Discover and Celebrate the Bliss of Kayaking in the Asheville and Western North Carolina Area

Words cannot describe the feelings of sheer exhilaration that white water kayaking can give you... whether you're actually doing it yourself... or witnessing beautiful videos of someone else.

Glorious footage of white water kayaking in Western North Carolina! ".... Thank nature, God, or geological serendipity for the jackpot of whitewater riches in western North Carolina. Home to 6,000-foot Appalachian peaks, the region gets more than 47 inches of rain annually, and the runoff has to go somewhere. Hence the Class V runs on the Raven's Fork, the Linville, the Toxaway, and the West Prong of the Pigeon, plus hundreds more Class II–IV stretches on the Nantahala, Nolichucky, Tuckaseegee, and Ocoee rivers, all within an hour or so of Asheville. Duke Energy also gets credit for a major assist: The power company's near-daily dam releases on the Green River serve up legitimate Class V whitewater 12 months a year, on a 3.5-mile section known as the Narrows. The Green's waterfalls, slides, eddies, and boulder gardens, 22 miles south of town, are where elite steepcreekers like Pat Keller and Tommy Hilleke cut their teeth.... Après-paddle, head for the slacker-hip downtown, where art deco facades house indie cafés, an eclectic music scene, and a core of craftsfolk that rivals any in the nation. CLICK HERE for more of this story from OUTSIDE ONLINE'S article on "Best Outside Towns".

Endless River Advertures
"... Western North Carolina is the Epicenter for Whitewater
The rivers we have here in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee are what make this area the epicenter for whitewater paddling and instruction...."

The North Carolina Professional Paddlesports Association
"... is an organization of professional outfitters committed to providing the safest and most exciting whitewater rafting, canoeing, and kayaking adventures possible...."

Click on each of the dozens of categories to the left to uncover what makes the Asheville area so vital, so intriguing and so, well, UTTERLY BLISSFUL!

From Rolf Potts' Vagabonding blog:

I've never been one of those uptight literary types who thinks that you have to have actually read a book in order to recommend it to others. So I feel no trepidation in suggesting Eric Weiner's new travelogue-slash-memoir The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World The premise of the book is simple but intriguing-- here is Amazon's description:

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Singapore benefit psychologically by having their options limited by the government? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? With engaging wit and surprising insights, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.

In the imaginary Netflix queue of books-that-I'm-planning-to-read, this one has just jumped to the top. By the way, why has no one started a Netflix for books? This question, and many more, I'll leave for another day.

When running this section of river it is also called "running the shit"

The river has an average gradient of 178 feet per mile (3%) with a half mile (800 m) section dropping roughly 342 ft (104 m) and containing 11 major class IV+ to V+ rapids. Through this area the water often channels through extremely tight slots as narrow as 4 feet wide as the river funnels through a stunning gorge. The three major rapids on the river ("The Big Three") are called "Go Left and Die," "Gorilla" and "Sunshine." Gorilla is considered the most visually impressive rapid on the river. It consists of the river funnelling into a 4 foot (1 m) wide slot ("the notch) and is then immediately followed by an 18 foot (5 m) waterfall ("the flume") and then another 10 foot (3 m) waterfall ("Scream Machine"). Sunshine is considered the most difficult and dangerous rapid, and consists of a 14 foot (4 m) waterfall landing on a jagged rock shelf below. The route through Sunshine is about 4 feet (1 m) wide and mistakes here have been known to cause paralysis. The river gets considerably more difficult at higher water levels, however the Green has been run at up to 300% flows.

On the first Saturday of November the best paddlers in the Southeast descend on the Green to participate in the annual Green River Narrows Race.From Wikipedia's article on the "Narrows of the Green"

Kayaking Linville Gorge