The crescendo comes at the end, with the roar of a waterfall so loud that rafters on the Chattahoochee River whitewater course can hardly hear the orders their guides are shouting.
The rafts drop and buck, drop and buck, like a bull ride upon the plunging river channel, which cuts just feet away from a rock island below the old Eagle & Phenix Mill’s powerhouse, near the Chattahoochee RiverWalk’s 12th Street access.
That rapid, engineered with a mechanical “wave-shaper,” is the crowning glory of the whitewater course, even more of an adventure than “Cut Bait,” long the name of the companion rapid paralleling it on the river’s Phenix City side.
Rick McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group that designed the course, thinks nothing beats it at high water — say around 13,000 cubic feet per second — the upper limit for rafting.
“Personally, I think the Georgia channel’s just awesome at 13,000,” he said this week. “It’s the funnest thing I’ve ever been in. It reminds me a lot of the Grand Canyon, except it doesn’t have the consequences. One guy in it when I was out there last said, ‘You just can’t come out of this channel without smiling.’ He’s right.”
via Wet and wild: what to expect on the whitewater course | Latest News | Columbus Ledger Enquirer.
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