The Portage - Etowah Falls

Etowah Falls is the one portion of the rivers we instructed racers to NOT paddle:

Though we've heard of folks paddling it and going over it without their paddles, we're not quite sure how it would be done while minimizing the chances of death. It's a 10-15 foot drop, with lots of rocks at the bottom that would just LOVE to french kiss the bow of a canoe.

There is a fun little portage around it that requires a bit of teamwork (steep), but is pretty short. To avoid the falls, racers were instructed to take out to the right anywhere from 200 meters upstream from or at the point of the photographer in the picture above. Anything after that and, well, you see the pictures. We had some volunteers there (a bit late) so it was clear, and of course there is a "warning bump" upstream. Between those and the hand-drawn Etowah River Maps we gave the racers, we had no mishaps at the falls.

One very-important-but-almost-not-asked question was: "how long is the paddle?" To which the answer "23 miles" triggered many "dad-gums" from the Southerner racers.