Posted by: Jack in White Water Rafting, West Virginia, Upper Gauley, River Guides, rafting, inflatable kayak, Guides, Gauley River, funyak, Extreme Whitewater Rafting, ducky, Adventure Vacations, ACE Adventure Resort, ACE on
Jun 13, 2009
You might already know that ACE — and only ACE — runs the Gauley River all summer long.
What you probably don’t know is that this program is run almost exclusively by women: the Gauley Girls.
The Summer Gauley is one of the most technical, demanding and difficult sections of water that are run commercially. Water flows change daily and the Summer Gauley guides have to adapt to radically different levels on every trip. Boat sizes change, too.
Once the Gauley gets down to its lowest summertime levels, we run it in duckys, 1-person inflatable kayaks.
Imagine the mighty Gauley River, Upper and Lower, with even more rocks and even steeper drops, and you’re doing it in your own boat (under the expert guidance of the Gauley Girls, of course).
Oh boy, the fun's on now!
Last weekend, 40 brand new guide wannabes showed up to train with ACE. This yearly event marks the unofficial opening of the rafting season. They pitch their tents in the snow. They show up at 8 a.m. when the temperature is around 25 degrees. We put them in wetsuits and take them out to the New River.
Talk about dedication. They must really want to become river guides.
On the river, guides are always asked, "what ever happened to ‘Five Dollar Frank?'" Well, ol' Frank has flown off to that great airport in the sky, but his spirit lives on at the Fayetteville airport.
Frank Thomas used to fly tourists on ten-minute flights over the gorge in his raggedy old Cessna 172. The "five-dollar" part quickly succumbed to inflation, but airplane rides out of Fayetteville were always popular. It seemed that, with Frank's demise, these airplane rides were over.
They were, until 2008 when folks in the area started to notice a brightly-colored "old-timey" lookin' airplane in the skies over the New River.
People sure have strange ways of having fun. Some folks stomp through the woods looking for birds. Others paddle tiny boats down raging rivers. Some even watch NASCAR races. But one of the strangest has to be watching trains. Yep. People called "railfans" travel all over the country and gather at spots where lots and lots of trains go by. I have to confess to being a railfan.
For me, it's not just the trains, it's the people, the other train-watchers. Some just sit around in a beautiful place and watch the trains go by. Many take pictures. The real fanatics keep a log of every train movement for an entire 24-hour day. Being a raft guide, I'm the type that just sits around and does nothing but chat with the folks.
One beautiful sunny day, I was sitting around in Folkston, Georgia, reveling in the 70-degree sunshine while West Virginia was getting hammered by snow. In conversation, I confessed to being a raft guide on the New and Gauley rivers. One railfan, obviously deeply involved in his sport and schooled in geography, asked if the New River was the one where the old Chesapeake & Ohio main line ran along the river through the deepest gorge in the east. I told him that it was and that, on any given raft trip, we usually spot three or four trains rolling through a gorgeous, inaccessible, rustic setting.
"Wow," says he, "I'll bet you could get some phenomenal pictures there, pictures that nobody else has ever shot."
Posted by: Jack in River Guides on
Mar 6, 2009
Hi. I'm Jack Lund, the oldest and ugliest guide on the river. As a Social Security recipient, I'm probably too old to be doing this. But I just can't stop. It's too much fun. Almost every day during the whitewater rafting season, I get to drive a rubber boat down one of the country's most beautiful and exciting whitewater runs. That's great, but the real attraction for me is meeting six or seven new people and sharing a really fun day with them. It's always new, it's always different and it's always a blast.
