Just Enough Water
| River: | Other |
| Skill: | Intermediate+ |
| Trip Date: | 05/18/2013 |
Even though the trip was posted as “Something Creeky” in West Virginia, on the Friday before the trip, it looked like we’d be paddling “Something Big”. The Gauley River was at 2,800 cfs and the New was so high that the Dries were running. Knowing that there would be something fun to run, Aaron Wicker, Wayne Jones, Ben Gilbert, Matt Swaim, Marcus Reynolds and I all headed to West Virginia to meet up with Don Beyer. On Saturday morning, Don checked the gauges, and amazingly, some spotty rain showers had brought the Cranberry River up to a low, but runnable level. I promised everyone that while there would be some boat abuse, it would be worth it. We headed over to Richwood, WV and to the Middle Cranberry. After setting our shuttle, we headed downstream.
The Middle Cranberry has clear, clear water and is mostly solid class III creeking. It’s a fun creek to read and run, so everyone took a turn at the front. In the steepest sections, it drops about 100 feet per mile. Because of last year’s heavy, early fall snows (remember Hurricane Sandy?) there is a lot of wood in the Cranberry. Thankfully, we were able to get around all of the wood, but it did keep us alert.
The most difficult rapid on the Middle Cranberry is the class IV S-Turn. We did scout this rapid. At low levels it is fairly well clogged with boulders, and on Saturday there was a bit of wood in the upper part of the rapid. We all ran some variation of left to right and back to the left. There was some rolling and a short swim but we all come through unscathed and smiling. It was a great day on one of my favorite creek runs.
Because we had some overnight rain showers, the Meadow came up a runnable level on Saturday night. On Sunday we all headed over to run the Middle Meadow. After reminding everyone about the undercut nature of the Middle Meadow, we were off, with everyone taking turns at the front. There is one known pinning spot within the first quarter mile, but if you go with someone who has paddled this section before, it is easy to spot and avoid. The first mile of this section is called the Miracle Mile and has fun rapids running through large boulders. After the Miracle Mile, the river turns away from Hwy 41 and starts to cut down into a gorge. There are a couple of rapids on this section that warrant a quick scout just to be sure that they are free of wood. We did a little surfing, caught a bunch of eddies and eventually found ourselves looking up at the Hwy 19 bridge, which marks the take out for this section.
We had a great group of paddlers on this trip, and we had just enough water to paddle some creeks. I’m planning to post the “Something Creeky” trip on next year’s paddling calendar for mid May. Don, can you go ahead and order up some water for next year’s trip, maybe just a little more than we had this year?