2011 Top Yough Race

Almost 40 kayakers came out on a snowy, chilly April morning to race down Maryland's Top Yough . This was the largest turnout by far for the Isaac Ludwig Memorial Race. This year we had about 250 cfs on the gauge in Oakland. Not as much as previous years, which is reflected in the times. Speaking of times, here is race organizer Jon Harmon announcing them to the crew:
Roger Loughney provided start times for everyone and ran sweep on the race, and Walter Augustine went out in front and recorded everyone's finish time at Suckhole rapid. Thanks Fellas!
Jason Beakes won for the 2nd straight year, and Charley Bartlett won the shortboat class for the 2nd time in 3 years. Jack Ditty was the fastest C-1 as usual. We had a ladies class this year, which was won by Paula Knochel in her inaugural race.
Full spreadsheet of times is at the bottom.

The pre-race HQ and post race party were held at Streams and Dreams rental cottage, which was perfect for getting ready beforehand, and for partying after the race. The cottage is a great location to stay if you wanted to paddle in the area. Sleeps 8+, right at the Top Yough takeout, and close to a whole lot of other boating.
We got to eat great food, and check out several hundred photos of everyone's run at Swallow Falls:
Kayakers Love Pictures

Zach Yomboro shot this video of all the racers on Swallow Falls. Pretty cool, and much appreciated. You can see a mix of lines, with a lot of the longboats choosing to go left of center.



The snow on the course made it extra beautiful out there. Good for snowballs at the finish line too.

Full times for the 2011 race:

Jason Beakes	10:26	Overall Winner
Ben Ledewitz	10:34
Jack Ditty	10:42	Fastest C-1
Jon Harmon	11:01	AwesomeOrganizer
Geoff Calhoun	11:05
Matt Fithian	11:08
Andrew Robinson	11:10
Charley Bartlett	11:45	Fastest Shortboat
Bobby Miller	11:51	#2 Shortboat
Micah Weglinski	11:51
Art Barket	11:52
Travis Coles	12:07
Martin Wick	12:09
Justin Teague	12:10	#3 Shortboat
Randy Greidever	12:16
Blake Huber	12:26
Jeff Blood	12:31
Roger Loughney	12:35
Seth Chapelle	12:37	#2 C-1
Andrew Miller	12:38
Andrew McCauley	12:38
Chris Schwer	12:38
Dave and Rob Fusilli	12:48
Matt Burnstein	12:49
JB Seay	12:56
Nori Onishi	12:57
Matt Sloan	13:04
John Stephens	13:15
Paula Knochel	13:18	Fastest Womens
Sean Chapelle	13:27
Max Harbert	13:39
Chris Heim	13:44
Mackenzie Hatcher	13:49	#2 Womens
Bob Norr	13:56
Nico Zegre	14:02
Laura Lindzey	14:26	#3 Womens

If I HAD to leave

The smarter, better half has been interviewing for a Residency position in various locales. I tagged along and got a chilly run on the Green.
If I had to leave West Virginia, I could think of worse rivers to have in the backyard:


Dave from Johnson City on a lap of Gorilla, Scream Machine, and Nies's Pieces.

High Ridge Run

In WV, the Allegheney Front is the boundary between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheney Plateau. It also helps to divide the Potomac drainage from that of the Ohio River (which the New, Gauley, Cheat, Youghioghney, and Tygart all join) in our State. The various branches of the Potomac have been boated for years, and are well know for their scenery; soaring Seneca Rocks, the wildlife and fishing of The Trough. Seneca Creek, a major tributary flowing off the highest point in the state, is one of the traditional Canaan area steep creeks, and was a proving ground in the infancy of vertical waterfalls and steep creeking. Exploration of other, smaller creeks has been minimal, with access, tiny streambeds, wood, and small flow windows deflecting a lot of effort. It is understandable, particularly when there is great class V boating ready to go on the other side of the escarpment. Interest and exploration has revived along the front however, and this past weekend I got to enjoy a great new creek.
High Ridge Run collects itself in a small drainage below one of the steepest parts of the Front. At the put in, the creek is tiny, and grows slowly as it drops 1000' in two miles toward the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac.
Harpers Ferry boater Mike Moore has been scouting this creek for years. I knew it as "Mike Moore's Secret Creek" long before I knew its name or location. He has scouted, checked on access, chatted with landowners and fisherman, and spent weekend after weekend clearing logs from drops and learning the creek. He must have a good Tom Sawyer speech too, because he drafted his friends to help him get things boatable. The hard work paid off, and I can't thank those guys enough for their effort.
Saturday morning found nearly twenty people hiking up a forest road to the top of the creek.

