Date: June 15-17
River: Upper New and New River Dries
Level: 6.4 on Thurmond Gauge and 4.6 on Dries guage
Coordinator: Woody and TD
Participants: All sorts... Woody and Tony D on Dries, Chuck and Nancy joined on on Sunday trip.. Larry P camped Friday night
Comments:Weekend started with sketchy plans to start with and that seemed to be the theme the rest of the weekend.. but it all worked out well..
Posted my plans and headed south Thursday evening.. arrived to Sandbar and set up camp.. checked forum and TD had a McCreery to Stoneclif posted for Friday and I joined that trip... Along the way we met other friends and groups joined and it was a great day on the river with friends that ended at the Cold Spot with agent orange wings and PBR.. It doesn't get much better than that ..
Met a guy at camp named Ed Duffy. He knew Freeze and Don Beyer and mentioned a few others.. he was a cool old timer. He had a cool idea he was excited to show me.. it involved boiling a can of bacon grease in the campfire and then throwing ice cubes into it resulting in a fiery display... Lucky for me Larry P showed up and we had a bunch of beer and forgot about that idea
Day 2 were planning on joining Wes's McCreery trip when TD came up with an idea i could not pass up.. an "ELF" New River Dries adventure ( Extreme Low Flow )... Wes group had shuttle and support covered so Tony and I headed to Gauley bridge "cross country".. We dropped off the Subaro and made a $5 donation to the Humane Society at New River campground and hopped in my truck and headed to Cotton Bridge.. On arrival at cotton bridge i heard a loud noise and thought Tony had fallen over the hill.. I was wrong, instead of trying to carry his boat down the treacherous hill he tossed it down the hill and stated that if the boat cant handle that it dont belong on this river... later in the day I reflected on that comment ..
We put butts in the boats and down the river we went... our first carry of the day was a drop that went somewhere we could not see clearly and TD was certain there was an undercut there so we both carried.. it wasnt too bad of a carry... most of the rapids were channels between huge boulders that dropped 2-4 ft into a boiling cross current... that was the theme of the paddling all day.. trying to get close enough to one of these drops that we could see over the lip and then choose whether or not to do it... It worked out
Scenery was absolutely amazing. I had always wanted to paddle this and view it from the river.. glad I got my chance
The first major carry was "Landslide" rapid.. Holy crap !! We were both throwing boats over boulders and purposely swimming boats across places.. I was reflecting on Tony's incident at put in about this time
We made it through with only problem was me losing my drain plug.. Tony whipped out a spare and we charged onward... the stretch called "mile long rapid" was very memorable.. Some of Tony's stories paddling this in the glory days were pretty scary.. I can not imagine
At takeout the changing rooms were locked with a combo keypad.. we were walking to car when we met Tony's ex Aunt in-law... she cooked me the best hotdog I ever ate.. brushed butter all over the bun.. browned it.. added chili and coleslaw.. wow that thing was good... after eating this lady coughed a couple times and it sounded like a clue to the bathroom locks... we changed clothes and headed to Ace for spare drain plugs
Amazing trip and what a cool day on the river
Finished off the weekend Sunday with a Tony D, Nancy and Chuck GC-GVSB trip.. this was also a great day
See you guys soon and thanks for everything