Rafting with the D.C. group

So this past weekend entailed some camping in an open meadow and some White Water Rafting (via ACE Adventures) in Oak Hill, WV. The group of friends I went with included Pete (from running fame) and 5 of his friends from his bible study. If you know Pete you will know these were some interesting folks! Here is how I recall some of the weekend:



Friday night I worked late, had some pretty important things I needed to be at work for. Headed out of town around 6:30pm and arrived in Oak Hill around 8:15. I decided to drive through town knowing the D.C. gang would not arrive until later that evening (and they arrived later ;) I headed to Wal-mart to check out where all the town's action was going down. A couple things caught me off guard. First off the Wal-Mart was a normal Wal-mart. I am so used to 'Super' Wal-marts that it took me by surprise. Mainly because they have a closing hour and no real food section. Secondly I went back to check out the camping/fishing/hunting section which was HUGE, had to be 3x the normal Wal-mart section. I should not have been surprised being out in the middle of West Virginia though.

I head to ACE, set up camp and realize the mantle on my lantern is busted after unpacking the car. So what do I do? Pack the car up and head back to Wal-mart. Showed up 5min before close (10:55pm) and picked up what I needed before heading back to ACE and setting up the 6-man tent. The night grew later and I went to bed around 1am, completly exhausted from a long week of work. 3am? arrives and the D.C. group rolls in. We had a few laughs, a few more laughs and fell asleep.

Saturday was full of rafting in Duckies (inflatable kayaks) as the water level was low. This is a great first way to experiance the Gauley in my opinion. You are able to take in the scenery without having to look over or around people and can take the river at your own pace. I took plenty of pictures with the water camera and will post them when they are developed. Hope they come out! My most memorable experiance experiance came at a place called "Iron Ring", it is a class 5 and right after lunch there was a dam release so the water was a good bit higher than when we started. 400 cfs (cubic feet / second) of water to 800+ cfs makes a big difference in duckies.

I hit the first drop well, but then was caught on a rather large boulder (called Woodstock). I leaned into the rock and was making progress until I got the craft about half-way into the next falls. At that point my duckie went sideways end-over-end and I was tossed like a rag doll underneath of it. The reason why this was memorable is not because of the falling out but rather because of my body being scraped along (the rounded and thus no scrapes/scratches) rock and while my feet were down (a no no when thrown from a boat, but I was too disoriented to do anything about it) my right foot got caught in a hole. Though very briefly, I felt a large stick and rocks all around. My Sandal got trapped and because only the front of my foot got trapped it ripped the front strap off of my foot. It was pretty disturbing since the front strap was tightened well. Just glad my whole foot was not swallowed into the hole, that would not have been pretty.

That night we had dinner at a good NC style BBQ and Rib joint and had our picture taken with the owners! The service was great and the food perfect after a day on the river. The trip home was a quick 2 hours and I took a nap upon returning. I'm not real sore, but the muscles are pretty tired today.

So there was the weekend, looking forward to Gauley Season and another trip September 25th!