Sometimes the gate is open, but this was not one of those weekends. We climbed 1400' in two miles before turning left and crossing another mile down into the very top of the creek. I was soaked in sweat and hurting by the time it was done. I am terrible at pacing myself, and currently have sub-optimal fitness. (which begs the question of why I did it again the next day)

The hikers filtering down into the put-in, at the highest runnable portion of the creek.



Chuck Morris on the put in rapids.

The second significant drop: a transition onto a slab and then out.

Busy Busy Busy.
Whoah. Long day for this man, but he did it with a smile and a game effort. Big boat on a little creek.

Sam Burke in one of the more boulder filled rapids on the upper section of creek. The rock to Sam's left dished out a lot of abuse, from scraped knuckles to full on swims. Above this drop is a 12' falls, and a 10' slide, and some other stuff all in sequence with no real stop. I ran it on verbal directions from Chuck, who got them from Mike Moore, who spent much of the day standing on various perches giving out directions like an air traffic controller. (or a mountaintop guru of rapid lines) Beta from Mike, and from Don Smith, who had also been on the creek previously, made for confident probing and bombing away.


Chuck Morris keeping his bow up in a tight LZ. Just below this ledge is a large, broken tree spanning the river. While you portage around the tree, you can take a moment to scout the confluence canyon.

Don Smith runs the second of three drops in this sweet little crux gorge. 20' entrance falls, a 12' or so kicker in the middle, then a twisting slide to exit. At this point on the run, you have traveled about 1/2 a mile and dropped 400'. Awesome.

Geoff Calhoun finishes up the third slide.
A decent sized fork of the creek is entering on the river right, directly into the bottom slide. Beautiful place. The pace eases up somewhat from here down, and our large group of nearly twenty ended up stretched over several hundred yards of creek. Eventually, a handful of us, (chasing Jason Beakes) started moving really fast out in front and we split into two groups.

By really fast I mean we didn't scout here.

Or here. Or countless other ledges and turns. The work Mike and crew did, the super friendly nature of the creek, and some very comfortable probes out front made quick work of the bottom 1 1/2 miles of creek, which were still dropping at a 400-500fpm pace.

Mild mannered elementary school teacher Robert Miller genteelly makes his way down a babbling brook.

Don Smith loads up for the best boof on the creek. Taller than it looks.

Eric Amason charges around the corner and prepares to log dodge.
The creek quieted down even more below here, and was straightforward read and run to the takeout. These photos are by no means a complete representation of the creek, there is lots more I didn't have time or angles to photograph. Think of this blog post like a movie trailer, it tells enough of the story to get your attention, but by no means is it the whole thing.
High Ridge Run is an incredible combination of friendly streambed and gradient. Every drop is runnable, with countless 6-10' ledges and unique falls and rapids. It is a busy creek; there are no real pools anywhere along the run, and an out of control line can take a long time to recover from. Eddies were minimal at times, as can be expected for a micro-creek with this kind of gradient.
More pictures from our run can be seen on my picasaweb album. Hopefully I can add more pics and some video as the media other guys shot becomes available.
For Saturday's run, the NFSB Potomac crested near 11,000 cfs at the Cabins gauge. I don't think there is a direct correlation, but that gauge climbing high combined with heavy local rains is the best indicator that High Ridge Run is flowing. Seneca Creek was also bankfull in nearby Onego, WV on Saturday. A group of us went back in on Sunday, and while the creek was fun, it was really too low, the watershed is quite small for this creek, so catch it on the way up and don't delay, it won't hold it water for long.

