Rollin’ On The River

Adventure On The New River Is Full Of Thrills And Spills

BRIDLE CREEK, Va. – That rock jutted out of the rapids like an iceberg, awaiting the Titanic. And, no matter how I hollered, I knew there would be no avoiding it.
Destiny finds us – in the mountains, in the wilderness and especially on a river, plowing forth in a canoe.
I thought of how the Indians crafted these creations from logs, trying to brave wild waters in search of game. I also thought of my 76-year-old father, who grew up in boats on the James River at Rescue, Va.
And once, on a weekend 10 years ago, Dad was more worried about me floating down a river in a canoe than taking flight in a hot-air balloon.
Such thoughts clamped my concentration in the face of disaster. And, oh, I could see this mess coming – this wreck on a rock.
I said something about it to Maggie Caudill, my 18-year-old niece, commanding the stern.
But I should have known it was no avail, as time froze and the flashbacks flowed.

HEAR THE HOLLERS
All the characters I had met along the New River – all the pre-paddle preparations I had made for this voyage – slipped onto the shoreline of my mind.
In my peripheral vision, I could see canoes passing. But so, it seemed, also went the days of my life – going back nearly 20 years, to about the time I was Maggie’s age, floating in an inner-tube across the New River rapids of McCoy Falls.
Then, I was a college student at Radford University, about 100 miles north of Bristol, and the New River was a cool escape from the concrete of campus.
For a split second, I could also hear the hollers of Shawn Hash, teaching me to fish for smallmouth bass at McCoy Falls in late spring; and there was Paul Moody, steering an inflatable pontoon past the river’s towering Eggleston cliffs.
I had met both river guides in Giles County, Va., earlier this year, just as the water temperature warmed.
I could see myself, too, coursing a kayak down the headwaters of the New River in North Carolina – no sign of danger on a sultry day in June.
And now?
Our canoe teeter-tottered on that rock and then turned slightly sideways.
Maggie hollered something from the stern. But, for the life of me, I chose to only holler back – words of panic.

SPLASH OF DISASTER
Since she was 14, Maggie has tagged along with me on small boats. We’ve paddled across all the local lakes of Bristol and Washington County: Clear Creek, Hidden Valley, South Holston.
We’ve been great students of nautical navigation.
So I figured – easy – we can do this. There would be no trouble joining a group at Hungry Mother State Park in Marion, Va., and taking off on a half-day journey to the New River in nearby Grayson County on a Tuesday in August.
We would be shuttled to the river by the park staff, and then we would sail away – with trained guides.
Only, I didn’t figure Maggie – a recent graduate of Abingdon High School – had developed a more independent nature since we last went boating together a couple of summers ago.
That, coupled with my failure to trust her instincts, must have led to that rock.
We slammed our Hungry Mother State Park canoe, “HM-7,” into that foot-high obstruction, and then we leaned to the left.
WHOOSH!
Water rolled over my leg like a barrel of rain, tipped and pouring. I fell out. My feet landed on the river’s rocky bottom.
Still, I clinged to that canoe, trying not to lose my camera in the canoe’s dry-bag, the cooler with the sandwiches – and, of course, my beloved niece.
In the splash of disaster, time made me wonder: Why? Why have I been able to climb in and out of boats for 30 years and never fall out – until now?
On this Tuesday, I had meant to be the leader, taking on the unexpected. Yet, from my place in the bow, I was only the scout. Maggie was the captain, steering us from the stern.
And so I stood in the roar of this rapid.
Oh, how Hash and Moody, those river guides from Giles County, would have been so disappointed.

RIFFLES OF THE RIVER
Rolling into Pembroke, Va., a few weeks ago, dozens of miles downstream from Bridle Creek, I viewed the bearded Moody like a river sage. He had talked about his childhood in the 1960s – when the New River was polluted and not appetizing for any day’s adventure.
Once, Moody said, people were simply afraid to go near the New River.
Cutting an arch across Southwest Virginia, the New River runs backwards, flowing from south to north, springing forth in North Carolina and emptying at West Virginia. This waterway passes near the Virginia villages of Fries, Austinville, Mouth of Wilson and Foster Falls. Some say, too, it’s among the oldest rivers in the world.
In Giles County, the 55-year-old Moody took me on a tour and showed off the towering, 200-foot-high cliffs of Eggleston. Then, after lunch, we bubbled across the Class II rapids near Pembroke and landed at New River’s Edge, Moody’s rental retreat.
The following day in May, on a separate trip with Tangent Outfitters, Hash seemed much more animated. And clearly more focused on fish.
A couple of times, while I held my fishing rod near McCoy Falls, I could hear the frizzy-haired Hash howling at me from the other side of his inflatable pontoon: “STAB IT! STAB IT! STAB IT!”
Taking that cue, I gave another yank on my line and reeled in another whopper. But, under state guidelines, my smallmouth bass was the wrong size to keep.
So – PLOP! – what might have been dinner went back in the river, just like that 30-inch-long muskie snagged by Hash, 41, the owner of Tangent Outfitters.
On yet another excursion, a few weeks later in June, I kayaked a section of the North Fork of the New River at Grassy Creek, just off the banks of the River House, a bed-and-breakfast in Ashe County, N.C.
That day, I became one with the soft riffles of the river.
“Our whole deal is, it’s so easy,” said the River House’s general manager, Sherman Lyle, who rents the operation’s kayaks and canoes. “You don’t even have to paddle.”

ZIGZAG
But now, at the bow of our canoe, I hardly paddled on my Hungry Mother State Park river trip with Maggie. She paddled. And, every time I tried, it just seemed to turn us the wrong way.
Prior to our wreck, we had watched others in our group scoot down the river in their canoes, mostly in a straight line. But we would often zigzag, going from the left bank to the right and back again.
Then came that rock, that crash and all that water.
Standing in the river, I summoned every bit of bionic strength I could muster to hold our canoe upright. Maggie shouted for me to get back in. But I shouted back, saying I was trying to ease the canoe around and point it downstream.
Then, huffing a bit, Maggie hobbled forward and took a seat in the bow. I climbed back aboard and captured the stern – the driver’s chair.
In a matter of minutes, we caught up to the others – resting at a swimming hole.
For part of this half-hour break, Hungry Mother State Park park ranger Geoff Hall scooted his canoe upriver to the rocky rapids where we had wrecked, and he tested his luck with a fishing pole.
In another half-hour, our river journey was over. Maggie and I would roll through the Class II rapids called “The Devil’s Dice” and then land at the Bridle Creek ramp.
But the rapids we wrecked on?
“I find that one more challenging,” Hall said. “It’s hard to read.”
Officially, that is a Class I rapid. “And you have to maneuver through it,” said Candace Edwards, an interpreter at Hungry Mother State Park.
But, does it have a name?
Hall grinned and said, “I call it ‘Aggravating.’ ”
Smiling, both Maggie and I could agree.

YOU SHOULD KNOW
Hungry Mother State Park: Marion, Va. Offers guided tours of the New River in Grayson County. (276) 781-7400.
New River’s Edge: Pembroke Va. Offers New River tours and cabin rental. (540) 599-8382.
River House: Grassy Creek, N.C. Offers overnight accommodations, gourmet meals and canoe/kayak rentals on the North Fork of the New River. (336) 982-2109.
Tangent Outfitters: Pembroke, Va. Offers tours of New River and canoe rentals. (540) 626-4567.