Beyond Liquid Adventures

Well we are back from the annual New River trip! This year the river was at a runnable level (unlike last year when it was way too high). We had the usual crowd of Tom, big Nathan, me (Ajay), Peter, Nathan, Brad, Gary, Eric, Carrie, Jeannine, Jeff and Carlos. We also had some new paddlers who joined us: Genna, Brent, and Jennifer.
I decided to head up to the New with Tom on Saturday mourning LAKS style, at 4 a.m. Genna also decided to join us for her first liquid adventures experience and Brent was going to follow us. I don’t remember much of the first four hours other than that Genna snored…sorry. Once we got closer to our destination it began to rain, no big deal right….wrong, the windshield wipers on Tom’s van choose not work, they seemed to rather make odd noises. Soon after that adventure we arrived at the campground where we were supposed to gather, most of the gang decided to reach on Friday and camp an extra night. After setting up our tents the four of us that woke up early needed some breakfast, so we went to Biscuit World. Tom pulled the usual “no salt please” causing the whole world of Tudors to stop and figure out how to accomplish this. I on the other hand ordered a biscuit and some yellow rubber (scrambled eggs).
After breakfast, everyone met us in the parking lot of Tudors and we headed to the put-in. There we unloaded, got changed, and put-in. We split up in to three groups: the youth, one group with Tom and one with Nathan. We did the usual stretching and warming up. Nathan and Peter went ahead to the first major rapid, I soon followed. The first rapid is named Upper Railroad, it consisted of a fairly good sized hole and wave. It was hard for the playboats to stay on it for very long because it would push the surfer towards the surfers right where it was more of a glassy wave. On the other hand it was easier to surf the wave portion in a longer boat. Almost everyone walked up to run the rapid for a shot to hit the meat of the hole. Also some of us tried to paddle up into the hole through some very boily backwash, which was very exhausting. The next rapid in line was Lower Railroad. Here we had to hit the tongue of water which was in between two pour overs. Most hit the line perfectly, I on the other hand went too far left and in turn hit a huge back ender. Here many of the rafts tried to “surf” the pour over and sometimes flipped the whole raft. Soon we drifted down stream through few small rapids till we got to a nice surfing spot, which had a small wave at the top and small hole directly behind it. Here the adults practiced their surfing while Peter and Nathan practiced their loops and what not. Ender waves, as this spot is known, was also where we stopped to eat lunch.
The next three major rapids are known as the Keeneys. Upper Keeney is marked by a large rock on river left known as Whale Rock. Here we eddied out behind whale rock, then set up for Middle Keeney. As a probe for Tom’s group I ran it first, running left of center almost running into the hole in the middle. Next was Lower Keeney, here we scouted it on the left side. As usual Tom gave his “four things you should ask yourself before you run a rapid” speech. Everyone did fine, running from left of center then paddling hard right. Now we were a little more than halfway done. There were a few more big rapids like Double Z, Greyhound Bus Stopper and the final Fayette Station. All in all it was a great day of paddling and everyone seemed to have enjoyed themselves. The youth began to call the New the New River Lake because the water was somewhat on the low side which translated to a good amount of flat water.
Everyone except the drivers had to wait at the take out while they went to retrieve the other cars at the put-in, which took about two hours, well it felt like two hours. Once we tied boats down and put on some dry clothes, we headed back to camp for our traditional camp side dinner. We had plenty of food with the usual garlic bread, pasta, and sweets. Surprisingly we were eating dinner and sitting by the fire before it got dark, unusual for Tom’s trips (probably because we had “adults” with us). I was stuffed in about five minutes and exhausted from waking early, driving and then paddling all day. Brad and I got the fire going or at least tried, the wood was damp causing the fire to be smoky and all I could hear in the background was big Nathan complaining how it was like “Mt. Saint Helen’s over here”. Soon I headed back to my tent only to find that I had left the flap unzipped all day, allowing numerous insects claim my tent theirs. At least no mosquitoes were going to bother me with the four daddy long legs on my “ceiling”. I slept like a baby knowing that we had to get up somewhat early the next mourning to paddle and eat breakfast at the Cathedral Cafe.
The only reason I didn’t complain when I got up was because I knew where we were eating. Cathedral Cafe has some of the best food in West VA, you can actually eat it and enjoy it. After eating we headed straight to the put-in. For our second day on the New I decided to paddle my playboat and join the “youth”. Again we had to wait for shuttle, so Peter, Nathan and I paddled down to Upper Railroad to have a surf session. It turned out the the river level has dropped, so the hole wasn’t as sticky as the day before and harder to get into. We tried our luck for about two hours until everyone else caught up with us. Knowing the New from the day before we kind of just paddled down and stopped where ever. Nothing had really changed from the day before other than everything was a bit lower. We did stop at the jumping rock this time and most of us jumped. It didn’t look that high from the river but once you got up there it looked and felt high. I hesitated for sec then heard a local girl say, “you scared??” with a strong WVA accent, then I had to jump. Tom had to perform his signature back-flip, anytime he gets the chance to jump off something he has to try a back-flip. While on the river we ran into these two paddlers from North Carolina who were paddling the New for the first time and decided to tag along with us. It turned out the Nathan actually taught the sister of one of the guys when he used to work at NOC, what a coincidence.
At the take out we changed and put the boats up. Jeff, Brent, and Genna had to leave us for the real world while we got to paddle another day. For dinner we headed to Pies and Pints, another great place in WVA. The waiter had a little something for Sass’s “beautiful eyes” other than that it was great. Another fire and a good nights sleep was all I needed.
The next mourning we headed back to Cathedral Cafe for another great breakfast. As usual on the the third day of the New River trip we head to somewhere different on our way back home. This year the choice was between Valley Falls and the new artificial ASCI course, we choose to work on our boofs and headed out to Valley Falls.
The park at Valley Falls was very nice and the water level was on the low side, which was good to practice. To warm up we ran the slide on the river right side. Then we practiced boofing off a ledge into a pool of water. After we all got that down we ran a slot with a bout a 12ft drop. We ran the slot three times and I wanted to run the top drop, which was about 15ft. I had seen Peter and Nathan run it clean so I gave it a try. Valley Falls was a beautiful place to practice boofing in a relatively safe place. It was late in the afternoon and it was the end of our trip. We all parted our separate ways and headed home. Tom and I spent the four hours driving talking about many random and interesting subjects from Roman history to how Shakespeare was somebody else to black holes and religion. I couldn’t have asked for a better trip.

Drive over the largest single arch bridge in the world and look down at the white water 1000′ below. This might be your first view of the mighty New River. It flows for 8 miles through a deep gorge, with crashing waves and powerful eddies and whirlpools. Unlike smaller, shallower rivers like the Lower Yough and Cheat, the New is deep and powerful almost everywhere, and where there is play, the play is big. If you have a good roll and want to see a natural wonder from a boat, come to run the New. The best time to join us is on our annual Fourth of July weekend trip. AW information