Click here to go back to the main kayaking page or here to go to Life In Mayberry.
July
4, 2005. Jeff called on Sunday night to see what I thought about paddling on
Monday morning, considering the rain storm we had earlier that evening. We
had planned for our next trip to be on the New River, but Amy had to work on the
4th and we couldn't figure out a way to make it work. So we made the call
to just paddle at the lake for about an hour. Then as I went to sleep it
dawned on me that if we could get to the lake by eight, then we could get to
Kibler Valley by not much later. I calculated that we could paddle the
first three miles and be back in Mount Airy by eleven so that Amy could go to
the office. When I woke up to see that it had rained all night, I called
Jeff and he jumped right on board. He came by to pick up me and my boat.
I picked up my mom's truck in Claudville to use for the shuttle. We were
in the water at the hydro station at ten minutes after eight. Not as much
water as we had hoped, but enough to work with. The gauge in Francisco was
off the map, but we were a little behind the water in Kibler. We took the
time to take some photos in the upper sections. Jeff was trying a
different spray skirt and it was too tight. It kept popping off, so he
just took it off. Consequently, he had to stop and empty water out of his
kayak every so often. The falls were
awesome, especially the three above the first bridge, basketball falls, and clark's falls. Jeff stopped at Basketball Falls to wade out and take some
photos of me. I then stopped to remove
the menacing stick that has been
sitting dead center of the falls for the last month or so. I wasn't sure how to go about that project, but
it actually wasn't too hard once I got in position above it. I even managed to
do it without swimming. I made a few aggressive moves involving strainers
and trees that luckily worked out, but that I will probably handle differently
during the next trip. It was a nice trip, the fog and wetness made for a scenic run and it was good practice for the
river run on the 30th. Oh yeah, I again miscalculated how long a trip
would take and we didn't make it back until eleven forty.
