Russell Fork, part DOS

Last weekend marked my third consecutive weekend of paddling class V water. While many people dislike and fear the Russell fork gorge, over the last two weeks I have found myself every comfortable running it. This last weekend I meet Alex and his dad for one last run before the release season stops. The trip started off with me driving the whole 9 hour drive by myself.

 Alex was in West Virginia so his dad went to pick him up for fall break and then headed over to meet me. The plan was to meet at breaks Interstate Park, which I rolled in around 1:30am. As I drove in I spooked a black bear about 50 yards from the campground. This was the first Black bear I have seen while on a kayaking trip. As I lay in my sleeping bag, all I could think was what a great start to a trip.

The next morning we woke up and headed to the lodge for breakfast. With the US wild water trials going on the releases were starting at 7am, which allowed us to get on the river at an early time. This was Alex’s first time down the gorge, and with no other boaters around it was just the two of us heading down. We scouted tower and triple drop before we ran into some other guys. Alex ran the hairy ferry, while I walked it (I’ve done it before and feel the risk, if you were to mess up, isn’t worth it). I ran fairly clean lines until triple drop where I went over the third drop backwards. After triple drop we meet up with Kevin and Scott, too other kayakers who helped us down the river.

Next was El Herando, I thought I had a good line but at the bottom of the drop I got flipped. While upside down I heard my shoulder pop, after missing my roll, I finally popped up. I’m not sure what happened but my shoulder really hurt, and there was a sharp pain. Being only half way down the gorge, I had to continue through the pain. Needless to say the rest of my run was not the greatest. Once at the take out I decided it would be best not to run another lap so Steve and I went to set up camp while Alex ran another lap.

The next morning I was in enormous pain while lying in my sleeping bag. I was about to tell Alex I wasn’t going to boat but I decided I didn’t drive 9hrs to hang out in the woods. My run on Sunday was amazing. I focused really hard on all my lines and ran the gorge the cleanest I have ran it yet. Overall a great trip, I didn’t take any video as I was focusing more on guiding Alex down. I did get a nice time lapse of the clouds over the gorge. Here is the video. Enjoy until the next adventure.