Written by: Bobby “The Dogg” Miller
The Lower Meadow has a reputation for being one of the most dangerous runs in West Virginia. The rocks on this river have been weathered down over the years, creating severe undercuts and siphons. At 125 feet/mile, there are plenty of steeper runs out there but you will be hard pressed to find a river with more caves and traps. The run is a constant maze of boulders blocking your view and the rapids feature complex moves with precise lines. There is no room for relaxation on this run, even many of the eddies that appear calm empty out underneath the next boulder pile.
Masked behind the Lower Meadow’s intimidating reputation, lies a run that is extremely fun and features some really great rapids. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure! Really? Is it? However, this reputation keeps many capable paddlers away and it can be sometimes difficult to find a crew to run it with. On my first time down back in 2000, I grew tired of the warnings and cautiousness of other paddlers and completed the run solo. Armed with nothing but my kayak, gear, and a break dancing mat, I had a tremendously focused and spiritual day taking the road less traveled. That day was one of the best days paddling I’ve ever had and the Lower Meadow will always have a special place in my heart.
American Whitewater Article from 2001: The Road Less Traveled by Bobby “Zone Dogg” Miller
Ok, enough sappy reminiscing about days gone by. My apologies, sometimes I get a little emotional. Winter was approaching in the Mid-Atlantic and there was nice weather in the forecast. I was stoked to get in one last kayaking adventure before ski season. The Lower Meadow was running at a nice level and the day brought 70 degree temps. Adam Rettig and I had no choice but to take advantage of this prime opportunity. Plans were set and we headed to the Summersville area to meet up with Matt Sloan for a sweet day of creeking. It was a 4 hour drive each way for Adam and I but the Meadow is oh so worth it. A day spent on the Meadow is priceless, even if it did cost us a pretty penny in gas. What does that even mean? What is so pretty about a penny anyway?!?!
https://vimeo.com/56669819
I needed to get out of town and clear my head after being recently shunned by the kayaking community. In an effort to get more votes for Rider of the Year competition (the Heisman trophy of kayaking), I made up a story of about the tragic loss of a fictitious girlfriend in a car accident. I told everyone that I dedicated each paddling trip to her memory or some crap like that. Eventually, the press found out that the story wasn’t true and I had to back pedal into more lies about how I was the victim to save face. However, the damage was done, and I was banned from the competition by the committee. But I digress.
We decided since the day was so beautiful that we would go a few extra miles by running the Middle Meadow as a warmup and then continuing down the Gauley past the normal takeout to Woods Ferry. This set up a sweet 18-19 miles of SIK Class 3-5 whitewater! A run of this length and magnitude requires determination and conditioning, both traits that the Dogg exhibits. I’m not afraid to go out into nature and have a battle! These hands don’t soak in Ivory all day!
Things got off to a rough start when Matt forgot his helmet. I told him that he would have no choice but to run the river sans helmet. He balked at this idea but I told him that he needed to take off his skirt, cancel his manicure, grow a mustache, and harden the F up! Well, actually we went all the way back to Fayetteville to get his helmet and lost close to an hour of daylight. This definitely created a tricky scenario for having enough time to complete the run. We decided that we could still make it if we kept a good pace so we stuck with our plan. I noticed a short cut road on the map and we took what we thought was the road. Soon, the pavement had turned to gravel and then the gravel ended at a farmer’s field. Whoever marked that as a county road should be pistol whipped! What are my tax dollars paying for anyway?! Well, they pay for everything! Policemen, trees, sunshine! And let’s not forget the folks who just don’t feel like working, God bless ’em! We eventually found the correct road and made our way to the putin near the town of Nallen. I looked around and admired the wonderful situation I was in. Who had it better than us that day? NO ONE! The trip began with a beautiful 5 mile paddle full of Class 3-4 rapids and gorgeous scenery. Soon, we were in sight of the Rt. 19 bridge that marked the start of the Lower Meadow, one of the most fun runs in the entire state!
Heading downstream, I was confident in the success of our run. After all, I was paddling the Fluid Bazooka, the best creek boat on the market, made even better by the fact that I touched it! The first rapid is Rites of Passage and features a fun drop with a curler to punch to avoid an undercut on the left. We blasted through this rapid with no problems and continued downstream through lots of fun rapids before getting out to scout Hells Gate. Because the run was on the medium low side, the normal line down the right had some exposed rocks next to some sieves so we opted for the left line that leads to a sweet boof into a pocket. I launched a SIKy! Oh Yesh!
Soon, we arrived at Brink of Disaster, which unfortunately was choked with logs. That was unfortunate because Brink is one of the best rapids on the run. Those logs didn’t do P-Turkey for my day! We walked around this rapid and used this opportunity to scout out the next rapid, Comin Home Sweet Jesus. This rapid is extremely dangerous and has a ton of sieves and a monstrous cave on the right. I know what you are thinking, this rapid is too dangerous, Dogg. Don’t do it! Don’t worry, reader, as your paddling hero, I won’t let you down, unlike some people from these parts. You see, the WVU Mountaineer football team made it to the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, only to be embarrassed in a 38-14 loss to Syracuse. It’s true! It’s true! I ran down the left side to avoid the sieve. This line took me over a few cool boofs and into an eddy next to a table top boulder with a toilet bowl sieve going under it. I carefully stepped out onto the rock and slid my boat over to drop back into the main channel. I dropped in and negotiated the twisty drop that ended in a sizeable hole. I hit the hole with full head of steam and blasted through. Huh? How can a head be made of steam? That doesn’t make any sense!
