Moormans River Adventure

Plan for the day: meet at 10:30am, check river levels (since its rained a TON in the past couple days) to see what fun creeks are running, pick one, and GO.

Actual events of the day: I slept through three alarms and six missed calls, having been up late working on a paper, and finally opened my eyes circa 11am. John's 9am meeting didn't finish until 11:30. Multiple logistical snafus later, and after about 45 minutes of debating which river to run (Hardware is above some people's heads, Balcony is too far away, Tye dropped too low just too early, Conway is a little too far away and not enough is known about it, Bullpasture is too high and too far, etc), we decide on the Moorman's River, just west of Charlottesville. The crew assembled plans to meet Dave at the put-in, but then snafu number 30 of the day occurs, and directions get mixed up. We finally put on the river at 3:10pm.

And we had a FANTASTIC run. Beautiful day, great group of people, really fun little river to explore. (personal first D also...and it felt great to get on something new after running the LJ and Balcony about a hundred times this year).

Here are a couple pictures to evidence the fun of the day:

Group shot from behind


Dave surfing a fun little wave

Davis on the same wave

John surfing

Me seal launching off a cool rock

and landing waaaay too flat.

Attempt number two didn't hurt quite so much.

John preparing to launch

launching!

This day was the best day I could have asked for to have as my last day on the water in Virginia until the fall. I couldn't be happier. :-)

Soggy Springtime Fun

It's official. We had about two days of sun all spring. And its still raining. Which is PERFECT kayaking weather. Maury, Lower James, Balcony Falls on the James have all been run multiple times, and all were great days on the water, with one sobering exception: at the end of my one run down Goshen Pass, we found out that there had been a fatality earlier in the day right above the rapid Devil's Kitchen. Our thoughts and prayers have been with the family and friends of Mercer Oast. God Bless. Needless to say, it was very sobering to find out while on the river, and was a potent reminder of the power of the river.

Here's a selection of photos taken this spring:

Lila and me jumping off Jump Rock at Balcony Falls

Outdoors Club Officers Pic at Balcony Falls

Bob running Balcony (I wont mention that hit the hole and swam)

me filming at Pipeline in Richmond

Ryan smiling for the camera in Pipeline

John G in Pipeline
ditto

John T in Pipeline

and again


Ryan

Group shot! (Lower James in Richmond)

Meghan seal launching at Balcony
Dave
Dave finding his mystery move!

Bob, me, Kelsey at Balcony

John T styling Corner Rapid on the Maury (and nicely helping me with my portage by transporting my boat)

John T in Devil's Kitchen on the Maury

John and Brad unpinning Bob's boat

All in all, its been a great spring on the water. I've got one more run in planned for Thursday, and then its off to Costa Rica to study Spanish for five weeks! Sadly though, I wont see a kayak until July when I get to Jackson Hole, where I'll be working for Rendevous River Sports/Jackson Hole Kayak School and the Teton Raptor Center...both of which should be a blast.

Global Warming has its perks

Saturday was a beautiful day in Virginia, 65 F and sunny, so my friend John and I went down to the Lower James in Richmond for a couple of laps on this short, fun run. Here are some photo highlights:

Me in Hollywood (taken by mtwash125 on flickr.com)

Same (taken by mtwash125 on flickr.com)

Same (taken by mtwash125 on flickr.com)

Me on the second drop of Pipeline (taken by John)

John surfing in Pipeline

John surfing deep in Pipeline

John seal launching into the canal in between Brown's Island and the city. We parked at Belle Isle and so had to walk back up from below Pipeline, and decided to paddle part of the way in the canal.

Overall, we had an incredible day. We got two laps in, and on the second one, I nailed Hollywood. I had never run it so cleanly--such a sweet feeling!

Indian Summer II: Rapidan River

The Rapidan River is a mountain stream in the Shenandoah Mtns of Virginia, and is one of my favorite places to fish. I haven't been up there since last fall, and so was stoked to get up there again last Friday! I went up with my dad, and we had beautiful weather. The fishing was great as well, I caught about a dozen Brookies on little Copper Johns, Royal Wulffs, and a little tan and gray unknown dry fly I found in my box. A couple of the really little ones, including the first fish I caught below, earned their wings when I set the hook a little aggressively and pulled them out of the water!

This is the second fish I caught, right after I released him

Same fish, different shot

My dad stalking the 'monster' Brookies

A nice 6" Brookie

The view downstream from one pool, the fall foliage colors were spectacular.

An older, bigger Brookie I caught

The inside of that fish's mouth was black, which we think is normal coloration for older fish during spawning season.

The same fish again, this shot showing the supposedly-normal black coloration on his belly. I've contacted the VA DGIF about it.

My dad

Rivers have always had a special, indescribable, powerful effect on me. There's just something about being out on the water that makes everything else fall away. All that matters is the moment I'm living in right then, whether its a cast to a rising fish, dropping into a rapid I've run many times, or one I've never run. The lens through which I view the world changes entirely--having my fly rod, or the bow of my boat and my paddle in between me and the river changes everything. It's a beautiful thing.

