The Perpetual Flow: April 2009

This weekend started a day earlier than planned when I got a text from Billy on Friday morning. I was having a nice day in the burbs, making some eggs and sausage when I found out that the Blue Ridge Mtns west of C'ville got dumped on with rain the night before. I quickly finished my all-american breakfast and threw a weekends worth of gear and some clothes in my truck and booked it to Billy's place. All the streams were dirty brown on the way there, and the sun was starting to shine...it was gonna be a good day, I could tell. I picked up Billy, we scurried to Mark's and relieved him from a day of daddy duty and headed for the moutains. It was all suspect what would be running when we got out there. The last look at the gauges had us wondering if things might be too high. Before arriving at the NF of the Tye, at Billy's request we made an impromptu stop to do some hiking and looking. We liked what we saw. This turned into hiking and boating. First D??? Who knows? New Nelson County classic steep creek?? who knows? There was one runnable 25-30 ft slide (with out any chainsaws necessary) that had a fun 50-75 yards of micro-creekin boogie lead-in. Billy found this one on a hiking trip a few weeks ago and thought it might go. He named it Preist's draw (i heard "free straw", just for the record). We hiked a ways upstream to find even more vertical goodness, that was unfortunately unrunnable due to wood. I think with some sawing and z-draging this could realllly be a kick butt run. Its super micro-creeking at its finest. Check the pics.

After a few laps, each going higher and higher until we got to a larger strainer, we headed on. The NF of the Tye was looking pretty beefy, I have never done it and Billy wasnt planning on it with his shoulder injury and I felt hesitation from Mark, so we decided to go look at Adrenaline Alley, which was totally wood choked. We made a group consensus to head to Staton's creek. After a long, long, long drive to Staton's (kidding I had to throw that in there, it just feels long when you have been driving in high anticipation of getting in your boat) we arrived at the steeps once again. the put-in is awesome, right below a huge unrunnable waterfall. Mark and I did 2 more or less successful laps. there was some wood to walk around, including a tree that fell between our first and second run...sketchy. Statons is not like anything I have ever done in a kayak before. Lots of running into, over, and against rocks, logs, briars, and occasionally water. It was quite fun though. Most of the big drops were good to go except Duck and Run, I think it was called. Which involved some scrambling and then a killer seal-launch right into the next rapid. I totally botched the first big rapid both times with a styled out stern piton. Despite the maze of logs and f-u rocks and briars, it was still lots of fun and very steep.

I returned to C-ville to drop off the guys ate a delicious Pad-Thai dinner and then headed to my brothers place in Harrisonburg. I drank a beer and slept, hoping the NF of the Blackwater would run in the morning. After talking to John, Mayer, and Ian it looked like we were doing the Laurel Fork of the Cheat, a seneic class 3-4 through a wilderness area. Long story short, I waited, cell phone dont work in WV, they were running later than i thought, i panicked, thought they bailed, so I thought i would be smart and find them at the Top Yough. No such luck.

Fortunately I did find some other boaters who had just put on and yelled to them asking if i could get a shuttle ride. I got the thumbs up and met them below swallow tail falls. The Top Yough was BROWN and feeling pretty big. I ran the left side double boof at Swallow the first lap which was awesome. The Top Yough is great cause you can run it down to reported lows of 48 cfs to reported highs of 4,000. Saturday it was just under 800 cfs and was awesome. Big, pushy water, with fun boofs and big holes. I ended up getting in 3 laps which was very nice.

The last two laps i paddled with a local, matt fithian, who graciously offered me a couch at his place after paddling. I accepted. we drank beers and watched super bad and i went to bed, he went to a hot tub with some friends and 3 ladies, but i couldnt ruin the ratio for them so i stayed behind and went to bed.

Sunday, we were blessed with a blue bird day in West by god with 68 air degree temps. awesome day for the Blackwater. We met up with two of his friends who didnt party the night before and got up at 6 am to boat. They were on it, by the time we met them at noon at the Upper B putin they had already done a lap on Deckers Creek and a lap on the Lower Big sandy. We did the Upper and lower blackwater. Then they headed over to do 2 laps on the Top Yough. Impressive.

It was an awesome day for the Blackwater, just over 300 cfs when we put on. Fun level. The amount and quality of the boofs on that run really amaze me. I had a great time and felt much more at ease with the river than my first run down the UB. I was able to really enjoy myself, the challenging, not-stop paddling, and the beautiful canyon.

Unfortunately my camera battery died so no pics from Saturday or Sunday, but here a few from Nelson County.

Enjoy.