Thanksgiving

It is all too easy in this day and age of intense consumerism to get caught up in the things that we don't have: the hottest car, newest electronics, best job, etc... However, this Thanksgiving as I sat in the recovery room of the Shady Grove Hospital in immense pain, I had the chance to realize just how thankful I am for what I have been blessed with. Just after waking up from surgery I was in extreme pain. In order to try and keep my mind off of the present I thought about everything that was good in my life. I have an amazingly supportive family who is always there for me. I have awesome friends who share my love for adventures and good times. I have good health, a college education and tons of ideas. Without the support of my friends and family I don't know where I would be. I want to say thank you to everyone who has played any part in my life for being who you are.

I finally decided to go through with the surgery on my foot that I have been putting off for a while in hopes it might magically get better. I have been awkwardly and painfully getting around over the last two years since my fall while climbing down at Looking Glass, NC.

So, in the final days before my surgery I decided i needed to go out and try and clear my system as much as i could. I had the chance to get out on Great Falls a lot. I got to paddle the Maryland side of the Falls at a higher level than I have ever paddled it, as well as some good days on the Virginia side. I always enjoy paddling the falls and it was just like the "good old days" of the last year or two being back here paddling with friends and leaving work to go fire up the falls.

John Haddock on The Spout - VA Side Great Falls

Scott Anderson on The Spout - VA Side Great Falls

John Greer on The Spout - VA Side Great Falls

I was hoping to get in some creeking on the Blackwater with some recent snow in WV. However, the weather stayed very cold and the snow, instead of melting, just piled up. So i figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I headed out to Caanan Valley Friday morning after they had received about 24" of snow in the week prior and about 8-12 more inches Thursday night. It was snowing most all of the day and was a total whiteout. The wind was blowing hard and the air was about 15 degrees, not including wind chill.

I rented some snowshoes and ended up snowshoeing up to the top of Bald Knob with some other folks i knew from kayaking and then snowboarded down in what turned out to be waist-deep power in some places. The hike up was awesome. I can really sympathize with the saying "Earn your turns." I gained a new appreciation for the downhill after snowshoeing the whole way up.

Whitegrass is a very awesome place. Everyone out there was having a great time regardless of skills or experience. Its hard not to have a good time when you are romping around the snowcovered woods of West Virginia.

Every now and then during the ascent you could hear random people letting out yelps of cheer. It was not uncommon to hear a few "Whooooohoooo"s or "Yeeeehaaawwww"s while making the climb up to the top of ny of the surrounding balds.

Earning the turns - Justice skinning up a really narrow steep trail we took to the top on Friday

Celebrating small victories at the Round Top shelter - about halfway up to Bald Knob

The view of Bald Knob from the shelter

Me with an icy beard

Whitegrass...what a cool place

Saturday turned out to be an awesome day. The weather got a little warmer, in the 20s and the snow and wind subsided. I met Billy in the morning and I got some XC skis and he decided to try out the "Guides," a Telemark setup. XC skiing turned out to be quite interesting for me. Not only was it quite uncomfortable for my foot, but i was also quite bad at it. We managed to make it up to Bald Knob, where you could actually stand for a few minutes, as opposed to Friday, and we enjoyed a beer. Meanwhile, Billy had managed to break the bindings off of his rental skis and faced a one ski / ski sledding decent. I just fell pretty much the whole way down. I am glad I can laugh at myself. Doing the pizza with XC skis with no metal edges barely slows you down, and puts you in a very weird position to fall i found out.


All Whitegrass Pictures

Billy, chatting it up about the Guides with innocent bystanders.

The view from Bald Knob, Saturday

Blackwater Falls

One last day...I was lucky enough to get ut on the falls with John, John, Billy and Brett one more time before my surgery. We met in the Maryland Parking lot and got all geared up for a cool evening run. The level was just right for a medium Maryland lines run and a lower water run on the VA side. We started off on the MD side with awesome lines off Pummel; which is an amazing boof at higher water. Then we hit Z turn and the left side of Horseshoe, which is also a great boof when it is at the right level. Then we headed over to the VA side, ran U-Hole at the top and then all the other standard lines.

Gearing up at the put-in

Mayer prepares for Takeoff on Pummel

Weird effect with the flash, but Billy is nailing the boof at U-Hole

Well, my foot is all cut up, in a cast and i am now on crutches. Its not for good and I am very excited about the fact that I will soon be able to walk normally again and enjoy all the things once again that had been bothering me so much over the last couple of years.


All Pictures from the Potomac

I will keep posting in my recovery.

