“Stay to the right and you’ll be fiiiinnnnneeeee…….” says the raft guide to Akhil, Mike, and Matt. A river guide for more than twenty years he wears at least a week and half’s growth of whiskers as comfortably as he does the old t-shirt, ripped shorts, and beat up sandals that he has used to float down the ‘New’ river at least a couple of dozen times. This river is dangerous not because of the amount or speed of the water but because of the softness of rock. As the current has raced by over the last couple of hundred years it has created small cutouts in the rocks below the river. These are big enough however, to pin a full grown man and drown him. So when the Big John – that is our guide’s name – says to stay to right we do!..
The Gnu River in West Virginia is claimed to be one of the oldest on the continent and ACE Adventures has been guiding trips down the river for decades. Ace is a an outdoor destination high in the mountains that has offerings ranging from rock climbing to river rafting, and provides camp grounds or fully appointed cabins for guests. Their compound serves as a base for all of the tours they give but also has a decent sized man mad lake filled with toys such as a 3 story water slide, zip lines, water trampolines, paddle boats, kayaks, and a large blob used to launch people in the air.
Several months ago while looking at a very cold and ugly site from out of the windows at my clients sit in Dayton Ohio Mike, Akhil, and myself hatched a plan to get a little R&R. The original plan was South America. Well that was a bit too ambitious. Next it became Florida. Then possibly Vegas, and finally Mike came up with the crazy idea to go river rafting. What a great idea. It was settled. In all honesty he did most of the work and research; including making the reservations and pushing us to decide a date. And I’m glad he did. It was an unbelievable trip.
Some how I lucked out and Avis gave me a free upgrade the week we were going camping. They gave me a brand new Dodge Durango! It was perfect a good sized SUV to take into the mountains. It’s a good thing they did to because we had way to much crap to fit into a normal sedan. The back seat would have been full and Akhil would have to ride on the roof (only because he smokes other wise we could have taken turns). Luckily this wasn’t necessary we got a big truck. So we packed it up Thursday afternoon and hit the road.
The road trip up was fun, though in all honesty the two hours on two lane highways was a pain. We did stop a couple of times and we were hooting and hollering so loud we didn’t even notice the radio only played static for hours! So after getting lost in Beckley West Virginia for 40 minutes or so we found the hotel and got about 5 hours of sleep.
The next day we had rock climbing at 8am and needed to be on site by 7am so we needed to leave about 6:30 in the morning. Believe it or not Akhil was up. Normally we’re lucky to see him at 8am but some how he managed. We all had the gear on that was recommend to go caving. After getting to ACE and having break fast we found the meeting point, got our gear, signed our waivers, and loaded up the van. Some how Akhil slept from the hotel to ACE, then from ACE to the cave, and again from the Cave to ACE! I can normally sleep in strange circumstances but this guy has it on me!
The cave was a lot of fun. A river ran through it so it was incredibly humid. On top of that it was in the 90s and even though the cave was under ground it was hot and sticky. So for several hours we followed our guide and squeezed through tight spots, crawled across ledges, and were blinded several times by one of our counter parts! Man some guys just can’t listen to instructions. I had brought a polar fleece and by the time I left I wish I hadn’t it was hot. I must have sweated a gallon or more running around in that cave. It was cool though, not so for the amazing formation underground (there weren’t that many), or the crazy graffiti on the walls(not everywhere but in a few places, but for the various obstacles and ever changing rooms. By the time we left the cave we were quite tired and glad to be back at the top of the hill and out from under ground.
The rest of the day we didn’t do much except swim, eat, and drink. We did try to launch each other off of the blob in the ACE lake but never had a lot of success. It took us a long time to figure out how to even climb on the thing. I have to admit it is embarrassing when you are struggling to climb this inflatable amusement object and 5, 6 , and 7 years olds are climbing up with no problem! More embarrassing even because it took us that long to figure out there was a rope step to help you! Once we found this getting up wasn’t much of a problem. The next big challenge was the blob it self. If you jumped on it feet first you slid off (again we were shown up by little kids). Then when Mike tried to launch Akhil, Akhil went straight up and land back on the blob launching Michael off! Unbelievable we had so much trouble – and as much fun – with a big kids toy.
After swimming for a while we went back to camp and changed, then headed to dinner and spent the rest of the night at the bar. Why not? We were just going to go white water rafting the next day. That night we didn’t get a lot of sleep. Part of it was from being at the bar to bar close, part of it was that the tent was way to small for 3 guys –props to Mikey for sleeping in the truck-, and part of it was because the neighbors were so noisy. They didn’t even quite down when Akhil threatened to come over and show ‘em a thing or two! Even though I don’t think he was getting up for anything. The biggest result of that’s escapes though was being slightly hung over at 7am the next day when we went rafting.
