Spring Break

Two weeks ago my friend Dylan Evans and I, along with my dad made a trip to the New River Gorge area. What would follow the 5 long hours of driving to get there would be 4 days of epic brown making.( Brown being a kayaking term not referring to poop ;)

Me and Dylan at Grist Mill falls in Babcock state park

Day 1(Sunday): Got up somewhat early, packed up and hit the road. 5 hours later we make it to the New River dries with an hour or two of day light left. We played around up top for a little then decided to venture down deeper into the gorge in search of better waves. Because it was at around 8 feet on the Gorge gauge there wasn't much up top but we found some sick waves downstream a ways just as it was getting dark at what I believe to be the Kahuna waves. Dylan Hiked out early but I decided to stay a little while because I was having a blast on the top wave. It was definitely one of the easiest waves to set up for a trick I have ever been on. Perfectly green I managed some really big air blunts and nice pan ams and I think one Mcflush. Sadly no pictures. After the treacherous hike out just as the light was completely fading from the sky, we got some dinner and found a hotel.

Day 2: We woke up around 9ish, stopped at the Biscuit World for some delicious breakfast biscuits and headed to the dries. The Dries were still at a bit of a low level so we decided to go and check out one of the creeks on our hit list. Due to the lack of a massive rainfall the night before we decided to be someone conservative and go with the creek that was most likely to be running. We drove about 30 or so minutes to Glade Creek AKA Upper Manns Creek, in Babcock State Park. It was a little low and bumpy, espescially Grist Mill falls which was a 13 foot waterfall that pretty much lands on a big flat rock slab, except for maybe a 2 foot wide slot. Which after running it twice before dylan and thought it was impossible, then ofcourse, finally, dylan, getting the guts to run it hits the line perfectly off the 2 inch deep lip and boofs the Sh%& out of it. The rest of the rapids, even though low and scrapy were pretty sick. There was a nice little 5 foot boof onto a kewl little rock slide. Then a neat double ledged drop totaling about 8-10 feet, a 2 footledgeslide to a 5-7 foot drop. Straight into a weird little manky rapid straight into a boof where 80 % of the water flows straight into an undercut rock and the other 20% lands on a rock. Dylan had 2 laps on it and I managed 3 on this .5 mile run.

Day 3: On day 3 we woke up and headed to the Dries again to check the level, a bit higher but we decided to give it some more time to rise some more. So we headed to nearby Mill Creek, which flows into the New River Gorge right above Hawk Nest Dam. Mill Creek was also pretty low, but we managed some sketchy lines down F*&^ Up falls and made it down some neat little slides and a few other smallish drops. We made it to Mill Creeky falls, spent about an hour clearing a log out but after we cleared the log out determined it to be to sketchy due to what appeared to be a very shallow landing. The possible deep spots were not very wide and it was obvious that there was very shallow(2-6 inchs under the surface) rocks pretty much everywhere around it. So we choose to just hop out there and head back to the dries.

Dylan Evans

F&*^ Up Falls

Me

The Dries were at a near perfect level of 9.5 feet when we got there. Put in waves were SICK, we met Dave Fusilli there and threw down some seriously big tricks there. I managed to get some Big pan ams, blunts and a few blunt nastys. Definitly a sick day.

Day 4: This was our last day and the New had droped but we had checked the gauge of Glade creek and it looked higher than the first day we ran it so he just headed back there for a few more runs before heading back home.

Jordan P