Indian Summer I: James River trip

Last Sunday was a beautiful day, one of the last warm ones of the fall. I hadn't been kayaking in way too long (midterms tend to get in the way of outdoor fun), and was really craving it, so to celebrate one of the days perfect fall days, I ran the Upper and Lower James with the UVA Outdoors Club. The river was pretty low, about 3.5 ft., but that level has unfortunately been the standard this fall. We had a great day out overall, with very little carnage considering we had a first-timer and couple of second-timers on the Lower. Bob swam in Hollywood, but I running safety and it worked out no problem. He didn't have enough speed coming off the tongue and couldn't get left fast enough, and so ended up getting pinned on Washing Machine rock. He swam immediately and caught the rope I threw to him. Matt got his paddle, but Bob's boat ended getting pinned at the bottom of Hollywood. I walked back up, ran Hollywood, and pulled his boat free. Right below Hollywood, I was leading and found a fun, really narrow slot line...everyone but Matt made it through smoothly.
He ended up getting flipped on a pinning rock about halfway through, and was unable to roll because it was so shallow. He ended up with some scuffed up hands, but nothing major. Beth swam surfing at Pipeline, but recovered her boat and pride quickly. Overall we had an awesome day! I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked, but here's a few:

Matt gracefully entering the river.

The view upstream from Pony Pasture. What a beautiful day!

Bob enjoying the day.

Home

I'm back in the states, finally. I got back in the end of July, and the rest of my summer was a whirlwind of seeing parents, family, and friends, and getting ready for school to start up. The past month has somehow been even crazier with school, etc. I have managed to get some paddling in, the NRG and Gauley in WV and the James in Richmond a couple of times. Here's a picture of the spectacular sunset we saw one evening in Richmond:


UVA is a little deficient in quantity of intermediate-advanced paddlers, so one of my goals for the year is to get a core group of people moving into class III stuff by the spring...i.e. I want more people to paddle with! So I've been leading / helping lead some beginner kayaking trips through Outdoors at UVA, my school's outdoors club.

We've had very little water this fall, except for one big rainy weekend when a hurricane came through, so hopefully as we move into October and the cooler months, the water will come and more stuff will start running well! Pray for rain...

Speechless

I've been hearing whispers and rumors of a place called "Cave Stream" somewhere in the vicinity of Castle Hill since I arrived in Christchurch. Nothing concrete: no directions to its locations, no detailed descriptions of what exactly it was, just vague accounts and knowing looks shared between those who had been there.

Then I found out that the Dalai Lama has described Castle Hill as a "spiritual center of the universe." My fate was sealed...I had to find this place.

So, the day before semester break began, Cara and I went up to Castle Hill to search for the cave...it turned out not to be so hard to find, only taking us one wrong turn and about 20 min to discover. Grabbing our headlamps on the way out of the car, we scrambled down a hill, and were quickly granted our first siting of what lay ahead. The entrance to the cave (actually the exit point of the stream):Just inside the cave:After standing in awe of this massive hole in the ground and the crystal clear (and cold!) water trickling out of it for a few minutes, I started to venture in. I quickly ran out of rock to stand on, and began wading through the water. Ankle deep became chest deep in a matter of seconds, the shock nearly taking my breath away. I turned around laughing, and Cara's face was one of shock. She wasn't too sure about continuing into the cave if it was that deep already, but I eventually persuaded her to come in. Teeth chattering a little bit, we started wading up stream, and luckily for us it quickly subsided back to about mid-calf deep. With nothing but darkness ahead, I paused to look back towards from where we came:
This cave is indescribable. The stream winds its way through limestone mini-caverns, over little drops (the biggest one by the exit was about 1.5m tall), and was joined midway by trickle of a waterfall:
The stream has gradually carved pockets and ridges and a myriad of unnameable formations in the limestone, here are a few:I was going first and Cara second through most of the journey. Talking afterwards, we confessed that we both had worst-case "what-if" scenarios running through our minds the whole time. She was afraid one of us would get hurt (sprain an ankle, etc), while I struggled to control visions of walls of water rushing around a bend in the stream and overtaking us. That's one of the crazy things about caving...the dark combined with the one entrance, one exit thing makes your imagination run wild. All of our fears were just that though...imagined. It would take a torrential downpour for the cave to flood and if one of us were to get hurt, the cave is not actually that long...it only took us an hour or so to travel the length.

I could sit in front of my computer for literally days and try to make up words to describe this whole experience...the cold water that eventually felt soft because my legs were numb, the crazy rock formations, the two or three random bright red rocks, the eel I saw in one of the pools, the 'stars' on the ceiling that were actually just tiny droplets of water, stopping and turning our lights off to sit in the total darkness halfway through, Cara reaching out to touch me to make sure I was still there, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, having Cara close her eyes before leading her around the corner and asking her to open her eyes and see the light, standing in the last final pool in total awe before climbing the ladder out, reaching the top of the ladder and shimming our way across a narrow ledge looking down into the pool from which we came:
But instead I'm simply Speechless.