An intrepid crew of 11 Thursdayists eagerly jumped on the first clear day after a week of rain to paddle Smokehole Canyon. That's the South Branch of the Potomac south of Petersburg, WV, US 220 Bridge to Big Bend Campground. Paddlers were Mark Brenneman, Len Rice, Bruce Campbell, Gary Steinberg, Ken Cohen, Peter Ryan, and Sergey Grinkrug (K-1), Virginia Del Rosario (packraft), and Chris Kelly, Dave Duncan, and your humble coordinator (OC-1).
Your coordinator was particularly humble after having watched ever-changing rain forecasts and gages for several days, hoping for that elusive Goldilocks day. Come Thursday morning my original target, Passage Creek, was too low, having been OK the day before; ditto, Moorefield; and Hopeville Canyon and Seneca Rocks to Head of Hopeville were too high (becoming OK, as it turns out, the day after). This is why the coordinator's job description warns volunteers to be prepared for angst. And here I thought, when I signed up for May 28, given the dry weather we'd been experiencing, that mine would be a simple choice among Little Falls, Little Falls, or Little Falls.
Actually, we had stopped en route at the Lost River in Wardensville, hoping that it might be an option with less of a drive, only to find it running at 3 feet, triple what we'd hoped for. None of us was tempted, and it was on to Moorefield we went, making it quite a long day. We learned, by the way, why the Lost was so named, as several of the group got lost trying to get there.
The level was 2.81 feet when we started at about 1:00pm, deemed low runnable by AW but deemed not particularly low or scrapy by us. All paddlers had good runs through tricky, Class III Landslide; our packrafter was especially elegant. The river is then Class II (mostly) and III (a couple rapids, lots of fun) down to a low-water bridge at the 5-mile mark. Three opted to take out there, and we had set shuttle accordingly. The rest paddled the remaining 5 miles, which the coordinator deceptively had billed as being 4 miles but accurately had described as being scenic and mostly flat. Those doing the shorter haul missed an exciting pin in a rocky Class II stretch. Persistent efforts by two paddlers, the affected one and the last of the group who fortunately was still behind, dislodged the boat while the others, ahead and out of sight, wondered mightily what the delay was. (Way too long for a bathroom break.) Moral of the story—always good to have the next paddler behind you within sight, even in relatively mild whitewater.
A special treat for the long haulers was a closeup view of a remarkably large eagle who posed on a tree limb and then slowly took flight.
The Big Bend takeout hit me, as always, with the disorienting sensation that the river is flowing the wrong way in relation to where the road had been during our trip. Looking closely at a map, something I have to do afterwards every time, explains that the bend that gives the takeout its name causes the river briefly to flow south, contrary to its mostly northward trajectory.
Notwithstanding a 7:30am start that day, I waltzed into my Takoma Park home that night after 11:00pm, tired but pleased to have made lemonade out of the post-rain lemon options of mostly too high or too low.
--Larry Lempert