Tuckasegee, West Fork, North Carolina, US

Thorpe Dam to Tuckasegee River

West Fork Tuck Slide

West Fork Tuck Slide
Photo of Ken Kastorff by Kevin Colburn

River Description

On June 29, 2001, American Whitewater organized a team of volunteers to run this dewatered reach as part of a whitewater flow study. We found a super fun creek run of moderate difficulty with one big drop and tons of great low angle slides and boulder rapids.  We signed a settlement agreement with Duke Power and other stakeholders in 2003 recommending 7 annual releases, which were expected to begin in 2006.  Delays associated with the removal of Dillsboro Dam have prevented the new releases from becoming a reality.  FERC licenses were issued in 2011, and it appears likely that the spring of 2012 or 2013 will be the magic year when releases will begin. 

If you want to tie up your modem and his server, you can view Leland's 9.5-minute video of the event. Choose:
Small version (240 x 160, 69.3 MB), or
Large version (360 x 240, 168.8 MB).
Yep, that's "MB" as in Megabytes. These files will take a while. (Clicking on them will open a new browser window.)
(You'll need Quicktime to view these videos.)

See the related article about relicensing of Duke Power's dams.

Lat/longitude coords of the putin and takeout are very approximate.