WOR – Toe Gorge
| River: | North Toe |
| Skill: | Novice+/Intermediate |
| Trip Date: | 07/02/2013 |
Trip attendees: Shelia, Pete and Rowan Chapelle from Maryland, Beth Zielinski from Virgina , Will from Virigina, Diana Haywood from NC.
I had paddled the Toe Gorge 24 years prior during my first year of boating. I had remembered it as a fun easy river with plenty of places to practice eddy turns, ferrying, and surfing. It was once used by the club as a river to teach classes on. It is a rare treat for it to be running during WOR when it is normally a much dryer time of year. But with the rains we had this year the Toe Gorge was on the board as on option. Others who went had never had the opportunity to paddle it but, were willing to give it a try. With the help of several club members we got directions and GPS coordinates. Even though we realized the river was 2 hours away and the river trip itself only about 4 miles we were willing to give it a try. Plan was to practice and play as much as we could to make the trip distance worthwhile.
While running shuttle we did have a inter-tube shuttle guy stop by and tell us he thought the river was “a little bit high that day.” Well he was right it was really, really high for a class II rated river!! The gorge had turned into a really really long, very high wave train. Watching someone ahead of you run the wave train meant watching them appear at the top of the wave, then disappear in the trough, and reappear again at the top of the next peak for about a ¼ mile. The waves were so high you could not see the river when you were in the bottom of the trough. When the wave kicked you up to the peak you had to “prairie dog ” to see which way to go. It reminded me of waves out west. Lucky we were all intermediate to advance boaters so the trip was as fun as a barrel full of monkeys! For the first part of the trip Shelia, with her expert paddling skills took the lead and Pete ran sweep. Once we were a bit lower in the gorge we let Rowan, the youngest of our crew, take the lead and decide the line. She did a great job! We probably only caught a third of the eddies I had planned for us to catch but, we all had a thrilling day!