NRR Saturday Report Quickie - Details later

[Rock Magnet]

Dry hair until Double Z.
Bad swim @ Double Z and foot entrapment.
Gather up and run on down good until Undercut
Went under Undercut with boat and all.
Gathered everything up and finished right side up.

[slo2rol]

Anxiously waiting for the detailed report...

[Nutter]

what the hell??? How do you have a foot entrapment, and go through an undercut in the same run and live to tell about it?? Maybe Kayaking is not for you, You need to get a roll, or you are going to die on the river.

[Rock Magnet]

Roll is there but not perfected yet; it worked today at upper railroad. Ran great today. Will give the more details on Saturday's good and bad when i get home. After today kayaking is definitely for me. I will give a full report about yesterday and today when i get home.

Lower Kenney Saturday http://www.leisuresportsphoto.com/mp_cl ... _7879t.jpg

[Max K]

I made my PFD on the New River Gorge Yesterday (9/4). No unintentional swims to report.
Led Dad through Lower Keeney, even though it was hard to see (pictures below).
He did alright, even though finishing backwards.

Led Mom through today (9/5) in the raft. She at least made it though going forward!

"Rock Magnet" I will give a full report about yesterday and today when i get home.

I thought you did pretty good Pete!

[Rock Magnet]

Sunday's Run http://www.leisuresportsphoto.com/mp_cl ... _8636t.jpg

Report to come tomorrow. i am going to catch up on my sleep. Awesome weekend to say the least

[Wallace]

Pete rocked the gorge both days. A little better leadership may have gotten him thru Double Z and Undercut in good shape on Saturday. Just look at the run he had on Sunday as proof. Looking good, Pedro! Just keep your feet up when you swim

[Mango]

Thanks to all (Steph, Shanon, Wallace, Gromit, Justin, Brian and others, sorry not great with names)
who helped us get the rafts ready on Sunday. I know how kayakers love rafts. But we do come in handy every once in a while.
Thanks, Ken for setting the trip up, sorry we headed out early on Sunday and didn't get to see ya'll. Thought ya'll might be sleeping in
and didn't want to disturb......
Big THANKS to Gail (and JR) for shuttling the MangoVan back down to the bottom both days. That was really great!
If anyone has pictures of the maiden voyage of Mangles II, could you drop me a line. We didn't get any good ones.
Good times with friends.
Happy daze,
Mango

[Giggles]

A big Thank you to all for making this weekend Awesome!
Helping with the raft, Shredder and Max, we couldn't have had such a smooth day with out you.
Max had 2 great days. He was quite sad today not to be out on the river. He moped around all day
Gail thanks for shuttling the Mango van 2 days in a row. It was so nice to have dry clothes at the bottom in our own vechile.
Congrats Pete on 2 great runs on the Gorge.
Thanks Terri, now time for a new paddle.

[tolyho]

Wow Pete! Glad your cool and hankerin' to get back in the kiddie pool!

Mangles and Max; sorry to not catch up on the river Sunday but the extra hour of sleep was much needed after a looong day on the road. PFD on the Gorge would've been a dry hair day with out some surfing/rolling involved. After I nailed a sweet surf/ferry on Good to the Last Drop from river Left eddy to the rock wall I was headed back on a lower line getting tangled with a canoe(my fault) and window shading.. made my roll on a eddy line and tried to feather to stay up but to no avail. Pushed over a rock so I punched out... only had to get in the boat to ferry across to the take out. Oh the shame! Monday was a blast! Surprise flipped me so I tucked and held until it was less turbulent and rolled up. Good to the last drop handed me another window shade on a ferry but I timed the roll perfect with the waves and knocked it out deciding to call it a day.

Perfect weather, great company and awesome water yielded one of my favorite weekends to date! Thanks to Lee and Alicia for showing Mark and myself some lines, the Coastals group for sharing their camp fire and birthday cake and MarkT for letting me sleep all the way back to Charlottesville! Trip report to follow.