Update: an addendum from Mike Moore himself. I'm just gonna quote his e-mail:
"Tim Gavin felt that the Allegany Front held secrets that us kayakers ought to know about, but we were all pre occupied with the Blackwater and North Fork @ the time, and could not be distracted with other things!

Jeff Cogle and I renewed the interest, flyovers on Google Earth and poring over the raised relief topo map Jeff has.

I was the 1st to step and see with boaters eyes, could not believe what I was seeing only a 1/2 mi up the creek bed, Chris Good and I went up to the confluence drop that same day, making it just @ dark. It looked like fantasy land, looking up @ the confluence drop in the fading light.

Back in the following weekend, and following 4 weekends, with Jeff Cogle, Clarke & Jeremy Gesey to begin working away and scouting the Upper section, which was dubbed The Wet Dream Section. Truly amazing section of whiteh2o, more boofs than any creek around, and hardly any boulders.

Exploring out of the High Ridge drainage has been fruitful as well, the whole Allegany Front is peppered with classic class 4-5 creeking in the wettest of times. Its nice to see a new place with world class runs when all of our west side creeks are blown out and our signature east side run[ Seneca] is too high.

So kudos to Timmy Gavin for the thought, and the inspiration to keep searching and discovering.

Somehow, I think Tim was along for that 1st D!"

Middle Kaweah lap two + gawking at big trees.

After my first run down the Middle Fork of the Kaweah, i was pretty tired.
My back was also killing me, so after dinner I decided I wanted to sleep in a real bed, and ended up getting a room for us in Three Rivers for the night. I realize this makes me a sissy, and it hurt my budget for the trip, but that bed and shower were nice. The room also included breakfast in the morning, and an internet computer. The computer was handy to determine exactly where the best Middle Fork take-out was, and we could check what else was going on with water levels. West Cherry looked to be on the high side, and most everything else was low, so we stayed in town for another lap.
Jay Moffat arrived in the middle of the night, having driven straight through from Asheville, NC with just a few naps. He slept in his car and was up early rigging his new boat and (correctly) harassing us for being slowpokes. That motivation probably explains why Jay managed to run Upper Cherry, the Middle Kings, NF San Joaquin, the Stikine, and more this season.
Oliver headed home to do some work, and Adam, Jay and I went back into Sequoia for some boating. We put on at Buckeye Flats, below Chuck's Drop this time. What took hours to sort out the day before, we got done in minutes. We were soon through the mini canyon, and out scouting the heinous boulder pile above V-slide, which Adam ran, and then the V-slide itself.

Jay Moffat runs V-Slide, photo by Adam Johnson.


A spectacular place, complete with live studio audience. Jay Moffat and JB Seay below V-Slide. Moro rock above. Photo by Adam Johnson.

We did not get out of our boats again until the bottom of the 420 gorge area, where a shallow drop with a 90 degree pillow/flume at the bottom prompted a quick portage. Adam and I had both run it the day before, and neither of us liked the chunky stuff we felt in the pillow and flume. It was a good time for some beef jerky and a panoramic picture anyway.

Sitting still for the picture felt like one of those old timey, manual, sepia photos.
Panoramic photo by Adam Johnson.
From there it was more bombing and quick explanations over the shoulder to Jay all the way down to Zero to Sixty. Adam and I probed (scouting again seemed risky to me) and then Jay styled it right up.
Jay Moffat runs Zero to Sixty, photo by Adam Johnson.
We were soon drying gear in the sunshine at the Potwisha campground, the confluence of the Marble and Middle Forks of the Kaweah, unaware that Ben Stookesberry and Darin McQuoid were on a mission just a few miles up the Marble Fork.
We completed our run from Buckeye Flats to Potwisha in a little over two hours, quite an improvement from the 7 or so it had taken the day before while we figured it all out. The Middle Fork of the Kaweah is a great river, and one I look forward to running again someday. I understand it has an early season, before the melt, and that fall rains will also bring it in. What a fantastic resource! Once you know the lay of the land, you can adjust your put-in for how much you want to bite off, and it has a fun combination of drops. When you add in the other forks of the river, its no wonder the Kaweah River has an informative webpage dedicated to it.

