What an absolute BLAST the last three days. Drove 5 hours to Summerville, West Virginia Thursday after work. Got our tent set up and into our sleeping bags a little before midnight. It was not supposed to rain Thursday night. Around 1 am the skies opened up and it poured soooooo hard for hours. Rained so hard folks trying to get to our campground the next morning were unable to make it due to flooded roads. We were supposed to float the Lower Gauley River on Friday but it was raging. It is normally run when the river is running at 2800 cfs. It shot up to 8000+ cfs. So we changed plans and floated the lower New River Gorge which has huge Class IV and Class V rapids. The New was also running well and we caught some MONSTOR wave trains and dropped into some huge holes. I was thrown out of my seat three times, but managed to stay in the boat, slightly bent one of my oar blades on a huge boulder. My wife, Joanne, was tossed onto the floor at the first rapid.
Remember honey save yourself first the hat second!! Some of the drops were just massive, what a blast!!! The next day we spent scouting the Gauley River, it was pouring rain the entire day. We got a few photos of some of the commercial rafts going down the Lower Gauley. It was still to high for even slightly insane people so Joanne and I decided to be smart and not run it. We went to Gauley Fest and hung out and listened to the live band while it rained some more. Here is a video of the river we ran, this is not us, just a good idea of what we were in. Skip the first 3 and half minutes of the video.
Whitewater Rafting WV Lower New River with Adventures on the Gorge