Matt and I headed downstream to Sieve City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. What? Who says stuff like that?!?! I flew through the approach curler and lined up the left boof, launching a HUGE SIKY to avoid the boulder just downstream. Oh yeah! That boof alone was worth my ancestors’ journey across the Atlantic! They could hear me land that loud BOOF! all the way at Summersville Dam! The Army Corps of Engineers evacuated the surrounding towns because they thought the sound was the dam getting ready to blow! I know what you are thinking, “Is that really how it happened, Dogg? Do you expect me to believe that?” I assure you that everything written in this article is just how it happened on that day. In a world where Tour de France winners hide doping practices to build their business empires, you need a solid and real hero to believe in. I am just that hero. Please send $4.95 to the Doggystyle fund and you will receive a dogg bone shaped pin that all the cool kids are wearing these days.
Heading downstream, we were met by a seemingly endless series of boulder drops with tons of fun moves and sweet boofs, with plenty of ugly undercuts mixed in. Let’s Make A Deal contains a heavy rapid that ends in pile of boulders with several slots to choose from. We ran the middle slot dropping cleanly into a pool below.
Soon, I hopped out to look at First Island, which contains a sweet boof on the left that drops you into a folding ledge drop. I launch a nice one and landed in the fold before going deep off the second ledge. It is an exciting ride through there. Matt came through and aced it but Adam got screwed up in the fold, flipped, and washed into a rock pile. He ended up going for a swim but luckily, there was a decent sized pool at the bottom to recover his boat. Adam, on the other hand, was not ok. He suffered a severe hangnail in his left pinky finger and was contemplating walking out. Luckily, I talked him into toughing it out and continuing on the run.
We continued downstream through more sweet rapids and arrived at Second Island, which features a sweet boof in the middle of river. I scouted and was so stoked about the boof that I forgot to tell Matt and Adam about the rock in the landing if you boofed too high. The both launched a little further up the rock than I did and landed solid clappers under their seat on the rock. It rattled a few fillings loose but they were otherwise ok.
The final major rapid is Double Undercut. It has an awesome launching kicker with a precise line between a horseshoe hole and an undercut on the left. Upon landing, you then need to head hard left to avoid a massive undercut on the right. You can be sure that I brought out the picture perfect boof stroke on this prime opportunity for air time! After launching a big’un and slipping past the undercut at the bottom of the rapid, I smiled like a monkey with a new banana! Oh yeah!
Once through here, we booked down the last few miles of easy water on the Meadow to the confluence with the Gauley. The Lower Meadow throws out one last treat just above the confluence. On the left side of an island, there is a large sloping drop into an exploding pile of boulders. The key is to drive hard through the left slot and blast through. It is a SIK way to end an awesome run.
We headed out on the Gauley knowing that we had limited daylight and probably 8 miles to go. I knew the odds were against us but, like Billy Joel, I was keeping the faith! The flow was noticeably higher than fall release and the waves were definitely getting really big as we headed through Lost Paddle (where, as you know, NO ONE can hear you scream!). The first three drops of the rapid were really fun with huge waves. I entered the fourth drop and noticed that it contained a much larger hole than normal. I skirted the right side of it and headed for the mail slot. I took a quick look back at Adam and saw that he had missed his line and was dropping right into the meat of the hole. The hole pulled him back and beat him like a rented mule. He eventually swam out but it took us a decent distance to get his boat to shore with the higher water level. He looked like death eating a cracker. Even the Good Samaritan would have kept on walking at the sight of his haggard appearance!
At this point, we knew we weren’t going to have enough daylight to finish the run. We bombed down through Shipwreck and Iron Ring in the fading light. It was almost dark by the time we reached Sweets Falls. Adam didn’t like the idea of running it so he walked while Matt and I paddled through the darkness and disappeared into the maw of this powerful drop. It was a wild feeling lining up the drop by feel and cresting the lip of the drop, staring into a massive wall of white! We both blasted through the hole with no problems.
The remaining 2 miles to the Panther Creek takeout are Class 2-3 so it was no big deal to paddle them in the dark. The problem was that our takeout was another 3 miles downriver at Woods Ferry. We debated what to do. It would be really fun to keep paddling for sure. It obviously is not safe to paddle in the dark but the Gauley is mostly Class 2-3 in that section. The main problem was the Woods Ferry rapid, which has some sizeable holes at normal flow. It was too dark to be able to see a major hole until you were dropping into it. A swim would mean that you and your boat mostly likely would get pulled all the way to Mississipp! Plus, if we survived that rapid, we could easily paddle past the takeout since it was so dark out. In the end, the voice of reason won out. What? I didn’t hear any voices other than Matt’s, Adams’s, and my own! We decided to take out at Panther Creek, walk the road to the top of the hill and take another road that descended down to Adam’s truck, a distance of around 4 miles. It was a nice walk, the stars were out and it was absolutely breathtaking! However, the cold night air took its toll and I ended up with bad case of bronchitis. AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RZF_RNBDxI
We decided to head to the local speakeasy (that had gotten rave reviews on Yelp) to celebrate our day with shots of Fighting Cock whiskey! The only people not happy about this course of events were my wallet and my liver! In the end, Adam performed a crowd pleasing rendition of Put Me In Coach and Matt worked his charm with some Honky Tonk special, who had about as many teeth as a jack-o-lantern, to keep him warm on that cold night. I, well I got a little out of control myself. I don’t remember the exact events of the evening but, by the end of the night I was crowing like a rooster, and I challenged the mayor’s son to a gentleman’s duel! But that is another story.