After our run, Jay hit the road to Oliver's house, and Adam and I took the scenic route on the Generals Highway through Sequoia National Park. We climbed Moro Rock, a kind of must do since it was always photo-bombing our kayak shots. We saw several juvenile bear cause a "Bear Jam" on the Moro Rock access road, and obviously, a lot of fantastic large trees and mountains. We arrived late that night at Oliver's house to find Shannon Carroll in town to join our merry band with several days off from work and ready to boat.
Adam has more pics on his picasa site, and his take on the Kaweah on his blog.
Keep watching for day three; "A weekend warrior finds his limits" or something. Middle Cherry is up next.

Middle Kaweah day one.

This spring, I made plans to try for some Sierra creeking. The trip was to be part vacation, part adventure, part reward for pulling up stakes and moving to a new town. I had a narrow window in the month of June to go, but was able to free up 6 days in between moving and my wife starting her rotations in a new hospital. I started scouring blogs and message boards for dates and flows on runs in California. You guys need to put more dates on when you do those snowmelt runs. For the record, we ran the Middle Kaweah at low water on June 17th and 18th, and then the dam controlled Middle Cherry on the June 20th.
The plan was to meet Ed Gaker and Adam Johnson in California, and hopefully hook up with our friend Oliver Grossman for logistical help and some boating around his work schedule.
We wanted to try for Upper Cherry, and if it was too high, do day trips or maybe West Cherry.
I had my Westbound ticket bought, and was looking for the return flight when I got terrible news: Ed had drowned boating in Colorado. (I wrote some about this in a previous post) I struggled mightily with what to do about my trip, and looked into giving my ticket away and just letting this one go. In the end I decided to proceed, confident Ed would have wanted it that way (cliche or not it's true), but with a heavy heart.
On Thursday the 11th I shipped my kayak west to safeguard against any airline snafu's.
Friday a bunch of us drove to central Ohio to attend Ed's viewing, and his memorial on Saturday.
Sunday and Monday my wife and I packed up our house and moved 3 hours East, to the Panhandle of WV.
Tuesday I flew to Sacramento.

I got there late Tuesday night, and Adam picked me up, with my kayak already on top of the car. We headed south, checked in with Oliver, and confirmed that we would meet somewhere near the Kaweah the next morning.
We got to Three Rivers, just outside Sequoia National Park, around 4:30 in the morning. I slept in the back of the car for about 2 hours, then got up to get a snack and call the wife to let her know I was there and safe. I dozed some more until about 7:30, when Oliver met us and we went to breakfast.
We saw a car with boats and Oregon tags, so I went over to say hello. I asked the guy standing there if he was Chris (Korbulic) as we have a number of friends in common. Oops. It was actually Ben Stookesberry, with Darin McQuoid riding shotgun. We chatted a bit and quizzed them on levels, before hitting the road. Nice guys. They had just completed the 3rd or 4th decent of the Upper Middle Fork, hiking several hours upstream from the end of the road.
We were unsure of put-ins and take-outs, but Adam remembered paddling all the sections of the Middle Fork of the Kaweah, so we figured we could run the whole river, and loath to pay for two cars to get in the park, we left a car in town. We drove into Sequoia National Park, and ended up meeting with a group of 6 guys from the U.K. (who had no more info than us), and we put on at the Paradise Creek Trail bridge, just above the Buckeye Flats campground.
Just a few short drops around a corner, and we were at Chuck's (Kern) Drop. Its big, shallow and gets run occasionally.

Not by us though. Bill Anderson portaging Chuck's Drop. We dropped one team member who wasn't feeling well here, bringing us down to 8 first timers* on the run.
*Adam had run the Kaweah in high school, but when mixed in with the memories of their 200+ days a year paddling pace, he was fuzzy on where things were. Sometimes, at the bottom of a drop he would say "Oh yeah, I remember that one" but that was the extent of his beta.

