Children were dancing around in the heavy snowfall squealing and laughing while the parents shook their heads and smiled. Once they caught a snowflake in their mouth there was an immediate pause and grimace since it was made with soap. Finally the juice ran out and I drug the snow machine off of the top of the school bus and loaded it back in the van to unload at the shop and got on the road up to Charlottesville. 8pm departure and then meeting Josh B at my brother’s house to get a ride back into town to pick up my repaired car. Some beers at Black Market Moto Saloon(kick butt place and somewhere to visit again) then over to Millers for a bag of chips and Guinness for dinner stopped the night at 1:30am or so.
We met up with Josh T from Culpeper and rolled in with some other Hampton Roads/RVA locals for a 9:30 lap. At the take out the James River Hustle crowd was gathering with the van and bus and beers. Fun times with a lot of people. The second lap was just as cool in the juicy 3.8’ Lower Jimmy. The Photography contest, video viewing and overall concern and support for Greg Hawkins was incredible. It solidifies my ideas on the cool crowd I’ve gotten to know through paddling. Around 9pm Swami made it and we toasted a few more drinks and found some late night food. Up at 6:30 and towards the Gauley we head.
The original plan was to playboat the NRG but the Gualey had an unexpected release of 2200cfs so we decided to head that way. I’ve never run the Upper but Teague had my back. Later in the drive when we figured that Teague was the only out of three of us that were there that had run it we opted for the Middle-Lower for the day. Josh T dry-haired it and I flipped on a smear to roll up and man, that water was COLD!! The lower level made most of the rapids and waves smaller except for Diagonal Ledges and Pure Screaming Hell which was probably twice as technical and moving faster. The water had channelized and uncovered more of the ledges on the left leaving only a couple feet instead of 10’ of green to run down. The tongue on the left of Hell Hole was only about 10” wide and a bit swirly!! Then the light started dissipating and rain falling so the temps dropped pretty quick. Being the only one in a dry suit I just smiled but kept up the pace with the guys for the paddle out to stay warm. We ran it in just over 3 hours. After getting back to my car at the put in we found a flat tire on the Subi… after NASCAR’n – up we headed back to the take out to grab all the extra boats. Saying our goodbyes, I headed south towards Asheville and Teague and Josh headed back to Central VA.
Arriving at Trevor’s house at 11:30pm Ali and Trevor were still up so I grabbed the new Creek Boat that Ali had quietly ordered to replace Trevor’s busted Burn to surprise him. He was totally surprised. Then he let me in on the little secret that there were no Green River/Tuxedo Dam releases scheduled for the next day. Disappointed I slept hard. Trevor woke me up knocking on the door and letting all three dogs in to jump on me in bed and said “One hour 6” release, get your stuff ready”. 0 to 100mph in my head! We quickly watched a couple of videos of the rapids as he was pause/playing and explaining lines and dangers. After I dumped my gear in his front yard I let him load while I ran to Sears to drop off the flat tire on the rim. Get Road Hazard ppl. Especially if you plan on running shuttle on the Gauley or LBS!!
Gas and biscuit stop the a few minutes later we were on Green River Cove Road. That road reminded me of some of the switchbacks in Colorado. My ears popped and shortly there-after we were at the parking lot for the take out. Some dry clothes and beers were left then we hopped in his truck to get up top. We were alone at the put-in parking. 67 degrees and sunny we still put on our dry suits and loaded our boats on our shoulders. The new Wave Sport Recon in a boat anchor… just saying. At the put in there was a cool campfire ring and clearing that would be inviting for anyone to camp or party although it’s frowned upon. We relaxed as the bubble hadn’t gotten there yet. The nerves finally started to creep up. Then I could hear it… white noise started rising and so did my hear rate. Zip up the dry suit, put on the PFD and elbow pads and take one last picture.
When we put on I realized how small this creek was. At full release it’s only 218cfs! We made our was a quarter mile or so and got to the stick gauge on the back of a VW sized rock. We chilled out watching it rise from 2” to over 3” and decided to head down to the first rapid and wait until it peaked. Above Bride of Frankenstein I mentioned something to Trevor that was as much of a question as a statement; “I know that you have a lot of concern over the well-being of your friends and I’ve taken that into consideration before asking you to take me down today and I know you wouldn’t if you didn’t think I had the skills. I just had to say that”.. he laughed then slapped me on my shoulder and said “let’s do this”. I wasn’t any calmer.