[Shannon]

sharing their camp fire and birthday cake

Dang...missed the birthday cake. Other than that I had a great time on the Gorge Saturday and Sunday.

Highlights were many: Peter's great attitude both days, paddling the flats with Max swimming along for fun, paddling and hanging out with friends, the spontaneous cheering and singing happy birthday for Ken at the mexican place in Fayetteville, Mango with bunny ears in the ladies room, margeritta pitchers at happy hour with 5 minutes to spare, great weather, sleeping in the trunk of my car, and paddling great water with friends.

Thanks again to the Birthday boy for loosely organising the fun, and to Wade, Sejal, and Max for shuttles in the Mango Van. Sorry I missed paddling with you all Moday...but it was nice to be home for a day.

[GinnyN]

thanks to all - esp. our raft driver Extraordinaire on my 2nd gorge trip! 3 days - 3 great river sections. wonderful birthday cakes, thank you. the 2nd's for breakfast hit the spot. what a great group.

[Big Mike]

Great paddling with the coastals crowd as always, and congrats to everyone who made PFD's

So I tried something different this weekend: borrowed Peter L's superfun (too big for him, about right for me for playability I guess) and FIRED UP THE NRG!

This is going to be a long one with some carnage and suspense towards the end of Day 1, but a happy ending, so grab a beer

SATURDAY:

Made my putin test rolls on both sides, and proceeded on down. Had a flip early on at Lower Railroad and rolled up and began thinking that this could turn into a long day with this boat, but kept my hair dry for a while afterwards.
My Saturday Keeney pictures are here.

So somewhere around Lower Keeneys our supergroup of like 30 got broken up a bit for lunch - some apparently headed down to the beach on RL for lunch, the raft pulled off at "The Stadium" on RL below Lollygag, Justin and I hung around at Lollygag for a while practicing stern squirts (had the superfun vertical for about 8 seconds, fun stuff!)

So after we got tired of that, joined up with the raft, had a quick lunch and headed on down - We now had a group of 4 hard boaters (Myself, Justin, Nicholas from DC/Monocacy, and Matt) and were trailing the raft, I don't think Matt's on here to defend himself, so I'll tell on him

So it wasn't too long before carnage ensued starting with the unnamed rapid that is between Hook 99 and Greyhound.. I took some random line down the right of that rapid skirted some hole, and Matt followed me but pretty much went into the hole sideways, after he was spit out of the hole he missed 2 roll attempts, and even though I was right there for a T he came out of his boat. We picked up his pieces above greyhound, and proceeded on down to Upper Kaymoor.

At Upper Kaymoor, I told everyone about the horizontal slot between the rocks, and told Matt it's a challenge by choice move and to take the left or right side otherwise, so he elected to be a good sport and give it a shot . I think Justin made the move, Matt didn't quite get into the slot, flipped probably got dragged along the bottom and came out of his boat pretty quick so we picked up the pieces again and kept heading down.

At lower kaymoor we took the left side, I told everyone about the smear at the bottom, and they all followed me. Turned out there wasnt quite enough water for the smear in the usual spot and theres another pointy rock there thats usually covered which screwed up my launch , so I flipped and rolled up. Probably for the better - everyone else pretty much just ended up running down the chute further left and it was uneventful.

Moving on to Millers Folly or "Undercut rock" as some of yall call it, I gave the usual speach about the rock being undercut etc. So I ran the first little dip and, immediately turned and faced up stream to watch Matt, looked like he entered slightly right of where I did and flipped on the first drop and drifted towards the rock, and I said OH SH*T and I then ended up getting flipped myself somewhere in the middle of the rapid while watching him, by the time I rolled up Matt was out of his boat and drifting towards me (was actually relieved to see he was clear of the rock and swimming).
He later claimed that he braced off the rock with his hands and managed to stay clear of going under it before coming out of his boat.