The first drop of any size below Chucks. JB Seay, photo by Oliver Grossman.

Oliver Grossman runs the same.

More fun read and run brought us to a series of slides in a mini-canyon. We scouted from the river left, climbing on top of a house sized boulder perched on the bedrock. 2/3 of the flow went under the rock, but the left channel around was easy to make at low water.
Oliver and I headed up and ran the first few slides.
While eddied out under an overhang, I found this rock in the embrace of the roots of a sycamore tree.

Bill Anderson on Drop #2 in the series.


Drop #3 and 4, showing the rather large sieve. Photo by Oliver Grossman.

Once we got everyone worked through here, we portaged around a messy rock pile just below. Just a few eddies downstream and we arrived at the V-slide.

Oliver enters the V-Slide. We were under the impression it went best by driving hard right and falling into the trough late.


JB Seay at V-slide. Photo by Oliver Grossman.
Here I am falling into the V as late as I could, paddle carefully tucked upstream. Upon further consideration, it was smoother to get on the pillow a bit upstream and then rocket down it.

Adam throws a brown claw of joy in the pool below V-slide. Moro Rock looks on in bemused silence from 4,000 above.
Right downstream the river snakes around a blind, fast corner, so I eddied out and was bashing through brush to scout. Ben, Darin, and a group of German? (the Brits guess based on accent) guys rolled around the corner and bombed off. One of the group was portaging, and I relayed his description of Little Niagara to our group and they ran down as well.

JB Seay boofing Little Niagara, photo by Oliver Grossman.
The drop was steeper than I had understood from the German dude, so the guys and I all had a bit of a surprise when we got to the lip. Sorry fellas, my mistake. In the big pool below the drop, we had a dozen boaters, from all over the US and Europe, hanging out. Good stuff.
More fun read and run, and one full scout got us down to (what I later found to be) the standard Hospital Rock put-in.

Martyn Sollars at the bottom of a multi-tiered slide above the traditional put-in.

Oliver Grossman in the midst of the 420 gorge. He who scouts and directs runs last. Oliver is an incredible paddler, and a great asset to any paddling mission. I cannot think of instance, in many class V days of paddling, where I have worried about that dude. Anyway, the biggest drop, and kind of the entrance exam into this gorge was a sweet boulder pile with blind moves and lots of eddy hopping. We had quite a show of traffic direction to get our group of 8 through that one.

Panoramic of part of the 420. One of our group hiked up to the road from this point, bringing us down to 7. Adam and Oliver hiding in the lower right.

Sweet Kicker Falls. We ran out of an eddy on river right, charging across the grain of the current, and then down onto the kicker.

Chris Flavin on a perfect 12' falls.

Zero to sixty.
While scouting this falls, I began to slide down the super slick, polished granite. I looked for something to grab, or a dry place to jump, but finding neither, I decided to commit to the boating line, and ran/skidded/fell down the slide, and jumped over the lip into the pool. I surfaced just in front of the river right wall, and got out on a convenient rock to examine my options.That was dumb. JB Seay feeling foolish at Zero to Sixty. Photo by Phil Higgins.
Adam tried to tow me across the current and out of the LZ, but that did not go well, and I ended up floating back into a cave (to the right of the above photo) out of breath with my elbow pads down around my fingertips, and my pants pulled completely off. I was able to chimney up the back of the cave, and a quick hand from Oliver got me back up on top so I could try the drop in my kayak.
Shortly below there, the 4 Brits wisely decided to take out at a gauging station, and sort out their shuttle up on the road. We continued downstream, passing the Marble Fork and picking our way through boulder gardens in a shallow, widened streambed. With more water, I imagine this section is great fun, but the combination of low flows, being tired, and boat breaking paranoia wore on me. I eventually hiked up to the road, getting nearly covered in burrs and the fine, talcum powdery soil of the canyon walls. I lucked into a ride back to the put-in from our new boating friends. They were on their way back from a supplies run, and took me and all my filthy gear right to Adam's car. Adam and Oliver finally made it down to the confluence just before dark fell, with mixed reviews of the last few miles of river.

