New River Whitewater Adventure: Rafting in West Virginia

By: Dale Gaarenstroom

We left Uncle Phil's house in Charleston (my dad's brother) early with Phil, Amanda, Amy, Steve, Nancy, and me, Dale. Eric was old enough (7), but didn't want to go. It was a long drive on US 60, on roads that went up and down, left and right. It was a long time, 1 and a fourth hours to be exact, but eventually, we made it to Mountain River Tours in Hico, WV. We signed some forms, had to get some equipment, a life jacket, helmet, paddles, (which my dad and I and most other people didn't need), but we left soon. We were in the bus, when the trailer hitch popped off the ball. The trailer with rafts and boats was still attached, but hardly. We stopped and got it fixed a little. So we were cautious. When we arrived at the put-in, we went and visited a historic museum and ghostown called Thurmond. The museum was located in a old train station. It was interesting, (*yet I thought it was a little boring*). We left there and went back to the put- in. On the way to Thurmond and on the way back, we walked over a bridge that we could see down through to the river. We saw some duckies (they're air inflated canoes) and rafts go over some rapids (shown in the 2nd picture). We got to the New River put-in. The duckies and raft were already inflated. We left........

.......Now that we were on our way, we stopped again, only about 5 min. from leaving, and before we encountered any heart pounding, adrenaline rushing, rapids. We ate. We had lunch meat and lemonade and other snacks. We put our boats back into the water. The water was not that cold, actually, it was kind of warm, which went well with the hot and humid air. We had went rafting last year, but we've never gone on the part of the river we were doing today. We encountered the first rapids. Jody, (our excellent tour guide along with Sue and Bridget, who were also as excellent), was going to take who ever wanted to on the WiLd rIdE!!!!. Bridget, took who-ever on the mild ride. My dad and I (we were in a duckie) took the wild ride. It was fun. The waves were three feet high. That part of the rapid was called Thurmond Ripple. We encountered more rapids. We got to Jump Rock. It was fun. There was a large rock in the middle of a calm part of the river. We jumped off. It was cool because when you jumped off, you went plunging into the water. You went down about 2 feet over your head, (that is if you jumped right) and then popped out of the water because of your life jacket. When we were done, my dad and I got in the large raft which Sue was paddling. Phil and Amanda went in the duckie. We went on some rapids, we got to Fire-Creek Pool. We jumped in and went swimming. We were trying to flip over the duckie. My dad and I got back in the duckie. We were coming up to "Surprise", a class 3 rapids. We went on the WiLd rIdE!! We were coming up to it. It didn't look so bad, until we got closer. IT WAS HUGE!!!!! When we hit it, our boat flipped over. We stuck our feet downstream in front of us and floated out of the rapids. It was fun. Jody said she has a videotape of 75 duckies going into Surprise. Only 3 didn't flip. My advice to you, go as fast into it and straight on. We later encountered more small rapids, then we ended at the Cunard take-out. So over all, it was pretty fun. Mostly getting flipped over.