Snow's Cut: Just Don't Do It

The first trip over the US 421 bridge spanning Snow's Cut at Carolina Beach is likely to thrill you.  It did me!  For starters, you're going to feel as if you're flying.  (Great civil engineering design for that!) Then you're going to see an thread of water that looks pretty benign, like a friendly little river.  And then you're going to think, "this would be fun to paddle."

Well, stop those thoughts.  Just stop them now.  Because from all of the research and conversation I have gleaned, you don't want to be there.  

Why?

Because that ditch is, apparently, anything but benign.   (For that reason, you get no picture of the beast.  You get a sincere and heartfelt warning instead.)


Snow's Cut links the power of the water flowing into/ out of the Cape Fear River to the power of the water of the Intracoastal Waterway.  That's a lot of power, especially considering that the Atlantic Ocean is just over the dunes and islands nearby exerting even more force. And if that were all you had to worry with, that would be enough.  But it isn't.  There's more, even after you add in the wind conditions.

As large boats and yachts traverse the cut, they each create a wake which might, under more open circumstances, be fun to ride.  But the circumstances of Snow's Cut are not open.  You're in a steeply-sided ditch.

What happens is that the waves of each wake roll to the sides of the ditch.  Then they bounce back, creating what is called a recursive wave.  You don't want any part of a recursive wave.  Seriously.  You and your little kayak stand to be tossed about in a bad way, possibly flipped and/or smashed on the sides of the ditch.

The first time I heard about recursive waves, I was paddling in Lake Superior.  The day before, an expedition (12 kayakers / 6 boats,  i.e., tandems for more stability in the big water), was stranded on the cliffs of Pictured Rocks because they paddled too close to the cliffs on a mildly blustery day, and were subsequently trapped by the recursive waves.  By all accounts, they were lucky to survive.

So, in Snow's Cut, you face the power of the tides, the power of the current, the power of the wake,  the effect of the winds, and the treachery of the recursive waves.  In short, you face a stretch of very confused and unpredictable water that is looking to send its power and energy somewhere.  And you can then add in a multiplier effect if one yacht is cruising in one direction and another yacht is cruising in another direction.

To underscore the power of that confused water, consider this:  Snow's Cut has been connecting the Intracoastal Waterway to the Cape Fear for about 80 years.  In that time, the ditch has eroded from its original 30 foot width to about 400 feet.  

After I went to school on this stretch of water -- and  decided that the better part of valor was to paddle somewhere else -- I better understood why, on a day when I was considering launching at the boat ramp in Carolina Beach State Park to paddle Snow's Cut, the attendants at the Marina looked at me with alarm on their faces and said, "You're not going to paddle there, are you?"   I was about to do something incredibly foolish.   And who wants to be stupid to that degree, right?