submitted by Shane Groves

The Mountain State has its fair share of put ins and take outs. But there can be only one that is higher than all the others. That put in happens to be at a beaver pond inside a high mountain bowl surrounded by lush forest off the Scenic Highway. It resides in the tip top headwaters of the Gauley on the Right Fork of Tea Creek. I have wanted to paddle the Right Fork into the main fork for a while. I was finally able to catch it during Hurricane Ida in the late summer of 2021.

Josh Collins and Jeff Prior went against their best judgement and decided to join me in the Headwaters of the Gauley to probe some high water runs. We had no idea what to expect. When a scattering of storms rolls through after months of summer low water conditions, who knows what is running. The headwater higher elevations seem to catch more moisture, so I talked them into trying for the Cranberry or maybe the NF Cherry. I even talked them into using the Antix instead of their creek boats so we could have more fun on the high water class III.

We parked my truck at my camp on the Top Gauley planning to paddle a couple dozen miles down to it no matter what we did. We first saw what the rivers were doing when we crossed the Cherry coming into Richwood. We saw a wall of water coming down. My stomach dropped. Josh and Jeff had actually been mtn biking at Tea Creek the previous weekend so trying to catch the Right Fork was on Josh’s mind. We made the call to just go for it. I have walked it several times and didn’t think there was too much wood or too many difficult rapids standing in our way .
We parked at the Tea Creek trail head and hiked our boats through the high mtn field and into the forest along the trail. We quickly came to a reasonable put in on a beaver pond at 4175 feet above sea level making it the highest in the state!

The first few hundred yards felt a lot like the beginning of Otter Creek. Currents through meadows with flowers as we scooted over beaver dams. It didn’t take long till the wood appeared. Portaging wasn’t difficult because the forest at that elevation was clean of under brush and laurel. The creek was at a perfect level! The first clean rapids were tight, fun boofs. However this lead into a micro gorge with trees throughout and we had to portage. This pattern continued throughout the run as we picked up volume and gradient.

We got some nice boofs and overall had an amazing time. A few pieces of wood made some long sections of class v unrunnable. We still caught some nice slides and rapids despite the wood, and saw some epic flow coming into the pristine forest. The highlight was running a series of slides into the main fork which continued with slides and class v.
If we had time we could have hiked up the Left Fork and rode it down almost as far. We continued hiking out of sweet boulder drops with prime flow because of that one piece of wood that could be a problem, and we were in the Antix. The Antix was pretty fun in there and made portaging much easier with much less weight and length to worry about. But half slice creeking is always a roll of the dice. We beat the living snot out of the boats and were happy we didn’t break one!

We ended at Tea Creek Campground where it dumps into the Williams. The shuttle for the creek is the easiest shuttle in the state by far. The Scenic Highway goes straight to the top of the mountain from the campground to the put in. But my truck was dozens of miles downstream on the Gauley! We started hiking, hoping to see someone and luckily we did! It was the only car out there the entire evening. Some nice ladies just out driving to look at the high water gave us a ride up and completed our epic high water adventure. We got back to my truck to find the water a few feet from my tires, rising over 10,000 cfs since dropping it off that morning.

I definitely want to get in there again, and hope for less wood next time. It was a manageable micro creek that packs a punch. I would recommend it to any creek boater that happens to find themselves in the Gauley Headwaters during a high water event. It’s definitely the highest put in WV has to offer.