Beyond LA again: Kayaking Tennessee River Gorge, near Chattanooga, TN

August paddling for me, in southern Louisiana, means paddling someplace else whenever I can. We took a 7 hour drive up to Chattanooga with our two 17' touring kayaks on the roof, and did some hiking and paddling. On our first kayak trip, we paddled around Harrison Bay, just north of Chattanooga, and it was great. But this post is about the next kayaking trip we did, on the Tennessee River Gorge just southwest of Chattanooga. This trip was really fun and extremely beautiful, so I thought I'd share. This trip is different from most articles I've read about this area because it's a pretty simple looping day trip. Most trip reports I've read of this area are simply segments of longer, multi-day trips. For this one, no shuttle, and not much navigation needed. And note: There is no way my small waterproof camera can do justice to the beauty of this  paddle. 

Oh, by the way, if you don't know: This area is all part of the TVA, and this trip is between two dam and/or lock systems in the river. There isn't a traditional flow of a river, and the paddling is much more like lake paddling, except near some of the dams, at some posted times, and I'm not writing about that here. The river is more of a series of strung-together lakes.  

I wanted us to experience as much of the "rolling mountains" scenery as possible, and I thought Mullen's Cove would be a good turnaround where we could get out and stretch. I chose a small public boat launch on Lee Highway, just south of the Raccoon Mountain boat ramp. Also, spell checkers out there: note that everything I've read refers to Mullen's Cove spelled as I have it here. But maps (at least Google Maps) have the road leading to it as "Mullins Cove Rd". 

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0225399,-85.458547,1034m/data=!3m1!1e3

My planned route would give us a 4 1/2 mile or so, trip to Mullen's Cove, and we could decide what to do from there. But, when we arrived at the launch late in the morning,  there was a decent wind--hard to pin down its direction, but it seemed like we'd have a hard fight on the return if we went to Mullen's Cove and back. In this curved valley, it was hard to really tell from which direction the dominant wind was coming. But, we decided to go the other direction, towards Raccoon Mountain, and try to, so to say, keep a finger to the wind and turn around when we felt like it. We ended up going just about 4 1/2 miles "up river" (again, not a typical river current) until we got to Raccoon Mountain and it's big structure: 

This is the route we ended up paddling, but obviously, you can make your own distance, and with the various boat launches along the river, you could make up some pretty interesting shuttle-based trips also. This trip was just about 13 miles:

The first section of the trip was very mellow. Perhaps a little wind driven current, which seemed to be following us, but our speed and effort was very average, or maybe even a little slow.  There was boat traffic, but the river is very wide and we just stayed near our right side. There was some wake from passing boats, but nothing serious.

By the way, as you can sort of see in the pictures above, both sides of the river had a thick bed of "seaweed" extending out into the river, so we were never paddling right along the banks (I know it's not really seaweed, but that's what I'm calling it). This seaweed was very, very thick, and provided a stark change from any bouncy or wind-blown water we dealt with later in the trip. Even in the the bounciest conditions, there would be a distinct line where the seaweed made the water completely still. But, as I said, it was very, very thick and paddling through it was very difficult. This could (probably?) be a seasonal feature. Here's a decent close up of it:

Things changed quickly when we turned around, and returned on the other side of the river. I don't know enough about the wind and current dynamics of all this, but we had made an S-curve through this valley, and were now reversing that S, on the other wall of the valley (we stayed right, so we were now on the opposite bank of the river).  And paddling back through the same section of river, but on the opposite side, was quite different. 

Within of few minutes of our turnaround, we were bouncing a bit more, getting mild splashing over our bows, and generally having a good time. If a boat wake hit us right, the bounce got even better. Light bounce and small waves never look the same in photos as they feel in a kayak, so these pictures don't show it well at all. Plus, it did get bouncy enough that I was spending less time holding my camera and more time holding my paddle. To be clear, things never got rough--we were having a good time having to pay attention to the water after a few miles of mostly flat water. Just once, with just the right energy from a big wake and the curve of the river and the bounce in the water, the front half of my kayak was out of the water and just as I splashed down the back side of one wave, I was already hitting the next wave. It was fun---my 5 seconds of surf.

As we rounded the long right hand curve at the bottom of our S,  the wind and water became very calm again. We got back to our starting point, but were having too much fun to stop, so we continued another 2 miles. The wind continued to switch around on us, and we went through some pretty stiff wind once or twice as we continued down river, curving to the northwest. Then, it'd feel calm again.

Finally, at around 11 miles, we decided to head back. Once again, a turnaround and a change: When we turned around to return to our car, heading southeast, we paddled against a stiff headwind the entire two miles back. As hard as it was, at least we both knew our initial decision to change plans was the right choice. The original route up to Mullen's Cove and back would have had us paddling against that steady and strong wind for 4 or 5 miles. And it was a very steady and hard wind. We were quite tired when we finally finished.

So, we had incredible views the entire time. As I said earlier, these pictures from my small camera just don't do this scenery justice. This is Ansel Adams territory, and I can only imagine how it must look with fall colors.  Hawks, eagles, osprey all around. Rolling mountains and bluffs. At times it was calm lake paddling, and other times it was bouncy lake paddling. Sometimes the wind was a nice breeze, and other times it was a real challenge. Boat traffic was not an issue--plenty of room for all of us. When we returned in the early afternoon, the fishing boats were taking out, and the sport boats and jet skis were launching. In fact, we launched from the concrete ramp, but traffic was heavy enough on our return that we pulled up to the rocky river's edge to take out. So, it's probably a safe bet that boat traffic and wakes would be more of a factor in the afternoon.

This is a must-do trip anytime you're in this area.