Rapid Reaction

Visionary whitewater center helping region paddle, climb and bike to ecotourism forefront

by Bo Peterson & Jamie McGee, Charleston Post & Courier
10/2006

CHARLOTTE – It’s a $35 million pipe dream, a funneling fury of foam and current so big that even pro-paddlers do a double take.  The U.S. National Whitewater Center is like nothing you’ve ever seen.

“It’s a ski mountain with water,” said a sopping wet Josh Hall, the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission’s outdoor program manager, breathing hard and grinning, still thrilled as he pulled his boat ashore.

Just three hours from the Low Country, the nonprofit center is the first world-class outdoor facility of its kind in the region.  It may be the pump house that pushes regional ecotourism in the Southeast out in front of the world, tying the adventure of mountain whitewater to the serenity of Low Country sea kayaking.

“That’s going to raise the bar not just a notch, but a whole lot of notches,” said Mark Singleton, executive director of American Whitewater, an advocacy group.  “The region will get known as one of the hubs in the United States.”

The center, just 10 miles from downtown Charlotte, has the “banker city” buzzing.  Opened on Labor Day, it’s already the jammed-on-the-weekends new hot spot for adventure paddlers, climbers, mountain bikers and the curious.  A U.S. National Slalom competition drew 1,500 spectators per day before the center even opened.  The park is an official Olympic training site and the sport’s governing body, USA Canoe and Kayak, relocated to Charlotte to be based near the center.

It’s an Olympic run for the most daring paddler, a practice “hole” for the novice, and a rollicking raft trip for the beginner.

The heart of the place is a circling flume of water nearly a mile long that gets more intense around each bend.  The builders claim it’s the world’s largest intact artificial river.  Features include the wagging tongue of the M-Wave, a 10-foot drop pouring into a mess of jumping white foam, and a conveyor belt that rolls paddlers back up to the starting “pond.”

Above the water and below a hilltop restaurant stand the tower, boulders and the spire of a 46-foot-high artificial climbing rock.  The whitewater course and climbing wall are built with moveable sections, so the routes change day to day.

On a nearby hill, a ropes course sways tower-to-tower into the woods.  An 11-mile mountain bike and running trail winds around the 307-acre park along the Catawba River ravines.  A “flat-water” canoe and kayak launch opens on a five-mile natural stretch of the river with an island.

Kayaks adorn car racks throughout the Low Country, proving the desire for outdoor adventure is already there, Hall said.  The climbing wall at James Island Country Park draws 14,000 people a year.

For Low Country paddlers who have to drive five or six hours to the mountains and can’t be sure how well the water is running, this center is a sure thing.  And it gives novices a taste of whitewater that in the wild might be intimidating or inconvenient.

“It’s a great resource for everyone in the Southeast and specifically in the Low Country,” Hall said.

Singleton, the American Whitewater Director, compares the potential international draw of the park to that of the 1996 Olympics whitewater venue on the Ocoee River in Georgia.  “Georgia failed by not putting any infrastructure in place to keep people coming,” he said.  The Charlotte center is that infrastructure.

And in 2008, a stretch of the Catawba River below Great Falls will be opened to dam releases, bringing whitewater kayaking another hour closer to Charleston and helping extend the attraction into South Carolina, Singleton said.

It can do for the broader Southeast what the Nantahala Outdoor Center did for the North Carolina mountains, he said.  The Nantahala grew from a lone outfitter shop back in the hills in the 1970’s to a $15 million per year attracting about 150,000 visitors each summer.