People familiar with the Toccoa River know it has two sections, an upper section from Deep Hole to Dial Road or Sandy Bottom and a lower section from Dial Road or Sandy Bottom to Party Rock (a/k/a Takeout Rock or just Aska Road). Some have ventured a short distance past Party Rock to run the rapids that can be seen from the usual takeout.

Not many, however, have paddled far past Party Rock, with good reason. The water soon flattens and stills as the river is subsumed into Lake Blue Ridge, and a pleasant whitewater paddle becomes a tedious flatwater slog. Most of the time.

In mid-winter, though, the TVA draws down the lake by up to 20 feet. That allows part of the section downstream of Party Rock to be more like its natural state with rock gardens, drops and whitewater.

“Professor Rob” Butera, whose in-laws live at least part-time right near the river, has run the section below Party Rock several times, including a trip with Shari Heinz, Ira Ferguson and me at the very end of 2006. Rob has also put a good bit of information about the section below Party Rock - including put-in and takeout information, on the AW website at www.american whitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/4320.

As Rob suggests on the website, we started by leaving the vehicles at the intersection of Shallowford Road and Old Dial Road and walking the easy half mile or so to Sandy Bottom. Some ambitious members of the group carried their boats the half mile while those of us who are lazier dropped out boats at Sandy Bottom and did the walk with empty hands. Being really lazy, I stayed at Sandy Bottom to guard the boats and avoided walking at all.

The section from Sandy Bottom to Party Rock is well known to paddlers, so I won’t comment much on it. The water level was low, but not so low as to be really scrapy, the temperature was about 50 and we had intermittent drizzle and light rain. There was one bit of bad news on this section: the breakfast place across Aska Road from the steel bridge is closed, replaced by a new convenience store/pizza place next door.

None of us had a camera with us, but a couple of very nice women from Mississippi vacationing in the area took some pictures of us at Party Rock. Shari, running the rapid for the first time in her 15 foot canoe, got a little too far left and had a chilly swim, but the rest of us managed to stay upright. The picture is of Shari’s canoe just beginning to tip.

Just below Party Rock, Aska Road curves away from the river. The right bank, apparently National Forest property, remains wooded while the left bank remains a succession of large new homes, many with the requisite “No Trespassing” signs, replacing older small ones along Flat Creek Road.

Much of the section consists of pleasant, mildly technical rock gardens. Rob has named the most significant rapid BFH, after the fairly new residence on river left. (Big is for big, H is for house, and you can fill in your own adjective for the F.) We ran BFH near the left bank, right in front of the H. It consisted of a double drop of about 3 feet each followed by a very nice wave train.

After BFH, the river turns right and enters the area normally subsumed by the lake. Long, sloping banks on each side consist of dark mud interspersed with very light rocks of all sizes. They look like pieces of Styrofoam broken off from docks, but Ira and Rob said they were impure quartz. The effect is kind of eerie. Rob captured it when he said it was like something from a post-apocalypse movie.

The trip ended just before Tilly Bend, where the river makes a nearly hairpin turn to the left. The takeout is “marked” by a large bed area of usually-submerged rocks on the right bank. The first houses on river right are easily visible just downstream from the takeout.

The walk back to the vehicles, while not terribly long or steep, was the most challenging part of the day. It started with carrying the boats about 150 feet up the slippery mud slope from the water to an ATV trail. The trail is about .4 mile long and ended right at the parked vehicles. The ATV trail is strewn with pine straw that, except for a few rocks and muddy areas, allows the option of dragging boats rather than carrying them.

One advantage of this section is that it allows a reasonable one-vehicle self shuttle. An easy half mile road walk and a challenging but doable .4 mile takeout hike is rewarded with a paddle of 6.5-7 miles, a pleasant river and good scenery on a section few ever paddle.

One other note for future reference: Rob has learned the TVA plans to draw down the lake by 85 feet in 2009 for maintenance work on Blue Ridge Dam. That’s got to be bad news for the people who paid a fortune to live on Lake Blue Ridge, but could provide a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Toccoa paddlers.

by Rick Bellows

From “The Eddy Line”, February 2007

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