The number of kayakers making a pilgrimage to test the Cheoah River run Saturday overwhelmed the shuttle system that was set up to ferry paddlers.

The road that snakes along the river is narrow and curvy with only a few grassy shoulders wide enough to squeeze three or four vehicles, let alone 500. Instead, paddlers were required to use a shuttle system organized by the U.S. Forest Service.

Robbinsville High School was converted into a kayaking ground zero for the day. Row upon row of vehicles stacked with paddling gear filled the high school parking lot. Bright green, yellow, red and orange boats were strewn across the asphalt. The paddlers meanwhile splayed out across the lawn bordering the parking lot as they waited for the shuttles.

Kayakers were issued armbands with numbers that served a similar purpose as the “take-a-number” system at a deli, only it told the kayakers when it was their turn to line up for a shuttle.

It soon became clear, however, that the forest service got more paddlers than it bargained for. Some paddlers waited nearly four hours to get a shuttle, and those at the end of the line were in jeopardy of not making it to the river before the water would be shut off at 4 p.m. While it takes two to three hours for a swell of water to move down the seven-mile paddling stretch, anyone not on the water by 3:30 p.m. would risk having the water run out on them before they got to the end.

So by early afternoon, the forest service switched gears. The forest service eventually quit giving out numbers for the official shuttle at number 440 and organized groups of paddlers to strike out for the river on their own. Private paddlers with big vans willing to pile boats on top and rafting companies with an outfitter’s bus were incorporated into the shuttle service and began hauling loads of paddlers to the put-in.

“At this point, we’re doing whatever it takes to get people to the river,” said Frank Findley, an assistant ranger with the U.S. Forest Service in the Cheoah district. “We don’t want people to come all the way here and not be able to paddle the river. That’s ridiculous.”

Findley said they will triple the number of shuttles running to the river for the next whitewater release scheduled for Oct. 1.

Findley said the forest service had no good way of predicting how many people would show up. Several years ago, a first-time release on the Tallulah River in northern Georgia attracted 200 to 300 paddlers. That number was used as an estimate for the Cheoah’s first run.

“That’s the only number we had to go by. We obviously got more,” Findley said. “I hate it for these people having to wait.”

Paddlers were largely at ease with the situation, however.

“There’s nothing you can do but sit in the shade and wait,” said John Kulka, a paddler who came from Knoxville. Kulka said the forest service had no way of knowing how many people would show up and they seemed to be doing everything they could to get the paddlers through the system. Kulka said the number of people who showed up is a testament to the demand there is for more whitewater opportunities in the region.

The forest service switched gears at the put-in as well, reducing the wait time between groups of paddlers to get everyone through.

“First we were spacing them 15 minutes apart, then it went to 10 and then five, and now we’re pushing them through as fast as we can,” said Joy Orr, a forest ranger working at the put-in.

The paddlers inevitably strung out along gentle sections of the river and bunched up around the challenging drops and waterfalls. Lines of sometimes 20 paddlers would form at the waterfalls. When a paddler drops over the falls, however, they are no longer visible to those waiting upstream. Most paddlers would hold their paddle up in the air when they cleared the falls as a signal to the next paddler in line upstream that all was clear.

The shuttle system is only a temporary solution. A 200-car parking lot will be constructed at the put-in below the dam, and four smaller parking lots will be constructed at intervals along the road that runs beside the river.

It will be at least another year before the parking areas are built due to environmental requirements. Findley said Virginia spirea, an endangered plant, has been found at some of the locations where the parking lots were slated to be constructed and some might have to be scaled back.

Findley said nearly all the forest rangers in the Cheoah district — about 15 to 20 in all — helped out with the whitewater release.

“It was probably overkill but we wanted to make sure we had the people to handle just about anything that came up,” Findley said. “We also wanted the people who normally just work in timber to buy into this, to see that this was now part of the district so they would have some ownership along with the rest of us.”

Based on comments at Monday morning debriefing, “everybody seemed like they had fun,” Findley said.