Recovering from Helene: The French Broad River in Western North Carolina Emerges Post Hurricane

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which struck in late September 2024, the recovery of the upper French Broad River in North Carolina has been a work in progress.

I could end the conversation there—and honestly, some days, I wish I could. That simple truth carries the full weight of everything we’ve heard from officials, uncovered ourselves, and can reasonably expect in the months, maybe years, ahead. But emotionally, it also reflects something deeper: the state of ourselves, and our aching hope for things to return to the way they were—for our waters, and our lives, to flow like they once did.

Beyond the river, this has been a deeply personal journey for families and businesses alike.

There are hundreds of stories—some shared, many not—of people swept away by floodwaters, of homes and businesses crushed beneath millions of cubic yards of mud, rock, and sliding timber. Countless residents were left stranded without food or water, without power or services, without family, friends, or shelter from the elements. Tragically, some stories may never be told—lost forever to the mountains, rivers, and creeks.

The stories we have heard are reminders of how fraught those times were: survivors floating on mattresses, breaking through attic ceilings to cling to rooftops, watching their homes vanish, doing whatever it took to hold on until help arrived. For every heart-shattering story of loss, or miracle of survival, there’s another of extraordinary courage—all different, none that we can forget. All seem terrifying and jolting to those on the outside looking in.

The trauma from Helene lingers atop old memories—Fred, Ivan, Alberto, Frances, Jerry—still etched into us many months later, continually stirred up by every forecast of high winds or rising water.

Difficult Questions

These days, when I row or wade with clients along the upper French Broad River, I hear the questions: What’s changed? Where are the fish? Did they even make it? Has the river healed? When will it be?

These questions are impossible to avoid when you’re looking at the damage—while you cast flies in shallow pockets that were once deep pools, and along riverbanks that were once lined with oak, walnut, and sycamore trees as old as the towns themselves. Now they are stripped bare or destroyed entirely. On slow days on the water, I believe clients let the reality of Helene’s damage creep in—searching for reasons, looking for answers to why the fish aren’t biting.

While I acknowledge my clients’ curiosity, I know the answers aren’t as simple as most people would like them to be. This recovery from Helene isn’t going to be a story of the fish all being fine, all the bugs and other critters replenished, nor of Mother Nature prevailing, unhindered by human interventions. Recovery on the French Broad River is unfolding unevenly—playing out one way in the high-elevation headwaters, and in quite another as the river winds downstream toward hard-hit towns such as Marshall, Hot Springs, and beyond.

The farther down you row, the more signs of recovery you see—and the more I find myself concerned about the recovery plan for the fishery.

Nature is taking care of herself, healing the headwaters day by day. However, heated debates about recovery efforts continue to rage among government officials, stakeholders, and local residents. Disputes involve everything from when the recovery efforts should have begun and when they will end, to how—and particularly, where—they should happen, and even what shouldn’t be restored at all.

The good, the bad, and the ugly all get their time in the spotlight.

What one person sees as progress, another sees as permanent loss. Where a kayaker may see a log blocking navigation on the French Broad, a fly angler may see structure benefiting the fishery. During large-scale recovery efforts, priorities often shift quickly, without vote or permission, clashing with personal and professional concerns. What matters most to specific communities—such as anglers and boaters—can get sidelined in favor of broader infrastructure or economic goals.

Here in western North Carolina, the multi-use French Broad River isn’t just a natural treasure—it’s an economic powerhouse, generating an estimated $3.8 billion annually. The river fuels a thriving outdoor recreation industry, sustains countless small businesses, and supports a deeply rooted cultural connection to the land and water.

We live within one of the most diverse and ecologically unique watersheds in the Southeast. For anglers, it’s a dream come true. A fly fisher can pursue wild, native trout in the remote, high-elevation backcountry, then follow the river down through the floodplain to target an impressive array of warmwater species—muskellunge, smallmouth and largemouth bass, freshwater drum, sturgeons, walleyes, crappies, catfish, gars, bluegills, and carp, to name just a few. It’s rare to experience such biodiversity within a single waterway.

And yet, when it comes to Hurricane Helene’s impact on this resource—environmentally and economically—hard data remains scarce. Some assessments are already in the public’s view, while others are still in progress, and many have yet to begin. We’ve received official word that levels of toxins in the water are lower than expected, if not back to normal. We’ve seen unfortunate assessments of endangered species trampled by heavy machinery, and immeasurable losses to their delicate habitats. The true extent of damage to the upper French Broad River remains uncertain and evolving.

What we do know is that Helene came through fast and brutally: Wind speeds topped 100 mph, and more than 30 inches of rain fell on parts of the watershed in just 48 hours’ time in September 2024. French Broad tributaries including the Cane River and Ivy Creek took the most rain and thus absorbed the brunt of the blow. The damage to both tributaries was widespread and wildly uneven, sometimes reshaping entire stretches of the river and their surrounding communities.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Helene stands as the most devastating and costly natural disaster in western North Carolina’s recorded history.

Of course, the French Broad has seen its share of turmoil and natural weather events. More than 300 million years old, it’s one of the oldest rivers in the world—predating the Appalachian Mountains. It has carved its course with persistence, storm after storm, century after century. Flooding is part of its rhythm. But Helene—and other storms like it sweeping up from the Gulf of Mexico—feels different. These aren’t just seasonal high waters. These are what can only be described as high-energy, landscape-altering weather systems, increasingly more frequent and intense.