I have a few more photos on my picasa account, if you are really bored.
If you know the names of any of the pictured rapids, post a comment or drop me an e-mail.
Stay tuned for day two on the Middle Kaweah.

A weeklong celebration of the Cheat River drainage. AKA "How I spent my Cheat Fest" Part One.

Woohoo rain. I considered naming this blog something with "rain" in it, because its such an integral part of the boating here. Other than a few Dam release rivers, you can't go kayaking, especially creeking, without rain. I ended up doing something else, as there were several other folks writing under banners with "rain" in them, and I didn't want to seem unoriginal. So I stole a name from an old bumper sticker instead.

Cheat Fest is always the first weekend in May, and it's almost always wet, or at least damp. After a check of Bull Run, which my optimism convinced me was running, I got the kids to the sitter (Hooray! Grandma!) and met Adam Johnson. A second opinion and a few hours of ebb led us to leave Bull Run for another day, so we left a car at the adjacent Big Sandy/Cheat takeout, then backtracked to Deckers Creek. We had about 300cfs, which is a good minimum as the gage reads these days, and then drove up the mountain to the Little Sandy.
We were joined there by Jim, from New York/Connecticut, and headed down the tributary of the Big Sandy River. It was pretty low by that point in the afternoon, but once we reached the confluence of the Big Sandy, we were on big, brown, roiling water. And we were not alone! I have never seen that many people on the Big Sandy River. Dozens and dozens of boaters were enjoying the upper stretch of my home river. Eddys crowded with groups, craning over their shoulders to look downstream, with leaders explaining the wheres and whats. Surf spots were crowded, with friends corralling errant, driverless boats. It was pretty amusing and very colorful.
The river was still at 7.1 when Adam and I passed the bridge at Rockville, and after a quick help to some swimmers, we were downstream and all alone (Jim took out at the bridge, where his ride was waiting). The Lower Sandy was great, fast moving fun. One quick portage around the entrance to Big splat, and we were soon at Jenkinsburg, and then off to Cheat Fest.

Sunday brought drizzle and chillier temps, and after a round of calls and texting, I ended up back on the Big Sandy, with hopes for an afternoon run on something smaller. Ben Dunham, Bobby Miller and I got a quick run at 6.7, and Sean Devine met us back down at the take out. We popped over to check Bull Run, and decided to put on. It was low, but it sure beat folding laundry and watching TV, which is what I would've done at home.
Ben Dunham in the first rapid. If you have ever driven into the Cheat River take out (Jenkinsburg) from river left through Masontown, this is the drop next to the old mill (which is now a house).

Bobby Miller in the wall check rapid.

Video!:

Video by Bobby Miller. Thanks man. I stalled out a little at the lip, and ended up doing a weird twisting thing off the Matador. Ben did a nice job hustling into the eddy sans paddle yes? Bobby says it right in the video: Low but Fun. I'm glad I got on, especially since it eluded me the rest of the week.
I have a few more photos in a picasaweb gallery.

Big Sandy Race

Photo by Katie Buddenberg. Thanks Katie!

Saturday, April 18, a group of usual suspects met at the take out and hashed out the 2009 Big Sandy Race. Jay Ditty was the ringleader, and Willy Witt clocked everyone in at the finish line. I served as start timer, sending racers off at one-minute intervals.
We raced from the put-in bridge at Rockville to the pool below Little Splat, roughly 1.66 miles.
The level was 5.7 ft.
This race was easy to do and fun. We should have more of these all over the place!

Special Thanks to the safety folks at Wonder Falls and Little Splat.

