My First Time Shredding the Gauley

My First Time Shredding the Gauley

By Dennis Huntley

a Carolina Paddler article

∞ It was years ago. I can’t exactly remember the year, but vividly remember the day. It was the Saturday of Gauley Fest in West Virginia and I was there to paddle the Upper Gauley. I had paddled the Upper many times and knew the river about as well as anyone. I had been to all the Gauley Fests, from the very first small festival.

I was camping and must have come with members of Carolina Canoe Club, because Joe Berry was there along with others. In the early days of the Club, Joe’s father was a frequent paddling partner of mine. I normally paddled an open canoe or C-1 here.  I was planning to paddle the open canoe that day to prepare for the Upper Gauley race the following Monday, an event I always did in my open boat. This day was different though.

Joe Berry walked up and said his cousin wanted to paddle with me. Normally I would have avoided a situation like this, paddling difficult water with someone I didn’t know well, but since it was Joe and his cousin, I told him to tell her okay.  I had been introduced to her and the Shredder earlier in the year at the Upper Ocoee. We were all getting ready to go down to the put-in and this little, gray-haired lady, Ann Somers, appeared and asked if I was ready to show her down the Upper Gauley in her Shredder. The only thing back then called a Shredder was the original black Airtight Shredder made by Tom Love in Ohiopyle. We probably needed to be Shredder experts for this run, but Ann was boldly up for it so I caught her enthusiasm.

Ann and I pumped up the black thing and put on, along with the usual hundreds of boaters. We didn’t have anyone paddling as a safety boater. I looked around for some of the club members to paddle with us but they had stayed up late and decided to go to the Lower Gauley instead. I wasn’t worried because I knew many of the people at the put-in and they would be around us, if not specifically watching out for us.

Ann and I made the perfect pair. Ann never over-powered my paddling. She paddled well and strong when needed as I talked continuously about lines and where to direct the raft. We made our way down through the first rapids, never missing the desired lines more than a few inches. I was thinking we were doing so well, things were a little too comfortable. I needed to make things more interesting for Ann, meaning… to introduce a little anxiety-producing situation.

When we got to Pillow Rock rapid, I told her we had better scout it, as this was a big one. We got out on river left and made our way down toward the big rock that forms the pillow. If you know anything about Gauley Fest Day, you know this place is a zoo. Hundreds of boaters lined the left bank of the rapid scouting and partying. A loud, crazy crowd was packed on the top of Pillow Rock, dressed in every wild thing you can imagine. We had to stand on another rock behind people to see the paddlers. We watched folks go down the left side of the rapid and I asked Ann if we should go there. Then I pointed to folks taking the middle line, asking her what she thought about that approach. We watched rafts take the right line at the top and asked, “What do you think, Ann?” Seeing this huge rapid for the first time, Ann had no idea.

A group of young women with carbon fiber canoe paddles were standing in front of us, obviously an experienced raft group training for Monday’s race.  I tapped one on the shoulder and they all turned around looking at me and Ann. I asked, “You all mind if we follow you down this big rapid?” I knew it was trouble as soon as they all shot big grins at us, looking again at Ann’s and my gray hair, and responded, “Heck no, come on, let’s do it!”

We rock-hopped back to our boats and jumped in. Ann and I followed them over to the traditional top right staging eddy for rafts. As we lined up at the top of the rapid, the women stood, dropped pants and starting mooning us. I cannot attest to what I said at this point. I try to be a nice guy most of the time.

The young women removed whatever else they had on their bottoms and tossed  it all in the bottom of their raft. I remember wondering if they had a dry bag to put their pants in. Ann and I were shocked, to say the least. I did the only thing I could think of as appropriate at the time–get out my camera and start taking pictures. Ann calmly asked me to consider putting my camera down and paddling.  As we neared the rapid she started hollering at me, “Put that damn camera away and start paddling!” I did as told and we followed the women closely through Pillow Rock Rapid, right on their asses, so to speak. The crowd erupted. With hundreds of paddlers on the left bank and probably a thousand more on the right bank, the noise was deafening. We all had a perfect line, with the raft team doing the obligatory slapping of paddles on the rock as they passed.

