September/October 2013 - Bluegrass Wildwater Association

in places you've been many times before. I feel gratefuland fortunate right now.AliDitto that. As I have said many times, Heaven's Gatesrapid is the one that really beefs up as the water levelgoes up on the Lower Gauley. That one and the hole atthe bottom of Canyon Doors in the right channel.Glad you're okay. Let's sit down and have a beer soon soI can hear the minute details. One thing I feel pretty sureof. Both Jeff and Joe probably ran left of the big gate rockon SundayHanley LollerAli, Very glad to hear you are OK.Was the rock you got sucked under the huge one on theleft side of the ginormous hole at the bottom (The heavensgate)? or was it one downstream of that?Chris HOk, I'll give my account of the situation from my perspective.I was off work Monday, which I needed for recoveryfrom a very fun weekend.We let the raft go down heavens gate first. As I wascatching the eddy on river left, just to the front left of thegate rock, I saw the grey bottom of the raft shoot up fromthe hole on the right side of the gate rock. I knew thatthey were all swimming because the raft appeared to becompletely upside down. I was the first down, so I quicklyproceeded to the eddy behind the left gate rock. I startedcounting heads. I saw three swimmers below, and did notsee the fourth. I couldn't identify the swimmers becauseof the shadow river left and I was in the sun. I noticed itlooked like someone was under the raft or in the waterjust below the left side of the raft because there was apaddle blade sticking up in the air just to the left of theraft. The raft and paddle blade washed up on a rock thatwas basically completely under water that was 30 yardsdown stream of the left gate rock and a little river left. Itdidn't look like much, but you could see the water pillowingup and swirling. The next thing I saw was the Paddleblade looked like it got stuck and did a quick violentshudder and then disappeared. I was slowly going towardthe raft that had washed over the boil to the right sideand kept going down. I was following waiting for someoneto pop out from under the raft because that is whereI thought they were hiding and riding it out. Next thingI see is Ali emerge about 20 feet to the right of the raft,you can't mistake that pink helmet with the spikey Mohawk,and of course the first thing I said was are you OK.To which it was hard to hear what she was saying, but Ipicked up that she went through the cave and thoughtshe was going to die. Well I'm pretty thick sometimes,but I picked up that she was in no condition to swim andjust instructed her to grab the back of my boat and gentlykick to keep her feet up and told her that we were ok andthat I was going to get her into the first eddy we couldfind. I didn't know what to say, and learned over the yearsto keep my mouth shut in situations were I typically willsay something stupid or inappropriate. Anyway, after afew minutes and hugs, Ali was back. In the raft and downriver everyone went. It was something I wish to not experienceagain.20Jeff KChris, I don't think the left side of the Gate would be aproblem if you swam there. The hole besides the rock iswhat gets nasty at higher levels and most of the currentfeed into a big rock jumble just left of center maybe 50yards downstream. I would assume any rock in the currentis undercut on the Gauley, but this one also has acrack between the rocks that siphons from right to leftthrough the rock. I've paddled through it a lower levels,but it high water, it isn't where I would want to swim.Larry CableI just reviewed the video of Heavens Help You rapid onthe Gauley River Rapids website. The rocks we are talkingabout are at video markers 55 seconds to about 1minute in the video. The announcer even mentions swimmingright of the rocks. Well at the elevated flows, thoserocks are not visible and that is what Ali swam under andthrough. I will have to make sure and review this after arun at normal flows to make sure this is correct.Jeff KI can't find any good video or photos of the rocks downstreamof the gates or any other information on incidentsthere. I guess it's just not an issue at normal flows. AsI said above it didn't look like much sticking out of thewater. It felt like a crevasse because I could feel rock oneither side of me as I went through it. Most of the rockmust have been submerged since I wasn't anywhere nearvisible rock when I surfaced.