So I helped get Matt to shore and in the meantime, his boat had fallen behind and was with Justin (couldn't see that far up, not sure what was going on) But anyways, eventualy Matt's boat (a necky without float bags ) got pinned on a rock above what I think is called "invisible rock" And so began our recovery effort.
Justin and Nicholas met me at the botom of Millers Folly, and we hatched a plan that I would paddle/hike up to the pinned boat and ferry across with Justin's rope and attach it to Matt's pinned boat.
The plan got off to a good start untill the rope ran out about 8 feet short of the pinned boat. So while in my boat, I grabbed onto the bow of the boat, and slowly managed to get it free, and began trying to guide it down the rapid. Didn't get too far before the boat decided to drift and got pinned on another rock.

I caught the small eddy behind that rock (which was about exactly the size of the superfun). It was taking a whole lot of effort to stay in that eddy, and meanwhile Justin kept trying to throw the rope out to me to hook onto the boat. And for whatever reason, it kept coming up short
So while he was repacking his rope to give it another shot I was attempting to get out of my boat onto the rock that Matt's boat was pinned on. It was becoming obvious that I would not be able to step out of the boat and onto the rock and still be able to keep the superfun from floating away.
Ended up getting a hand on the opposite side of the rock, and pulling myself up onto the rock on my stomach while still in the boat (an amuzing site if anyone out there got a picture Having my torso entirerly on the rock I was trying to roll the boat under me to sit up and wasn't having too much luck. Eventually the skirt poped itself off and the superfun started to come off of me. I held onto it with my foot and ultimately got myself, and the superfun up onto the rock, which had just enough water splashing over it where it could have lifted and floated the superfun away at any time, one or 2 private rafts came by but no one stopped.
So meanwhile while Justin and I were debating what to do next, a late day Songer raft came by and offered assistance. I managed to drag the pinned boat up onto the rock, emptied the water out and put it on the raft, which then took it down to the botom of the rapid. THANKS SONGER GUIDE

So lesson's learned at Millers Folly: I'm taking newbies way the hell left next time so that they can't drift anywhere near the undercut, and I may stop telling people its undercut and just say its unfriendly - as this seems to produce a tractor beam or tunnel vision effect that freaks people out and pulls them toward it as they forget to paddle

SUNDAY:

Meanwhile - saturday night I exchanged some 20 texts with Mark T and convinced him that sleeping in is lame, and he needs to drag his sorry butt up to the NRG early so that he can run on Sunday and Monday, or better yet 2 runs on Sunday!

While tempted to do an Upper Gauley ELF run for variety, opted to try the Double NRG run, and made plans to paddle with Dave Stephens and Sawyers crew.
So my plan was to run the Superfun on Run 1, and Remix on Run 2.
At the putin, met up with 3 Canadians who were looking to bum a shuttle, I advised them that we were planning to do 2 runs and at the very least we can probably get their driver back, so they came along.

The supergroup was once again present at the putin - but the express group eventually broke off, and was comprised of Matt (now running in a liquid logic boat with float bags), the 3 Canadians (Joel, Dylan, Mike), Dave's raft, and another Dave (in a ducky).
(That Mark T guy changed his mind on going for 2 runs and bailed on us hanging back with the big group )

We moved at a relatively quick pace, everyone stayed in their boats through the Keeneys (My pics here), I jumped out at Lower Keeney to grab some video, and we got all the way to double Z before there was any carnage, and Dave came out of the ducky. I got to him for assistance, and he rode out the bottom half of double Z straddled between the superfun and the ducky.
Can't remember which rapid it was but Matt flipped, missed 2 roll attempts and finally heeded my advice to hang out for a T and I got him up, good run for him otherwise.
The 3 canadian guys stayed in their boats all day.

Unfortunately the run took longer than expected and some of the group got tired etc, so while there was plenty of time for it, Run 2 never happened, so we settled for running fayette station again and playing in it for a while.

[gromit]

I had a great weekend. Fun company, paddling and food.

[Mango]

Mango with bunny ears in the ladies room, margeritta pitchers at happy hour with 5 minutes to spare.

What happens at the Gorge..........................