Lynches River Gage located near Bishopville.

River approximately 4.7 feet, 180 CFS Hwy 15 to 401, 16 River Miles, 8 river hours with stops for refreshing dips, pull-overs and lunch.

Sixteen paddlers met at the put-in north of Bishopville at the Highway 15 Bridge. We had fourteen kayaks and two canoes. Many of the paddlers were first time paddlers with the Palmetto Paddlers...they came from as far away as Rock Hill, Charleston and Charlotte. Rock Garick handed out applications to all of the visiting paddlers. Kate Whitaker, Trip Coordinator, gave a brief talk reminding paddlers not to forget to lean into any strainers encountered...to lessen the chance of taking on upstream river water, which does flip boats. Not sure where she got the idea that there might be a few strainers---little did we know what was ahead.

An announcement was made that SCDNR has obtained a grant to provide signage along the Lynches River Scenic Trail, starting at Lee State Park, sometime in the near future. Someone asked what was signage? No one was quite sure what impact the signage would have...we'll have to find out from Stuart Greeter (Grant Writer).

After shuttling the vehicles and trailer to the take-out at Highway 401, 10 or 12 paddlers piled into Rock's truck for the ride back to the put-in. It was 11:30 AM by the time everyone was in their boats and ready to go. Some folks were already asking when we would take a lunch break.

It wasn't long before the first pull-over was encountered...it was a huge downed tree that everyone had to get out of their boats to get over...unfortunately, Linda was the first to get more than just her paddle wet...she and Sherry (new paddler) paddled ahead, hopefully looking for a nice lunch spot...never happened. They left a note on Kate's car that they had a good trip and were heading back to Columbia.

After each pull-over, limbo tree (pull-under) or trying to fit a wide canoe through a gap smaller than a turnstile at the fair, we were hopeful that it was the last. No one had an exact count of the number of obstacles, but for sure it was more than ten! We had many paddlers that helped each other over and under the many trees blocking the river. At each obstacle, several paddlers would help pull over the boats and then at the next downed tree other paddlers would step up to help...all and all everyone helped everyone else.

Along the way, several other boaters tangled with strainers "and lost"...one lost the battle twice at the same one. Everybody got their paddle shoes muddy, at least once. We only saw a few water snakes, turtles and birds...OH! There was this dead buck dear with velvet on his antlers hung up in one of the downed trees we had to pull-over...he must have drowned crossing the river. Man was he ripe!!!

The last boat was off the river by 7:30 PM and most of the paddlers headed back to their homes. Six of us headed to Watts BBQ in Bishopville, but they closed at 8:00 PM, so we ended up at the Pizza Hut near the Interstate. After our fill of pizza and banter about all the pull-overs we headed home. It was a long day, since most of us had been up since 6:00AM, but everyone seemed to have enjoyed the river. We were all pretty tired, but not too tired to eat.

Submitted by Rock Garick

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