or washed down a river or something, but that's a lower probability...)

Set up camp, ate supper and took a few photos.

We decided to hike a ways down a nearby trail, hoping to get down to the river, which we can hear echoing in the gorge (our campsite is probably 200 ft above the river on a level spot). (As Jack says, "Carol got the bright idea that we would hike down to the river.")  The trail started off pretty nice but soon became extremely steep and slippery. Neither one of us wanted to call it quits before the other, and soon we were both sliding down the muddy trail on our bottoms, grasping at limbs and roots to break our fall. It wasn't exactly a free fall, but you couldn't exactly call it "walking" or "hiking" either. As you can see in the photos,

our pants bottoms got pretty muddy. (That's one thing the RoadTrek doesn't have--a washing machine and dryer--will have to look into that.) Hiking back up was an ordeal, to say the least. We never did catch a glimpse of the river from the trail, although it sounded like it was right there in front of us. We both called "uncle" at the same time, for the record.

Tired and ready for early bedtime...