Here is a sweet X-Ray of my foot with the two screws in it:

The Russell Fork...Finally

After scanning American Whitewater for years, there remained one classic class V run in Virginia that I had always looked at with nervous ambition. The Russell Fork is way off in the far corner of Virginia on the Virginia/Kentucky border, not very close to anything. In addition to its location, the dam feeding it only has scheduled releases for 3 weekends a year in October. Thats not to say that it doesn't regularly flow, however often much lower, on natural flows throughout the year.

For some reason, I never made it out there to paddle this awesome gorge. A few weekends ago I had the chance to head out there with my buddy Billy Armstrong aka Strongarms and we both had our first go at it. It just so happened to also the the annual Russell Fork Rendezvous weekend.

It proved to be every bit of a classic as any good story might make it out to be. It's a pretty short run that is lots of fun and can easily be run multiple times in one day.

Banjo music, a huge fire, kegs of beer on top of a truck...this must be the Russell Fork

Handpaddler at Climax

A stoked Strongarms after a sik boof at Climax

Sunset over the Russell Fork Gorge / Breaks Interstate Park

The most pimpin' shuttle rig ever - Chris from Colorado's WREC Center

Fall foliage in the Gorge

Looking upstream at the first rapid: Tower

What an awesome time.

The rest of the pictures

Time to Reflect...

Summer is over, Gauley season is over, 6 months of getting paid to kayak...over. Man what an awesome six months. Looking back, I don't think that I really would have changed anything either. Well, maybe I wouldn’t have landed so flat off the 25-footer on OBJ or had a class V raft wrap on a forked tree in the middle of a class two section of water. But other than that, what a great time.
I got to live in two of the most beautiful areas that I have ever been. My backyard was my playground. It was truly a breath of fresh air, both literally and figuratively, coming out of the concrete jungle of Bethesda, MD. Colorado is an amazing place to be in the summertime. Although Aspen and the surrounding area is well known for its awesome skiing and snowboarding in the winter, all that snow can make for one hell of a summer. When the days get longer and warmer the outdoor activities in the Roaring Fork valley are endless. Mountain biking of all varieties out your front door, tenuous crimpy sandstone face climbing, bomber 3 pitch granite hand-jamming, four species of the largest prettiest trout almost anywhere, lazy river booze cruising, back-to-back 30 foot waterfalls, and everything in-between. At the end of everyday I found myself wishing that there were a few more hours of daylight. I wasn’t done having fun yet.

Working for Aspen Whitewater Rafting proved to be a good summer job once things got going. There were a lot of rookie guides this year, including myself, but a really awesome crew. My favorite job by far was safety kayaking, basically saving the customers that have fallen out of the boat. I also guided some rafts and did some shuttle driving and led some ducky trips (by far the most hilarious part of the job). We all did everything there. AWR is a small outfit of about 20 people so everyone gets to wash booties hang up lifejackets, etc.

I must emphasize how much fun it was paddling the Roaring Fork everyday, either for work or fun or both. There was a tremendous snowpack last winter which translates to an epic summer in Colorado. The Roaring Fork ran for almost 3 months straight peaking out at just under 3,000 cubic feet per second. This run has a little bit of everything. Boofs, bouldergardens, tight lines, big open lines, a small waterfall, playboating, you name it. I would say it is far and away the best class IV run in Colorado, and one of the top in the Country.

In the time I was out there I had many friends come out to visit from back east. It was great showing my friends runs I had done or exploring runs together that none of us had run.

As July was coming to a close as was the inevitable...the rivers were dropping. The once snow covered mountains that enveloped the Roaring Fork valley were now gigantic barren faces of red and grey rock with the occasional gully or drift of dirty snow still clinging to the most shaded ravines.

I definitely fulfilled my goal of paddling as much as possible and the longest I went all summer in Colorado without paddling was the three or four days I went home for a funeral. After paddling what was pretty much the last single day class V whitewater left in Colorado for 5 out of 7 days my body was beatdown and tired. In the days spent wandering around the one horse town of Kremmling, CO the disappointment that marked the of the end of an awesome season and uneasiness of an uncertain future must have been radiating from the dirty clothes and greasy hair of me and my buddy Chris as we sauntered into the local Subway, too tired and out of creative combinations of rice, meat, noodles, and sauce to make our own meal. The nice lady working that evening clearly picked up on it. She offered cheerful conversation and bought our meals for us. Following the Gore Fest and race I headed back to Aspen for another week or two of scrapping rafts down the painfully low river. Before long it was time to start packing the truck and blazing a new trail.

