October 15, 2000

The sun was shining and the air and water temperatures were above normal for mid October. It was a perfect day for the end of Gauley season. A small group of us decided to celebrate by paddling the Lower Gauley. The participants included Chuck & Nancy Brabec, Turner Sharp, Susan Klimas, Tom Eisenschmidt, Cheng Ling, Max Harbert (who met us somewhere below the putin) and Nancy Gilbert (a dear friend of ours from North Carolina).

The Corps was releasing all night so we put on the river as soon as we got down to the water. After a little warm up just below the putin we headed for Koontz's Flume. A few people ran the river left line and the others ran the river right line. Before we knew it the first major rapid was behind us. As we meandered downstream we played a little (some more than a little), enjoyed each others company and we took in the beautiful scenery. I don't think the colors were at their peak yet but they sure were pretty, especially with the sunshine and clear blue sky.

As we approached some of the major rapids we discussed various routes and we each took whichever route we felt most comfortable running. Things got a little interesting at Lower Stairstep. I mentioned my favorite line - eddy hopping down the right side and skirting the right of River Wide Hole (RWH). Tom told us that you would be ok running RWH if you kept to the left of the highest point on the wave on the back of the hole. Then we picked our lines. I went first and got into the river right eddy just above RWH. Nancy Gilbert joined me in the eddy. Nancy Brabec decided to skip the eddy and ran the very right edge of RWH. Susan decided to test Tom's theory except that she didn't quite get to the left of the high point. In fact, she hit it dead on and did a nice backender, followed very quickly be a great roll. She finished by running the next several waves backwards. Way to go Susan! I decided to peel out from the upper right eddy and try to skirt the right edge of RWH, only I was a bit too far left with not enough speed to get over the curler wave that feeds into RWH. The result was a nice slow backsurf into the center of RWH followed by a big backender and a roll. So much for my line...

The rest of the day was mellow. Before we knew it we were at the bottom of Kevin's Folly and all that was left was the flat water to the takeout. The end of one more Gauley season. But there is always next year...