08/15/00 Paddling New River (Bluestone Dam):
The New River flows northward out of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, looping through West Virginia and on into the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia. The New River Gorge is located north on Hinton, WV along WV 20 and provides a couple of nice overlooks of the river.
One looks down on Sandstone Falls which stretches across the river. A 600 foot trial leads to the bottom. It wasn't designed for old folks though. It was almost straight down. I went down about half way expecting switch backs to begin somewhere. When they didn't, I gave up and headed back up.
As I launched onto the New River from the boat ramp just before the WV 20 bridge over the Bluestone River it was cold (50's), dreary and foggy. Yup! In August! In West Virginia!
The put in is at the confluence of the New River, Bluestone Lake and the Bluestone River. I was anticipating a really pretty paddle today. Steep, sharp mountain peaks rise up out of the water on all three bodies of water near the put in. But I couldn't see much of them because of the fog. :-( I could see the sun trying to burn through at 9:30am though. Yeah! Come on sun! Lots of turkey vultures were flying around though. I hope they weren't an omen of things to come.
The New River (actually its very, very old) at this point is 600-700 feet wide and the peaks rise up another 500-600 feet or so. Through the fog, I could see the ridge on the left had many, many sharp knolls or humps that reminded me of the tail of a giant alligator. Behind me, the sandstone walls above WV 20 stood out as the mist swirled around the mountain tops.
As the fog began to dissipate, other peaks started to emerge behind the ones I had been watching. After 1.5 miles or so, I rounded a bend and the river appeared to open up, presenting yet another great view, extending up river for 2 miles. At the far end, steeply forested slopes slanted right down to the river's edge while a tall mountain ridge crossed behind a smaller set of hills at what appeared to be the end of the river but was not.
Lots of good size fish were jumping all over the place. There wasn't much in the way of rocky cliffs or bluffs or boulders and such. A few small sandstone bluffs but that was about it. It was very, very quiet. Just a few fishermen sitting calmly in their boats doing whatever it is fishermen do all day long.
I passed three egrets along the way and tons of blue herons. As clumsy and awkward as they are I have no idea how they get off the ground and stay in the air.
The peaks seemed to have moved closer to the river somehow, giving less of an open feel. Not a closed in feel, just less open, making it more difficult to see the other peaks behind them.
By 11am I had passed the Bertha Camping Area. The sun was out by 11:30am, leaving nothing of the fog behind except for the normal blue haze over the mountains. Things warmed up quite a bit too. It was in the 70's by now with just a slight breeze.
I saw another doe browsing in the shallows. She was really being bothered by those humongous horse flies. Or maybe they're deer flies. I dunno.
At noon I passed the Bull Falls Camping Area and noticed the first bit of current. I went a little ways past the camping area because the mountains on the right side of the river just seemed to stop up ahead. As it turns out it was just a sharp bend in the river.
On the way up I had been thinking about extending my stay in the area another day to paddle more of the New River farther upstream. The Bull Falls Camping Area would be a good put in for the rest of the river.
On the way back, I came up on a big carp pretty quickly and surprised it. In its panic to get away, it thunked right into the bow of the kayak pretty hard. Bet he had a headache after that. A little farther on I saw a pair of hawks. I don't think they were osprey.
Then I saw a fawn, still with its spots, in among the branches of a fallen tree extending into the shallows. At first I thought the fawn was stuck so I slowly and quietly paddled over to see what I could do. But the fawn moved out of and away from the branches very slowly and awkwardly. Then I thought it must be having trouble walking in the mud. But no, it wasn't having any problems at all.
I was within 20 feet of it by that time so I got the camera out and snapped a couple of pictures. When the fawn finally saw me, it didn't know what to make of me. If seemed to show more confusion than fear. I paddled back out into the river and watched the fawn for a couple of minutes and it stood on shore and watched me right back. Eventually it climbed back up the bank and disappeared into the foliage and I went on my way.
After the paddle I went to check out the Bull Falls Camping Area. It's a pretty rugged drive down the side of a mountain on a dirt road but I signed on for another day at the campground and will do the upper part of the New River tomorrow.
