After immense concern, consternation and intense gage reading and calculations we decided to make a late Wednesday evening call to the river for a Thursday paddle. By 7:40 Thursday morning we made our go decision. We ran the Caudy’s Castle section of the Cacapon River, Edwards Run/Cold Spring, WV to WV 127 Bridge, 7.7 miles. Gary and Ginny Quam, Paul Englehart, Virginia del Rosario, John Snitzer and Tony Allred met at the takeout at 10:30. The painted gage on the Bloomery bridge read 2 feet. While we could see how high the mud came up on the boat ramp, the river appeared to be running swiftly, but comfortably within its banks. With a nice small group and several large vehicles to choose from, we got all boats and paddlers to the put in 2 vehicles. We left Mr. Sine $5/vehicle and shortly thereafter he came out to chat with us and pointed us to the high and driest place for John to park his 2 wheel drive van. The weather was just about perfect paddling weather, mostly sunny, high 60s to low 70s, with little breeze. Water level is a big question mark with the virtual gage on American Whitewater no longer calculating correctly.
Gary observed and conferred with Tony to report when we put in the level at Great Cacapon was 6.62 ft., 3800 cfs. The painted gauge on the bridge at the takeout read 2 ft. Tony’s calculated level for our run was 1743 cfs. We noted the painted gage was a couple inches lower at take out, 3:00 pm, Great Cacapon gage was 6.53 ft., 3700 cfs and Tony’s calculated level was 1700 cfs. Water temp.: high 50s.
A few observations here from John. The river is fast but not really pushy since there are not a lot of rock formations creating rapids, just gradient, bends, and cobble bars. The run-of-the-mill rapids were wave trains with waves up to 3', with bonus features like swirlies and boils and reflections off cliff faces. It is a class 2 run but a big water class 2 run. The first two ledges were big--holes and hydraulics. They looked runnable via the usual lines but we all took end runs to avoid the meat of the drops, river right, class 1. Although the second ledge had a strainer on the right bank that required some boat control to miss the branches but stay in the chute. The third ledge was not as inflated, Ginny ran the drop, others ran around the drop on river left, again, easy. We had a nice trip, with the usual number of eagles and herons, a very fresh-looking forest with one blooming Mountain Laurel bush spotted, and a variation on the stream we all know so well. We stopped for lunch river left past first ledge, opposite the cliff and before the second ledge. Tony called it the Dick Pierce memorial lunch stop.
Thanks to all who paddled. It was a lovely day with near perfect weather, a great group, and in hindsight, a really fun river level. Photo courtesy of Virginia del Rosario. Missing from photo John Snitzer.
