Saturday, several of my church buddies and I ran the Upper Gauley through Hurricane Ian’s rain in a private raft. The water was 58ºF. The air was 49ºF. The mist rising off the water and around each fold of the gorge made it feel like we were paddling through a scene from Jurassic Park. None of us wore GoPros. But it wasn’t just scenic. We got to pound and paddle our way through some wild water.
Pillow Rock was the only rapid where I chickened out and grabbed the safety strap instead of obediently paddling until told to stop. And of course Pillow Rock was the only rapid where a photographer was stationed during our entire run.
The rapids of Pillow Rock drop you 30 vertical feet, and at least a third of those feet came in the two seconds before this photos was taken.
If you’ve ever heard a friend talk about a “hole” in a river, this is what they were describing.
Coming out of the hole at the base of House Rock in the Pillow Rock rapids, you have to climb a wave. From outside the hole, it looks like the river is regurgitating you after eating your whole raft and its contents. If you hit this hole correctly—and thankfully we did—it’s actually a smoother experience than you might imagine looking at this picture. When you get it right (and we often don’t), it feels like a cool water ride at a theme park.
We made it through all but Sweets Falls, the last rapid on the Upper Gauley, without flipping. And we flipped only because of a last-second diversion to avoid a raft that had gotten stuck in our path. Thankfully, it was a relatively-calm section to “swim,” especially compared to the gnarly rapids we’d navigated earlier. We told our paddler who was new to the Upper Gauley, “If you’re going to flip on the Upper, that’s where you want to do it.”
