West Virginia...take me home

Our friends, Dan (currently our housemate) and Laura recently got married in Virgina, US.














We thought we'd make the most out of our trip over there by taking our playboats with us and figured we could get on some rivers in and around our frequently-visited haunt of Fayetteville, West Virginia home of the New and Gauley rivers.
We were initially hoping for some New River Dries action but typically there had been generally low water levels in the surrounding area (Weather Witch on tour!) so we didn't expect too much.

Our hopes were raised a little though when 18 hours of torrential rain hammered down on us in an out-of-the-way hillbilly campsite(I was hearing the banjos....). Thankfully the tent held up well, and we'd managed to dismount the notoriously-leaky Handiracks just in time to avoid water pouring into the car. Our hillbilly campsite, full of 40-year old trailers, most of which hadn't been used for as many years (the toilets hadn't either - in fact the Ladies was locked shut: 'we don't have many ladies in these parts'), was just an overnight stopover so we could take a look at the nearby Maury River in the morning. We guessed from all the overnight rain the river would be pumping....

A little bit of disappointment ensued as we realised, whilst it probably was pumping, we had no way of getting to the river as we were trapped in Hillbilly-ville: the road that led from the campsite was now being crossed by a pretty fast-flowing river. Our small hire car was not going to make it across until the waters receded. In fact, the locals in their 4-wheel drives didn't try either, and stories of them being stuck for several days - to wait for people to fill in the washed out road - did not inspire us with hope!



There was quite a sizeable (well, sizeable for a 2-wheel drive Toyota) stopper just to the left of this picture.








As it continued to rain we spent the whole morning sat in the car playing cards, hoping the sound of banjos was just a figment of our imaginations...

.... 7 hours later we thankfully managed to escape to freedom as the river turned to a small stream. We legged it without looking behind to see who was following!

Unfortunately, typically, the Maury river was now far too high- pretty flat - (Weather Witch again?) and it was getting late, so we headed for our next stop: Fayetteville, West Virgina.

In our week of paddling (Cam's second time in a boat in the last year) we managed to tick off a few of our previously-paddled rivers, and a couple of new ones. Bizarrely, unlike previous trips, there were very few paddlers in Fayetteville (probably due to early rafting season, but too late for the Dries) and we were struggling to find anyone to paddle with and run shuttles until we bumped into some other boating-holidaymakers, (guess what - more Brits!) in the shape of Clive, Andy and Ali.

We managed to paddle the Dries, but, despite the huge amounts of rain, they weren't at epic levels, though we still had a fun run down and found some nice catch-on-the-fly surf waves.

We then got on the New for a high-water run, which had some pretty big waves on the rapids - a huge contrast (at least 10ft more water) to the last time I paddled it at 1ft summer-levels! 'Greyhound' offered some interesting super-fast surfing!

We paddled the Gauley....

Our previous trip to the Gauley had been during the festival, (when the release is guaranteed daily) with plenty of paddlers and rafts making it quite crowded, so another contrasting experience to paddle this empty river.

Cam surfing - making the most of no queues!











About to ride the pillow on Pillow Rock rapid.





We found plenty of other paddlers when we headed up to the 'Cheat fest' (for the uninitiated: a river-festival on/nr the Cheat River). We had reasonable water-levels on the Cheat and found a few good playspots, timing them right so we avoided the masses (which were plenty). The most interesting/terrifying/entertaining part of the run was the epic shuttle bus journey in the back of an open-truck going stupid speeds with far too many drunk people pinballing around (generally pinballing off my toes) in the back!

There are a lot of river festivals in the US, which generally consist of running the river with many people, lots of boating-type stands in a (usually) muddy field, camping in an equally muddy-field and most importantly partying with other like-minded, unwashed boaters. The speciality of the Cheat fest was the local 'bluegrass' (lots of fiddles, washboards, banjos etc) which resulted in some fantastic dancing in the mud!

We finished our short boating-trip with another favourite - the Upper Yough...





























.... before heading to DC to make the most of the pound-dollar exchange rate, spending a small fortune in REI and various outlet stores!

Thanks to Andy, Clive and Ali for the paddling, cheap red wine (!) and shuttles.
Thanks to Poncho Pete for the shuttle and the bargain :)
Thanks to Austin at Songer Rafting for helping us out.
Thanks to Clive and Cam for the photos.