Clay’s ‘Heavenly’ Weeks in West Virginia

April 3, 2005

What a great 2 weeks! I’ve been in Fayetteville coaching
HUGE experience’s ‘Spring Break’ sessions and not only met a lot of nice
young boaters, but also had tons of great big water boating to boot.

Started off on the New – at 6′ and 7′. The water rose
so we did Middle Meadow and Koontz Bend – at 1,200 and 4500. Dries opened
up so we ran that too – at 18, 24, 27, 30, 45, 50, and 60 THOUSAND cfs!
Nice way to learn kayaking eh? The Dries is surely one of the top playboating
runs in the world and we managed to catch it at different levels day after
day after day! We did river running / group skills, signals on Meadow,
creek boating skill on Mill Creek (including ‘waterfall-running 101 on
Mill’s 20’er), and of course big-water playboating everywhere else. 115
lb kids can catch a lot of air at the Laurel Creek put-in wave at 60g.
. . .and they get tosses around pretty good in Mile Long at 45g. Ours
all came out smiling.

Anyway – wrapping up my session with 2 runs on Mill
Creek today and will finish the trip on Mann’s tomorrow unless there is
too much snow. Yup – from 70 degrees to 3” of white stuff in a day. .
. Spring in WV is unpredictable, but this time we nailed 2 sweet weeks
of heavenly whitewater. Headed home and hoping for more rain down South.

Clay Wright