Southeast Stouts!

New in 2025 at Calleva River School was the Southeast Stouts program. This program is designed to push the skills of those looking to go beyond the Upper Yough. Kayak programs often take on the personality, style, and image of the instructor. So, when yours truly, the ZoneDogg, was named as the lead of the program, you can imagine it would be filled with big drops, some low volume escapades, and high amounts of adventure! 

The training featured three weeks of preparation before the trip to the Southeast. We started with an advanced moves clinic on the Upper Yough at a fairly juicy and challenging flow of 2.6. With the extra water, we made an evening run Top Yough to double our fun! The second week’s clinic brought heavy rain, high water, and lots of options! We were craving large amounts of gradient, so we headed to Red Creek. It is a true wilderness run dropping off the side of Dolly Sods, a gorgeous mountaintop plateau. For 3 miles, the creek drops an impressive 250 feet per mile down an endless series of slides and waterfalls!

The final training adventure took us to the 5th slide of the Fishladder at Great Falls. Steve O, Jesse and I headed out early that morning to preview the course and make decisions for how to navigate the run safely with our group. The 5th slide gave everyone good practice at driving their boat to the left to avoid the hole at the bottom and is easily lapped. After these three sessions, the group was ready to go test their skills on some of North Carolina’s finest runs!

The first day of the Southeast Trip featured the Nantahala Cascades, a ferocious half mile run with some stout slides and drops! The dam release was oddly placed in the evening, which threw off our schedule. Not being one for loafing around and wasting time, we went to check out the Cullasaja River for some park and huck fun. We drove up the road and checked out several sections for consideration. We decided on the Super Slide section starting at the boiled peanut stand (Boiled Peanut Gorge). It started with a fun section of Class 3-4 drops before disappearing over a horizon line of drops leading to a sieved out 5 foot ledge. I figured the likelihood was that I would bridge the sieve with speed and a boof, which worked perfectly! A few others followed with successful lines.

The final drop of the section was Super Slide, a long slide that got progressively steeper and ended in a wild looking drop with a roostertail that looked like a potential piton with some ugly boulders on the right bank. The slide actually went smoother than it looked and I was stoked to have fired up a clean line. Jack decided to send it too and also had a great run. 

We got over to the Nantahala Cascades near the beginning of the release. The level was around 350 cfs, which was a good bit pushier than the low water release we were expecting. After a full scout of the section, we ran it in two separate groups to safely guide down all 7 of the participants. The drops were cool and ran together quickly with only small eddies to set up in.

The Horns was the first drop and required boofing a hole, followed by a turn and a 6 foot drop between two rocks (the Horns). A short cascade led to a nice pause eddy. The second drop was Big Kahuna and featured a long slide with curlers and holes that ends in a broken 10 foot ledge requiring a precise boof. The runout drop was a slide into a large hole that dished out some nice skips if you hit it with the correct angle and speed.

The final drop was called Chinese Feet, which had a sweet 4 foot boof followed immediately by a second drop into a deep hole. The group navigated this section overall well with a couple flips and surfs being the only bobbles.

Before leaving, we decided to check out a large cascade on a side creek called White Oak Falls. It was steep and manky, with some a sharp turn against a pillow part way down. This was a Zone D-O-Double G drop if there ever was one! I caught too much rock on the initial boof which deflected me further left than planned heading into the pillow.

I bounced off the pillow with a slight upstream lean to carve toward the bottom cascade. My paddle blade got pulled down and I had to brace upstream. I rode the brace down the cascade and righted my kayak as soon as I went off the lip of the final falls. It wasn’t perfect but it was a successful run nonetheless! The rest of the group decided to save it for another day and we headed back to town to feed our faces at a fantastic Italian restaurant. 

Day 2 brought a double run of the Cheoah River, one of the best Class 4 runs anywhere. The highlights included a fun 10 foot drop called Bear Creek Falls and about a million high quality boofs! We owed it to ourselves to do a second lap of this kayaking goodness! We ate dinner at a cool restaurant that sat right next to one of the best boofs of the day!

After dinner, we were seeking more thrills so we headed up the Tail of the Dragon with the Calleva Sprinter van to test its high performance abilities on one of the world’s curviest and deadliest roads. After a few miles, we decided that the Sprinter was out of place with all the sports cars and motorcycles zipping around so we decided to go back.

The final day brought the infamous Green Narrows, now drastically changed from the flooding of the previous fall. We had no idea what water level to expect but we figured it would be doable. We set shuttle and hiked in on the Big Hungry Trail to the scoured put in area. We floated down to the gauge to find it a little above 2 inches (call it 2 ¼). Once we arrived at Bride of Frankenstein and the true Narrows of the Green began, we found that we had an acceptable amount of water for the run. 

Frankenstein looked low and very tight for missing the piton rock at the bottom. Nathan ran it and had a nice run but the rest of us opted to portage. It would be a long day on what was now an unfamiliar section of river so we decided breaking a boat, paddle, or bone in this rapid would be bad for the mission so we pressed on. The next several rapids were steeper than before and necked down nicely into smooth channels. Soon, we were out scouting the new Boof or Consequences, which required a 90 degree right turn off a small boof followed by a 90 degree left turn off a 4 foot boof right next to a siphon. SIPHON!!!! Although spooky looking, the group members that ran this rapid were able to avoid this danger and get off the bottom boof fine.

Next, we looked at the new Go Left, which is a mess of boulders leading to a sweet exit boof and slot. I came off the top drop and caught an FU rock that deflected to me right, through the slot and away from the sweet left boof. Luckily, the slot went smoothly and I rocketed off the final drop and into the pool. I carried up so that I could do the sweet left boof. A few others liked this idea and fired off sweet boofs of their own. Zwicks is next and has smoothed out from its previous version and dished out some absolutely SIK boofs.

Soon, we were scouting Gorilla and analyzing the complex rapid that it has become. After a quick look, I hopped in my boat to get SIK! I cut hard right through the entrance slot and hit a nice boof to catch the setup eddy. From there I ferried out and launched a SCHWEEEETTTT boof off the shelf on the right. Nathan, Sofi, and Jesse decided to run it as well and all aced it. 

The slides below were all fantastic and we made good progress through this section. Rapid Transit was still very high quality and provided a fast ride to the bottom (287 miles per hour using actual LIDAR measurements to be exact!). Groove Tube had a cleaner boof than before and offered up some nice launches.

From here, we walked around Sunshine and began the arduous scrape fest to get out of the gorge to the takeout. Some of the channels didn’t have enough water to float or even hand walk through so we had a couple portages in here. Soon, we reached the final section of fun drops. Hammer Factor closed out the run and was just as fun as it always was, much to our delight! 

What a phenomenal month of kayaking! We hit a top tier murderers row of steep runs that paddlers spend years, decades even, dreaming of running! We have another great program planned for this year, starting on Memorial Day Weekend!

If you are looking to step up to the next level, the Southeast Stouts program will certainly go a long way toward helping you reach that goal!

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