Bride was a chute on the left against the sheer rock wall of the Gorge that was closing in on us quick with a run out that pushed into a decent hole to punch. Just after was a 20’ pool just above Frankenstein. Frankenstein had us meander through shallow pushy water over one flat rock in the center and around another that was covered in the videos at higher water we were suppose to go over in the video line in order to line up the boof and land left angle in front of a large rock that leaned up-stream. I got twisted around and had no momentum going off the boof and pushed against the rock. The current was surging and I surfed it for a few moments before flipping and felt myself sliding up and down the face of it but didn’t feel myself moving to the run-out. I could tell there wasn’t much water, it didn’t seem forceful but I wasn’t going anywhere. Punching out made me realize again that this was a small creek. Trevor bumped my boat a couple times and I pulled it on to the bank with my paddle. Quick dump later and Trevor asked “are you ok?”… “glad I got that over with, let’s go boating!”
The rest was a blur of boofs, smears, ricochets and oh-my-gawd moments. We did the sneak at Go Left. Trevor ran Zwicks while I was deciding and he waved me off after getting stern squirted. Seems there wasn’t enough water to get speed for the boof over the horseshoe. We walked Gorilla, seal launched below it(what a hoot!) just above Nie’s Pieces and then to Power Slide which was a blast and right after was Rapid Transit. This one almost broke me. The entrance is a 6’ wide slot against the right wall of the Gorge that drops about 10’ on a decent pitch into a small shelf with a diagonal wave that wants to push you right into the wall. Against what your mind says you’re suppose to square-up to the wave pointing right at a house-sized rock 3’ behind it at about 15mph and the wave will surf you a little before punching and keeping you 4’ or so off the wall for the steepness that follows. The lower flows didn’t surf me as much as I thought and I was further left than I wanted to be. Once I passed the wave and the bottom of the world fell out I doubled speed in about 10’ and hit a flake that sent me even further left towards the mansion-sized rock at the bottom. I make a few corrections and braced for impact and got just that! But I was just enough over to get shot in the hole in the bottom which I was able to surf out of. This thing is about 50’ of vert(could be 70’, I’m guessing) and some of the pitches were over 70 degrees. At the bottom in the pool I gave a ye-haw, laid on the back deck and thanked God, Mother Nature and Mama Green for allowing me the ability, safety and stupidity to be in such an amazing place and “safe”. After my very loud verbal prayer the fly fisherman on the side of the bank laughed and said “AMEN”!
We picked/boofed/smeared our way through Nutcracker and grabbed the small eddy just above Groove Tube. Normally Trevor runs the right line but with the levels this low he hiked with me. Those 70 yards after included Sunshine; quick stop to check them out from above gave new meaning to holy $h!7!! Mad respect to the locals that style those after work everyday. A bunch of no name(or a lot of name rapids-read AW’s page here- http://www.americanwhitewater.org/conte ... l/id/1080/ - of fun boofs, scrapes and pin dodging got us to Toilet Bowl then to Hammer Factor. This rapid like a lot of the others had a few parts to it. First was line up a smear-boof on the left wall landing you pointed downstream on a diagonal boil shelf with a pour off the right side so a few right strokes to get you as far down the shelf before falling off the right side into a pitched leaned rock crevasse with major foam pileage. I’d say it’s 25’ of vertical over the entire rapid. Trevor styled it(of course) and I pulled a Tom Cruise with all the right moves until falling in the crevasse and throwing a high brace instead of a opposite side low brace and getting flipped against the rock… again. I held on and felt the wash out then rolled up. Trevor said I rolled-up smiling ☺ Some class II left and we were at Fishtop parking and my car. I happily paid Mama Green my booty beer so the next time I make it to this magical place karma will be my friend.
Couple of thoughts: I don’t know of any way to prepare for this river with what I’ve paddled in the past. Picking lines in deep rivers be it class IV or bigger has no bearing on ricocheting off of rock trying to keep on line out of a sieve with only an edge-width’s of water to use. Pick your guides and safety carefully, know them as not only good paddlers but good people that have your back. This isn’t a class IV river. I don’t believe I will ever run the “Big 3” and I’m OK with that. The one thing I know is there hasn’t been a minute to pass since Monday that I haven’t thought about it. I do know this: for me it was the most magical day on the water I’ve ever experienced. It has changed my idea of boating in whole. It was, for me, in a word: spiritual.