1. Geoff Calhoun	Greenboat	13:52
2. Matt Walker	T-slalom	14:01
3. Brian Menzies	Greenboat	14:10
4. Jay Ditty	Response c-1	14:11
5. Dave Gore	Response	15:09
6. Shawn Yingling	Vortex	15:16
7. Ed Gaker	Nomad	15:17
8. Jake Greenbaum	Nomad	15:26
9. Nori Onishi	Cerro	15:47
10. JB Seay	Burn	15:50
11. Ben Dunham	Nomad	15:55
12. Lila Thomas	Greenboat	16:12
13. Willis Phillips	Phat	16:37

After hanging out and chatting a bit, these four decided to add a 2nd leg: Above Big Splat to below First Island.

1. Geoff Calhoun	Greenboat	16:30
2. Jay Ditty	Response c-1	16:50
3. Brian Menzies	Greenboat	17:10
4. Jake Greenbaum	Nomad	18:26

Upper Blackwater Put-in Panorama

When you walk down to paddle the Upper Blackwater, near Davis, West Virginia, this is what greets you as you emerge from the trees onto the riverside boulders. ( Click for a bigger view. )



The standard start for the trip is Hundred Yard Dash, starting dead center, but everything upstream to the base of Blackwater Falls has been run at one point or another. For reference, this photo was taken at about 280 cfs. The river has been run down into the 100's, but many prefer 250-300 as a minimum level.
Maximum is user discretion, but I know of at least one recent run by Justin Venable at 750 on the Davis Gauge. Solo, no less.


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Elsey Run

The snow and ice have relented and we got warm (for February) temps, and on a weekend no less. Saturday night everything shot up, and Sunday offered lots of options. I enjoyed a lazy morning and caught up with a group who had just finished Daugherty Run, in Albright, WV. Five of us got together and headed up the mountain to paddle Elsey Run

Elsey is the steepest run in the Albright area, starting off with just a few minutes of warmup and then getting right into the goods.
Here is Art Barket getting back in the water after portaging around a log.
Note the heavy glaze of ice; we had difficult conditions for scouting and portaging drops. Slippery and cold.
From the first big scout, (which has a log in the entrance) Elsey falls out of the sky for a good half mile. There are 10 huge boulder drops, right on top of one another, with minimal eddies, logs in play, caves, rhododendron everywhere, and tough scouts and safety. You know, awesome. Sitting in bed last night, I realized I still smelled like Hemlock sap from all the scrambling amongst the trees. (*edit: looking at the map, this section falls at about 800fpm for a 1/4 mile)
JB Seay (me) enjoying the boof at the bottom of Acid Drop the first of the big ones. Photo by Art Barket.


Art in the middle of an easy one in the steeps.

For you guys who have run Elsey, the "room drop" is still diverting through the cave, with an uphill paddle to get to the old line. We skipped that one.

Sam Burk hitting up a nice slab of sandstone.


Ben Ledewitz styling the very next drop. JB Seay, Adam Johnson, and Sam Burk on safety. Art Barket behind the lens.


Me in the middle of my favorite drop on the creek. Photo by Art Barket.
This marks the bottom of the Captain Insano section.

Ben Ledewitz finishing er up. Photo by Art Barket.
Below here the creek transitions to high speed mank (description courtesy Ben Dunham) still short on eddies, and lots of logs and Rhododendron, but less stacked up. After a half mile of that, we reached the bedrock section of the creek, with half a dozen 10-25' slides all in a row.


Adam Johnson on a slide in his borrowed kinda old school creekboat. Whee.

As the canyon opens up, there is one last big one on the run, a 70 degree slide with some unfriendly guardian rocks on its right side. Sam and Ben aced that one, but with light fading we had no photo. In the classic video Fallin Down you can observe BJ Johnson and Colby Mackley running this drop with good result.
Below the Big Falls the creek is read and run all the way to the Cheat. It's a good thing, as at least one of the landowners along this section has threatened several times to shoot kayakers floating by for trespassing on his property. For this reason, we park at the Daugherty run take out just downstream on the Cheat and move fast when checking levels or finishing a run.
For more info you can check out my gallery, Art Barket's awesome set of pics and Sam Burk's post on the Team Riot site.


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