The following is an excerpt from Jay Young’s Whitewater Rafting on West Virginia’s New & Gauley Rivers: Come on In, the Water’s Weird
The bateau Rose of Nelson was in trouble. Broached as she was against the rocks in the middle of a Class-IV rapid called Dudley’s Dip in the Lower Gorge of the New River, she took on water about as quickly as one might expect of a 43-and-a-half foot long wooden bucket.
Her crew tried valiantly to bail her. They heaved water from the Rose’s hull into the river like a bucket brigade dowsing a fire, but to no avail. Within moments, the bateau tipped upstream and exposed her innards to the rushing torrent. Pinned and swamped, she flexed around the rocks. She held for a brief second, which to her crew, must have seemed like an hour, and then finally fell apart, sending splintered wood and her crew into the drink.
The year was 2004.
In 2003, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the New River Gorge National River, the Park Service organized a reenactment of C.P. Huntington’s 1869 voyage.
At the time of the reenactment, however, the New ran at flood levels. The water gauge at Fayette Station read 20 feet. Contrary to popular belief, neither the NPS nor the industry as a whole dictates a “cut-off” level past which no commercial rafting will occur, but a relatively low 12 feet, which is itself a huge volume of water, is the unofficial guideline. Before she even reached the Lower Gorge, the Rose of Nelson braved standing waves up to seven feet tall with little to protect her but a six-inch bulkhead her builders installed to help her shed water. Against waves that large, though, the bulkheads did little and the boat swamped regularly.
Every night and often throughout each day, the Rose eddied out for repairs. Her crew pounded cotton into the spaces between planks in a futile effort to keep the river out of the boat. When camping at night they purposely swamped the bateau to keep her boards swollen and tight.
But as she approached the town of Thurmond, everybody aboard her had the same thought: “There’s no way we’ll make it through the Lower Gorge.” Prudence won the day, and instead of trying, the team removed the Rose from the water and dried her out for a rain date with the New.
That day finally arrived a year later, when the Rose again put in at Thurmond and headed into the Gorge. The first half of the journey from Thurmond to Fayette Station is relatively calm. There is only one significant rapid, a class III called Surprise, and the Rose of Nelson made it through easily to the delight of everybody aboard her.
Though they had to stop often to affect repairs, the crew of the Rose watched rapid after rapid disappear around the bends behind them. One of those is a rapid called Lower Keeney. Together with Upper and Middle, Lower Keeney forms one of two class-V drops, but only at higher water levels when they blend into one long flume. That day the New flowed low enough to give it a go.
Deftly, the crew maneuvered the Rose of Nelson to river left (the left side of the river as a boater faces downstream) in the calm pool above Lower Keeney. Once lined up for the rapid, they paused to let the river push them where they needed to be. They hovered over the entrance to the drop and took in the roiling path stretched out below. Both banks were lined with spectators cheering her on.
The Rose dove into the first waves and the bateau flexed and bent to absorb the rise and fall of the river. In a moment that passed all too quickly, they were through. The crowd erupted in cheers.
Next up they knew would be Dudley’s Dip, a rocky dogleg left. Dudley’s is a wide-open green highway at some water levels, but would be steeper and more difficult that day, so the crew eddied out once again for repairs. They spent hours plugging leaks, sometimes with people in the water with masks and snorkels trying to locate the many tiny gaps that had developed throughout the day.
Finally, with the boat as plugged as she could be, they pushed off and headed downstream.
Cliff Bobinski, a ranger working out of the Glen Jean Park Headquarters, rowed up along side the bateau, running safety for the crew in case the worst happened. Bobinski recommended a clean line to them. “Enter right of center,” he advised. “And then turn back left with the current to split the difference between two rocks.” He watched in horror, however, as the boat floated exactly the opposite way, entering too far left. Instead of turning left with the current, the panicked crew forced the bateau right—broadside to the current, which swept her against the rocks.
The event marked the sudden end of the reenactment, which was itself historic. Bobinski spent the rest of the afternoon and much of the next day picking up pieces of the Rose of Nelson.
“Broken Rose” is an excerpt from Whitewater Rafting on West Virginia’s New & Gauley Rivers, published last year by The History Press. It is available at Waterstone, Cathedral Cafe, and Ironarchmedia.com.
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