We liked their lines so much at Pillow that we decided to follow them closely down the rest of the river. We did scout Iron Ring and after a perfect run of it, we caught up with our bare-bottomed leaders. At every rapid people were smiling, just having the most fun. When we got to Sweet’s Falls, the on-lookers dwarfed the crowd we’d seen at Pillow Rock. There must have been a couple of thousand spectators, having a big time – picnicking, drinking beer, and giving blood-curdling yells when someone ran a bad line, flipping or ending up in the dead end slot on the left side of Postage Due Rock. When the raft women stood up and went over the drop, the crowd went completely nuts. All perfect lines again.

We continue to follow their raft all the way to the traditional take-out (before the Woods Ferry take-out was developed.)  The raft paddlers got naked in the parking lot to dry off and put on clothes for the shuttle. Ah, to be young. I knew this needed to stay in our memory and no where else so I pulled out my camera and deleted all the day’s photos.

I had a great time with Ann, paddling her Shredder on the Gauley for the first time. I thought it was amazing Ann put that much trust in me, having never been on something as hard as the Gauley. I resolved to have a Shredder of my own. An old paddling friend of mine, Doug Worful, had broken his neck taking a header on his mountain bike. He regained some use of his arms, so I suggested that we get a Shredder and go paddling. Tom Love made one for us not too long after that.

We bought a small frame for the shredder and bolted a high-backed drag-racing bucket seat to it, adding a five-point racing harness to go with it. It was rigged so Doug could release the harness quickly if he flipped. I put oar rights on the oars so they would stay in position. Doug wore a glove with a ring that fit loosely over the oar to keep his hand from sliding off.

Doug would drive to the water’s edge in his electric wheelchair, slide across a plank to the bucket seat and we would strap him in. Then with a few others to help we would pick up the whole thing and toss it in the water with Doug in it.  You might consider this dangerous, and it was. We worried he would flip, break his neck, and drown.

To test the rig, I had him row out in the pond above the Ocoee put-in, outfitted with life jacket and helmet and strapped in tight, with me seated on one pontoon.  Using the fliplines, I turned him upside down. He was out of the harness and beside the Shredder, floating, before I could get under it and check on him. Our fears eased a little. For me, the most dangerous part was getting into his electric wheelchair, driving it up to the ramp and locking it in the driver’s position in his van. Then I had to nervously drive the hands-controlled van to the takeout and hitch back to the put-in, where Doug was patiently waiting.

Doug paddled with us in that contraption for a couple of years before dying of pancreatic cancer. It was very sad. I think paddling with us gave Doug a new lease on life. We had a big, fun party every time we paddled with Doug, eating out together after each run.

One autumn a few years later, I took the Shredder, oar-rigged, down the Grand Canyon for 23 days on a private trip with friends. As usual, the Airtight gave me perfect lines all the way down. I still have the black Shredder and often loan it out. I also have a RMR Phat Cat with oar rig, a gift from my friends at American Whitewater.

I have a another footnote to this story that involves Ann. I was at the Charlotte Whitewater Center and, to my delight, Ann and Joe showed up. Ann had her Shredder with her and wanted me to paddle with her. I readily agreed. Again, she put a lot of trust in me and I am ashamed to admit that I abused her trust a little.

On one lap down the Wilderness channel, I looked at her and asked what she thought might happen if we paddled backward at M-Wave, an especially big breaking wave hole (not a keeper hole.) She professed she didn’t know so I suggested we try it and see. We slowed down to almost a stand still as we approached the wave. The big back wash of the wave stopped us abruptly, and shot the Shredder straight up in the air with such velocity that it just kept going up and over until it did a complete 360-degree flip and landed upright. Naturally, we were both thrown and swimming in the warm water at the Center. I jumped in the raft and pulled Ann in. We continued to paddle all the channels until we were worn out. Maybe Ann will be a bit more circumspect about paddling with me in the future but we sure had fun.

Editor’s note: We hope you’ll enjoy the entire Gauley Trilogy.

Carolina Paddler’s Gauley Trilogy

Birth of a Shredder  by Alton Chewning

How a missing part created a new type of boat.

My First Time Shredding the Gauley By Dennis Huntley

The Upper Gauley was a good test run for Dennis, Ann and a Shredder.

Gauley Grandeur  By Ann Berry Somers

Balls, bottoms and a black boat. The Gauley delivers.