Where would this trail take me?? I decided since I was already heading back east with all of my gear I might as well try to get a job on the river for Gauley season. I was making phone calls the whole time I was driving from Colorado to upstate New York for my college roommate’s wedding trying to see if anyone needed a videoboater a week before the season started. After hearing nothing but my radio I finally got a call back when I was somewhere in Ohio I think. It was the voice of my soon-to-be boss at Class VI Mountain River, the foremost outfitter in West Virginia on the New and Gauley Rivers. She said she could work me a day or two a week as a whitewater videographer, or videoboater, and I said I was in. After the wedding I paddled a few dam release runs on Labor Day on the Eagle and Taylorville section of the Beaver River, then a low water run on the Bottom Moose. That evening I was greeted with the utmost hospitality at my friend John Greer’s Mom’s house. I awoke early the next morning and drove about 10 hours to Fayetteville, WV. I was finally on familiar ground again after 4 months of wandering.

Working on the Gauley was an experience in and of itself. The river draws customers and workers alike from all over North America. It is a gathering of whitewateraholics from Alaska to Georgia and Ottawa to Washington. Working the Gauley for me wasn’t awesome because I am a badass playboater and got to do trickywhus and McPhonicsNastyMonkeyLoops all day. It’s a fun river to paddle no matter your watercraft of choice or the pace you paddle. I felt extremely lucky to get to kayak the Gauley every release and worked all but about three days. You get a lot of time to think to yourself while paddling class V rapids solo 4 days a week. I couldn’t help but think about all the people missing out on this experience. Now I know the river ain’t for everyone, but when I’m out there I just can’t help but feel sorry for the misguided souls sitting on the couch eating Doritos and drinking crappy beer living vicariously through television shows and video games. LIVE IT! I digress.

The Gauley really is just a flat out beautiful area and awesome river. There are no death defying waterfalls or long technical boulder gardens but you can find lots of fun when venturing out of the main current and hitting some really interesting lines. Working the Gauley was awesome not only because of the whitewater, but also because of the culture and history and traditions and the people that make up the whole experience. The owners at Class VI were clearly hooked more than 30 years ago when they were some of the first people running commercial trips on the New and Gauley Rivers. I had a great time getting to live in the woods under two Wal-Mart tarps in the woods of West Virginia. I really felt one with the woods when I would come back home to my tent or step out back to nature’s bathroom and notice the leaves a little more yellow or orange than they were the day before. On my days of I enjoyed many climbing trips any of the surrounding crags or an evening mountain biking through the think deciduous forests of West Virginia. I also had the pleasure of getting to show my girlfriend, Emily, the wonders of West Virginia, virgin territory for her. We had a great time exploring Wolf Creek and wearing out her dog, Stubbs, swimming in the New River. Getting to share such awe-inspiring area with a total newcomer really opened my eyes to the real grandeur before me. It is easy to take the mountains that you see everyday for granted. However, after spending all summer in the Rockies, there was a certain comforting feeling I got coming home to the Blue Ridge.

Now what? What lies in store for this twenty-five year old homeless jobless bum? I have a college degree, an arthritic subtalur joint (heel), a laptop, lots of pictures, and health insurance. The way I see it the options are endless but I must follow the order o operations. First things first, I am getting surgery on my right foot so that 4 months from now I should be taking my first pain-free steps since falling 20 feet on to rock two years ago. In my downtime I also plan on telecommuting and working as much as possible as a consultant for my former employer, MDA Federal. This will allow me to make some money, stay fresh on my GIS skills, and curtail the inevitable boredom that comes with recovering for 3 months from surgery in the dead of a Mid-Atlantic winter. I also plan on working on expanding my photography and revamping my website to really try and get it out there and actually sell some photos under the guise of “artwork.” I may sink, I may swim, but if I don’t jump in I reckon I will never know. So I will be working on my website as well as searching out new avenues for displaying and “advertising” my work as much as I can through small coffee shops and retail stores. You know places where people interested in pictures of autumn leaves swirling in a small eddy on Mill Creek might hang out.

The outlook is good. Life is Good! I cannot wait to be healed up and more physically able than I have been in the last two years. I will try to keep my blog up-to-date with pictures of gnarly incisions and festering foot wounds and casts. So please keep checking my website as well. I just added an all-new category “The Very Best Of…” which can be reached from the links at the top. I really like it because it will be a nice quick and easy way to get to the goods. These are some of my top picks that would serve as good desktop backgrounds or prints. All of these will be protected, but can be downloaded or printed for a small fee.

Photos coming soon...


The Perpetual Flow.com - The Very Best Of...