Rafting – The whole point of the Trip. After getting up early, getting some grub, loading our gear, and riding on a bus to the launch point we were introduced to our guide. Big John. Big John was probably 6’ 2” and had some heft to him, not fat mostly muscle from guiding a raft through rapids all summer. Big John looked, smiled, and had an accent a little like Matthew McConaughey. Of course Big John talked more like a sailor, told dirty jokes, and had been banned from guiding church and school groups down the river! Big John was also a veteran rafter of more than a decade, maybe even two, and new the river very, very well. He also liked to have fun at other people’s expense. Big John had also gained control of a special boat. It was shorter and skinnier than the normal 6 person boat, but longer and fatter than the 4. I also had relatively small tubes for more performance in the rapids, though this also made it much less stable. Really he was the perfect guide with the perfect boat for us!
Now Akhil had also doomed us to some degree. During our caving experience he didn’t always listen so well – something he did during rafting a lot too – and blinded the guide several times. She actually had already talked to Big John about us. If that wasn’t enough when we were asked what kind of a ride we would like he told Big John that he “wanted to go swimming”, even if he was scared of snakes swimming around in the water – what a Pony. So our trip was going to be eventful. The first thing we did was sacrifice ourselves to the river gods. There was a large rock formation just a few feet down river from the launch so Big John pulled the raft up to it and said it was better to go in voluntarily. So we did. It didn’t help; we still didn’t stay in the boat the whole trip.
Rivers always have fun names for the rapids. The ones on this river are called things like nose bleed, cartwheel, Surprise, Big Baloney, Pin Ball, Lost Lunch, Piece of Cake, Hip Kick, Double Z, and so on (See Map Below). Most of the rapids were 3s, 4s, and 5s, not because they had a lot of water but more because they were dangerous due to the cutouts mentioned above. Rapids are graded either on the amount of water or the danger they present. Most of the rapids on this river were pretty dangerous because of the nature of the rock formations. No one on the trip was hurt however. Just a little shaken up. We were tossed from the boat two or three times. The first time was our guide warming us up for the river and intentionally turning the boat into an ejector seat. So we were the only raft to loose people at that particular rapid. I only fell out one more time but the other guys I think fell out 2 more times each… Though one time might have been voluntary for Michael.
The second time I fell out was the first time we tried to surf. Surfing is a ton of fun. What happens is you try to enter the rapid from behind or the side facing the oncoming water. If all works correctly the raft slides into the hole created by the water rushing over the rock and surfs over the water as it goes through that whole. You basically stay in the rapid until you want to leave, someone kicks you out going through in another raft, or the guide gets tired of keeping the raft in place. The first time we tried this maneuver I look over and watched Michael and Akhil slide out of the raft. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Then I looked over and the guide had been tossed out as well! So I stopped trying to stay in the raft and was tossed. I held onto the paddle so hard through the rapid that it bent, it was also a wild enough ride that the supports in my helmet broke! Most of the people in the other boats were amazed at the end of the trip that we had a wild enough ride to break a helmet and paddle.
We did finally successfully surf later on the trip. In fact at first we were the only raft to get into the hole successfully. Then we were in there for as long as 15 minutes at a time. We spent as much time surfing as all the other boats combined. We certainly lucked out with our guide. He let air out of the raft in just the right way, moved weight around, and had us all move back in the raft – it also probably helped that we were in the special raft. We did have to save a few people that fell out of their boats a few times. It was a ton of fun. We even did some stunts with the raft where we walked it across the face of the rock.
The one other event of the trip was our guide being himself again. Toward the end of the trip he set up bid time. We started heading toward what he said were very dangerous rapids. While we floated toward them he told us some stupid story and kept point toward shore off to the right of the boat. He pretended to not notice how close we were getting to the rapid. Then he got really excited and said to paddle one way, then another, then another, and we missed the route we were supposed to use. Also I need to mention that earlier when he was telling us commands – yes it seems he had been setting us up for a while – he said that if he ever yelled oh Sh(ir)t to hold on as tight as possible we were in for a ride. So as we went through the rapid he yelled “oh sh(ir)t!” and jumped into the middle of the boat. That certain freaked all of us out and he just started busting out laphing. He had really played us well even his nephew (the 4th rider in the boat) didn’t know he was full of it!
That pretty much covers our fantastic ride down the river. We then drank beers and road the bus back to camp, went out for the best BBQ around, picked up some liquor, and relaxed the rest of the night. The next day we slept in, then drove to see a really big bridge, had a 3 hour breakfast (due to the slowest service ever!), and drove back to Dayton. It was easily on of the best trips I have ever been on and we plan some sort of repeat performances again. Hopefully Soon.
