Category: Whitewater Rafting
The Moans and Shrieks of Semi-Frozen Trainees And Other Stories
Guide one day and you’ve got a story to tell. Read on for guide tales from the river, trail, zipline, and fishing boat.
Continue Reading
Three Authors, Three Picks: River, Rock, Trail
Three New River Gorge area authors pick their favorite routes, runs, and trails in the NRG
Continue Reading
Pushing the Envelope
Local whitewater SUP paddlers are shredding Big Wave and showing their sport what river surfing is all about.
Continue Reading
Catch That Gauley Glow
Novice or pro, in deep blue sky or pea-soup fog, everyone earns their bliss on this beauty of a river.
Continue Reading
Broken Rose
The following is an excerpt from Jay Young’s Whitewater Rafting on West Virginia’s New & Gauley Rivers: Come on In, the Water’s Weird, published in 2011 by The History Press. The bateau Rose of Nelson was in trouble. Broached as she was against the rocks in the middle of a Class-IV rapid called Dudley’s Dip in […]
Continue Reading
Drop Me In the Water
Swimming holes, whitewater runs, float trips, park and play, lake cruising: Take your pick to cool off in the heat of summer. 1. Classic Run: Paddling the Lower New Deep in the New River Gorge careening down the chute above the big hole at Hook 99 rapid, my wife yelled: “Paddle hard!” Her frantic tone […]
Continue Reading
Bicentennial Bateau
On May 23, 2022, a National Geographic Young Explorers–sponsored expedition passed its crux in the New River Gorge. Begun on April 5 of this year, the Marshall Expedition—six young explorers, two with whitewater expertise—retraced a route taken by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall 200 years ago from Richmond, Virginia, to Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. […]
Continue Reading
A Day in the Life of a Whitewater Raft Guide
6:00am Brian Healy, a 26-year-old raft guide from Fort Thomas, Kentucky, wakes up in a buddy’s hammock. He’s at at ACE Adventure Center in Minden, West Virginia, deep in the Appalachain Mountains near a well known whitewater section of the New River. Healy doesn’t actually live at the rafting company. He has a tent about […]
Continue Reading
The Gauley River Back in the Day
Back before it was called Gauley Season, there were no roads into the river, so you hiked. You didn’t know the names of the rapids, so you asked the rare boater you ran into. And when someone said point your boat straight downstream, you took their advice. Until you learned better. In the mid […]
Continue Reading