08/16/00 Paddling New River, West (Bull Falls):
Well, today got off to a great start, not! Although last night was warmer than it has been, this morning the fog was thicker than usual. It extended all the way down to the water and I was afraid it might be an all day thing. But it was burning off as I headed for the Bull Falls put in around 9am.
The first road leading to the put in is a one lane paved road. It gets worse from there. This morning there's road work going on and after speaking into her 2-way radio the young woman directing traffic on my end allows me to proceed. Around the bend I see a large grader, a front loader and a dump truck and a pile of dirt down the middle of the road.
The dump truck moves over to my side of the road. Thinking he means for me to cross over and come down that side of the road I bump over the clobs of mud in the center of the road. I stop and sit there for a second waiting for someone to say something. Everyone just looks at me so I proceed very slowly and very carefully. But not slowly nor carefully enough and I slip off the edge of the road and part way into the ditch. I'm stuck.
The guy in the dump truck doesn't think twice about it. He gets out of the truck and comes towards me dragging a thick length of chain. He's done this many times before.
Unfortunately most of my damn truck is plastic and there's not much for him to hook onto. They try the frame but that doesn't work because of the angle and they end up hooking it around the wheel. They hook the other end to the grader's blade and the guy slides me out of the ditch and onto the road through the mud with no effort at all.
The grader cleared a path for me down the road and after rocking back and forth a bit I was able to get moving with a push from two of the workers. Then I drove 2 miles down the side of a mountain on a rutted dirt road to the put in, in my 2 wheel, front wheel drive, 4 cylinder truck.
I usually leave the laptop in camp or buried in the truck somewhere. Because of the remoteness of the put in I decided to lug it along with me today. I couldn't find my extra large freezer bags so just wrapped the laptop up in a couple of trash bags and jammed it up in front of the foot rests. I wasn't planning anything exciting today so it should be fine there.
The sun was fighting for dominance over some storm clouds as I paddled out into a 1/2 knot current and a 2-3 knot breeze. The New River is about 300 feet wide here at the Bull Falls Camping Area in the Bluestone Wildlife Management Area. I had come this far yesterday and turned east to continue that trip.
A ridge on the left side of the river seemed about 200-300 feet high. The nice things about these ridges are they're pretty ragged with lots of peaks and knolls. While you can't see over the top of them, you can see past the lower parts to the peaks rising up from behind them. Great views.
After an hour's paddle the river became much shallower, mostly 1-2 feet deep. The current increased to about a knot too and the river seemed to narrow somewhat. With that scenario, I was expecting some shoals or rapids up ahead.
The battle between the sun and the storm clouds seemed to be a standoff and the breeze was dieing off. The mountains were becoming shorter also, though still interesting and attractive.
11:30am found me at the Indian Creek Camping Area, about 4 miles from the Bull Falls put in. I had seen many blue herons to this point, some ducks, a few hawks, a lot of big carp and one doe grazing in the water.
I soon came to the first set of riffles I'd seen on the New River. I paddled up through a bunch of little standing waves to the top with no trouble. I thought I was at the top and out of the fast water and relaxed a little bit. The next thing I know there's more riffles and standing waves in front of me. I was going backwards. I had to exert full force into the strokes and begin the old scooting motion to get up and over that cushion of water. It was certainly deceptive.
This was followed by a fairly easy stretch but then the current picked up to close to 3 knots. I was paddling at about 3/4 power and was making headway at only about .5 knots. I did that for 10-15 minutes and called it quits. I was reasonably certain most of the upstream would be more of the same or much worse.
I pulled in to shore for lunch while I watched a flock of about 50 Canadian Geese mucking about in the shallows across the river. On the way back I noticed an older (than me) couple fishing from shore with 12 fishing poles. Now those folks were pretty serious about catching their own supper.
I fought a 5-10 knot wind on the way back and that negated any effect of the 1 knot current I was traveling with for a change. I was also banging into wind waves up to 1 foot high part of the time.
I came to an island and started to go to the inside to get out of the wind. Up ahead I saw two does and a fawn at the water's edge. To keep from disturbing them I went to the outside and back into the wind.
All in all, this 10-12 mile trip on the New River has to be rated as my best trip in the Appalachians. It was one great view after another with no development and only minor boat traffic. It was also great to see some wildlife for a change too.