The storm’s footprint stretched far and wide—across Florida, Georgia, east Tennessee, western North Carolina, and southern Virginia.

Countless roads, bridges, power lines, and water systems—vast swaths of infrastructure that were torn out, buried, or simply erased—must be rebuilt. For the rivers to begin to recover, access must be restored, but that will require riparian buffers to be repaired, in-river structures to be restored, floodplains cleared, and more.

The work is happening, the process is underway, and the help is here, but for some people, help doesn’t always look like help. The daily scenes of twin-outboard-driven barges the size of buses with boom cranes and steel claws hauling off timber, building materials, clothing, ruined furniture, and large sections of homes—roofs, porches, personal belongings—are scary.

For anglers, it’s hard to watch two-story-tall dump trucks navigating the riverbed.

We know these machines have been working in places where they shouldn’t be. They’re running up and down rivers that were only lightly touched by Helene, making us question their presence. And while the urgency to rebuild is understandable, there’s a growing awareness that, in the name of recovery, we may be achieving short-term fixes at the cost of long-term harm.

Throughout the watershed, a chorus of concern has risen among river advocates, environmental organizations, fly shops, guides, private landowners, and conservationists alike. They’re sounding alarms about sediment compaction, destabilized banks, the removal of historically significant natural structures, and the irreversible damage being done to protected aquatic habitats. Beneath the treads of that heavy machinery, fragile ecosystems and species—many of them already under pressure—are being put at risk.

That’s part of the tension along the river corridor as recovery continues: between properly planned and monitored restoration, and urgency to get the river safe and open. It’s the pressure we feel as a community between ecological sensitivity and economic necessity. And it’s all playing out in real time.

Riparian Tonnage

In the aftermath of Helene, much of the familiar character of the headwaters has remained. The upper French Broad River in Rosman, North Carolina, maintains its natural beauty. Here the river runs clear and cold and still sustains wild, naturally spawning trout populations. Guiding clients to a productive day remains as regular as it was pre-Helene.

But 20 miles downstream, into and past the famed “Muskie Mile” and the smallmouth shoals flowing through the city of Asheville, many things have shifted. There has been an army’s worth of work done, and still more left to do. Some long-established riffles have become slow, opaque pools from the riverbed being plucked and features being removed. Formerly reliable runs are buried under layers of loose gravel and other materials not often found in a river. Naturally formed logjams have vanished or been relocated.

Starting around the town of Marshall—one of the most severely impacted riverside towns—are countless thousands of pieces of PVC pipe piled against the banks. The stark white pipes are entangled 25 feet up in the branches of trees, swallowed by any thicket left standing, and speared into the rocks as reminders to those who know, and eyesores to those who visit. Unknown quantities of God-knows-what are still sunk in the river, waiting to emerge in summer’s low water conditions. The guide world is small, and rumors of someone fishing and catching spread—and continue to spread. The fishery, regardless of the condition of the water, is coming back.

Fish and anglers adapt. As a guide, my job is equal parts teaching, reading water, and knowing where fish hold . But now the river reads like a new book. Banks are softer and less defined, rocks I knew are gone, and logs that always held fish are just memories—but we’re fishing what’s here.

And fish are just part of the equation. The French Broad’s recovery is tied directly to the strength of its food web. Aquatic macroinvertebrates—stoneflies, mayflies, caddisflies, hellgrammites—are biological indicators of water quality. This year, their numbers seem diminished, but great spring hatches still emerged strongly enough for a guide to rely on a good day of dry-fly fishing.

I have caught many fish this season on March Browns, Blue-winged Olives, caddisflies, stoneflies, and all the other familiar insects. I have seen trout spawning on redds. I have also found smallmouth bass in their usual spawning territories. I caught muskies during the winter after Helene. I caught smallmouths this spring. I have seen hellbenders wandering the bottom of the river. The eagles and ospreys are still soaring overhead. It’s all still here.

There’s no quick fix. But we have what we need to rebuild. This isn’t a straight-line comeback. No one is going to love everything that has happened and is going to happen. For the community, it’s trial and error. Two steps forward, one step back. It always has been and always will be a work in progress—that’s forest and fishery management at its core.

For me, each float now feels less like a return to something known, and more like a special pilgrimage through something reborn—something I constantly remind myself has done this over and over. The old spots may be gone, but the river is not empty—in some places, it’s just different.

It’s rebuilding itself, as rivers do, one stone and one current at a time. Some of this does happen with human intervention, but a great deal remains in the hands of Mother Nature.

And maybe that’s the bigger lesson during all these debates. Recovery, like water, doesn’t stand still. It asks us to pay closer attention, to remain curious and vigilant, and to find value in what’s here now, not just in what used to be.

The French Broad River will come back. It’s already happening. But it will be a different river. Your favorite rock, the most productive stump may not be there anymore, but from the looks of it, the fish will be. That’s not a failure—it’s the evolution of a natural system, with people trying to recover not just a river but their own lives alongside and entwined with it.

And if we’re willing to meet the river where it is, rather than where we remember it, there’s still plenty of magic to be found in its flowing water. This old river is still running. The fish are still biting. It’s still home.

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Gavin B. Griffin is a guide at Headwaters Outfitters (headwatersoutfitters.com) in Rosman, North Carolina. On Instagram: @troutexplosions and @headwaters_outfitters.

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