Cherokee Adventures, Inc., Erwin

In August my group paid for a full day rafting trip on the upper Nolichucky with an overnight stay in a private bungalow for six people. It was a terrible dissapointment. The water level was too low for the trip to proceed. All the other rafting companies in the area decided the water was too low to take customers out that day. I know this because we were the only people on the river and our guides even admitted that no other company would have taken us out. All six of us have been on several full day rafting trips many times. We have never had an experience like this. We spent almost all day stuck on rocks and we were lucky to get to the put out before dark. We were terrified that we would still be on the river when the sun went down. We were prepared to paddle and work hard all day, but this trip was more than we bargained for it. It was too much physically and lasted way to long. We were exhausted to the point that we didn’t even feel safe. We also feel strongly that there were not enough guides for a safe and fun trip. There were at least 20 people. Four people were in a raft and the rest were in funyacks. There were only 3 guides. The group became so spread out that there many times that there was no guide in site. I fell out in a rapid and there was no guide anywhere around. Luckily another person on the trip caught my funyack and I was able to recover without injury. For the last 45 minutes of the trip there was a group of 5 of us that never laid site on a guide or the rest of the group. We were totally on our own. By the time we got back and turned in our equipment the restaurant was closed. We planned to get back at a reasonable time and have a nice leisurely dinner with the full menu. I cannot express how disappointing the entire experience was. It was up to the management/owners to make the call to cancel the trip and to ensure adequate staffing. We would have been happy to take a rain check or a refund and reschedule for a more suitable time. Letting us go out on the river and have a terrible and unsafe day was very poor judgement. Next year we will back to raft the Nolichucky, but we will use a different company.