The Future of (Good, Clean, Easy) Off-Road FUN!

print email

It’s been a rough week. Hell, with the price of gas, food and just about everything else, it’s been a rough year. It’s Thursday afternoon and you’re well past hump day, but with a full slate of meetings and deadlines on Friday, the weekend still seems eons away. Still, it’s almost five o’clock and you think you might be able to sneak out of the office and get your motor running. What are your options?

Why not a quick whitewater raft or kayak trip, or perhaps a little rock climbing? Or how about a quick brick workout with a mountain bike and trail run? You could just relax, drink a beer and listen to some jamming reggae by the river…. But why choose? Why not do them all?

Impossible, you say? True for most people; but if you happen to live in the thriving metropolis of Charlotte, North Carolina, it’s all within reason. Charlotte, you see, is the home of the U.S. National Whitewater Center (USNWC), a sprawling 307-acre complex highlighted by a screaming-fun whitewater course that recently hosted the U.S. Olympic Trials for kayak and canoe.

It’s as if the Disney Imagineers had suddenly turned into active-sports freaks and been turned loose to build the ultimate fantasy park. As cool as that sounds, it also raises a question: is this a good thing?

In a sense, the entire southeast United States seems to have been sculpted for outdoor recreation. With raging whitewater rivers like the New, the Gauley, the Ocoee, the Nantahala and scores more, the fun factor for kayakers and rafters is already off the charts. Rock climbers can hit spots like Seneca Rocks or Grandfather Mountain, hikers can start with the granddaddy of them all – the Appalachian Trail – and work from there and there’s no end to the mountain bike trails. Okay, so the skiing is not exactly great. Sue us for having warm weather.

But now we’re faced with having all of nature’s glory artificially plunked down right next to a growing metropolis. Okay, it’s not completely artificial. A lot of the mountain bike single track was already in place when the facility was in the planning stages, and the adjacent Catawba River has a little history of its own, but still…

Real vs. Artificial, Compare and Contrast

Let’s compare. On a typical whitewater trip, you generally arrive on location the night before and rent a cabin or hotel room. You then arise before the sun, slop down a convenience store coffee and report to the whitewater center to sign the waiver, receive your helmet, wetsuit, life vest and paddle, then jam into the bus for a ride that can be well over an hour. Next, you and your crew have to haul the raft to the put-in, receive last-minute instructions from your guide and start the journey. When it’s all over, you have to drag the raft back to the bus and squeeze back into your seat, wet and smelly, with all your wet and smelly friends for the often-shivering ride back to headquarters.

In Charlotte, you dash over to the Whitewater Center, sign the waiver, get your gear and instructions, slide the raft into the water, and away you go. Good, clean fun. And, get this: after you do one of the two main whitewater channels, you paddle the raft over to a conveyor belt and are delivered right back to the head of the ‘river’ so you can run it again. And again. And again.
When your time is up, you slide the raft out of the water, turn in your gear and look for the next fun thing to do. It’s sort of like finishing up Space Mountain and heading over to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

And there’s plenty of fun to be had. 11 miles of solid mountain biking and hiking trails; GPS-aided eco-caching, excellent rock walls and ropes courses, river boarding and more. And when it’s time to relax, you can slide into the River’s Edge Bar and Grill for a hot meal and a cold brew or browse the Outfitter’s Store for your next ‘necessary’ purchase. If it happens to be that aforementioned Thursday evening, you’ll be treated to the Subaru River Jam, a riverside concert, for no additional charge.

A Community Undertaking

All this adventure opportunity being packed into one spot came from an unusual coalition, explains Lance Kinerk, the USNWC’s Sales & Marketing Director. “It started out with a lawyer and a banker – and I’m not telling a bad joke – who got excited after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. The lawyer, Vic Howie, and the banker, Chet Rabon, started kicking around the idea of a single channel for whitewater competition right in the heart of downtown Charlotte.”

As it happened, Jeff Wise, an avid paddler, heard about the concept, got involved and realized that it would take someone working full time to put the project together. When he took over the reins, the single channel in Charlotte morphed into a 307-acre multi-sport complex just outside of town.

Before all was said and done, the municipalities of Mecklinburg County, the City of Charlotte, Mount Holly, Gastonia, and Belmont along with 12 different community foundations had all contributed to making the grand plan a reality. Since opening in late 2006, the USNWC has hosted events ranging from the Olympic Trials to the Junior Worlds for Wildwater Canoes, the Pan Am Games, the Jeep Adventure Race Series and a monthly mountain bike series with an eco-challenge event coming up in September.

The benefit of controlling the environment, particularly for competitive purposes, seems pretty obvious. After all, you certainly can’t hold an Olympic Trials qualifier if the river’s not running, so it’s nice to be able to dial the river in just so.

But still you have to wonder. Isn’t a major part of the challenge in outdoors sports being able to deal with what nature throws your way? Does the Whitewater Center makes things a little too antiseptic, a little too safe? Or does it do what the anti-drug people have always said about pot, does it serve as gateway to the harder stuff and give newbies the urge to get out there and really get dirty and do stuff like hanging off 900-foot cliffs or dropping down unridden steep creeks in high-tech kayaks?