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...