I'd tallied all the big Western rivers I'd run -- the Middle Fork of the Salmon, the Green, the Colorado, the Alsek -- and laughed at the notion that some wimpy stream in West Virginia could test me. But the New River chastised me without even trying.
Our little raft was in the midst of Keeney's Creek rapid, and without more muscle power, we'd end up like the hapless crew a few rapids back. They'd lost headway halfway up a big wave and had "dump-trucked," stopped dead with the raft's bow nosing toward the heavens. Every soul, even the guide, fell into the drink.
Our crew of six was stronger and luckier. With our guide, Eric Autenreith, shouting, "Mush! Mush!" we blasted through, whooping and high-fiving our paddles, ready for more. There was plenty more to come.
The New River gorge has some of the finest white water in the United States. There are 23 rapids in a 14-mile run from Thurmond to the 876-foot-high, 3,030-foot-long New River Gorge bridge, the longest single span highway bridge in the world. At low water, the New's Class V rapids can be dauntingly technical, demanding precise maneuvers around giant boulders.
But we were blessed with high water from spring runoff, and our biggest challenge was keeping enough momentum to roller-coaster through the massive waves and holes. It was a wonderful ride, thrilling, but never so rough that I feared for my safety.
When we reached the takeout below the bridge at 3 p.m., after more than five hours on the water, I shouted, "Let's go do it again!"
If the New's rapids are a powerful surprise, so is the country surrounding them.
The West of the East
West Virginia is the West of the East, a place that often feels more like Idaho or Colorado than like Pennsylvania and Maryland and its other neighbors. The state has stubbornly maintained its independence since before the Civil War, when it seceded from Virginia rather than defend slavery.
But for most of this century, the state has been known more for hillbillies and moonshine than for history. It's an image the state doesn't always labor to dispel. Just last year, the state legislature passed a "road-kill bill," granting citizens the right to collect wildlife flattened on the highways for take-home dinners.
"We DO have indoor plumbing. We DO have shoes," sighs Deborah Grove, a West Virginia native who I met at Tamarack, a huge crafts gallery in Beckley that is the state's 3-year-old showcase for 1,800 artisans.
But if West Virginia is backwoods, it's also Fayetteville, a tiny town of 2,179 that is the gateway to the New River Gorge. Fayetteville's brownstone county courthouse and gracious white-frame houses with rhododendrons and big front porches are reminiscent of the gracious living that was the Old South. One of the biggest and best porches, with eight rocking chairs to choose from, belongs to Ed and Pat Bennett.
"Porch-sitting's one of the better sports in these parts," Ed said in a West Virginia drawl as he greeted me.
It wasn't long before I was sitting in one of the rockers, sipping a bourbon and water, and watching the world go by on West Maple Avenue.
Ed is a retired high-school principal, and a few years ago some rafting guides suggested that the Bennetts use the bedrooms of their grown children for a bed-and-breakfast.
The Bennetts, both West Virginia natives, were quick to point out to me that Fayetteville is in southern West Virginia, where Southern hospitality prevails. It certainly does. I'd never been on a rafting vacation where my hostess served bacon and eggs on the good china and silver, or where Major Harris All-American, the house springer spaniel, brought in the morning paper and laid it at my feet.
The Bennetts aren't the only ones catering to travelers. One night I ate filet mignon and drank a fine cabernet at Breeze Hill, a new restaurant in an old farmhouse with a splendid view of sunset over the New River Gorge. Another dinner was grilled swordfish with poblano chilies at Sedona Grille, a casual cafe across from the Fayette County courthouse.
Coal-mining past
This country hasn't always been so given over to gracious living. For 60 years, from before the turn of the century until after World War II, Fayetteville made its fortune mining coal, as did much of the rest of West Virginia. This cruelest of commodities exacted a fearsome price. More West Virginians have died in the mines than the state lost in all wars, and although the industry has waned, its legacy remains visible at the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine in the town of Beckley 20 minutes south of Fayetteville.
This mine, which operated for 10 years at the turn of the century, lies right under the Beckley town park. It's strange to climb aboard the electric miners' train and clatter into the blackness for a tour, knowing that children are playing a few hundred feet overhead.
Our guide, a retired miner, showed how miners 90 years ago would lie on their sides for 12 hours a day, chipping away at the 30-inch coal seam with a pick. He showed how a fire boss comes through a mine, testing for deadly methane gas, and where one boss had chalked an "OK" in the tunnel this very morning, declaring the mine safe for our tour. He showed how the advent of mechanization and electricity made mining safer and less arduous. But as I sat in the darkness, with water dripping on my head and my nostrils burning with the sulfurous reek, I was glad that West Virginia's destiny is no longer shackled to coal.
The New River Gorge has a coal history, too, although you'd never guess it to see it now, so green and wild.
"Can you imagine?" a mother asked her three children in the visitor center of the New River Gorge National River, part of the federal park system. "This beautiful gorge was all coal mines."
The Industrial Revolution happened swiftly. In 1873, when the railroad came through, the gorge was clear-cut. By 1905, there were 75 mines bored into the coal seam 700 feet above the river. Trains hauled the coal away to heat homes in Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland.
Coke ovens belched red smoke night and day. Towns like Thurmond sprang up along the river to house and feed the thousands of miners, who earned $1.10 a day for a 10-hour shift.
Across the river, the 100-room Dunglen Hotel drew high rollers from New York and Cincinnati who made the place notorious for fast women and strong drink. One poker game ran night and day for 14 years.
The whiskey and women are gone now, and so is the Dunglen Hotel, burned down in the 1930s, and Thurmond, the only town that remains in the gorge, has a population of seven. The people who drive the winding, narrow road into the gorge to Thurmond now are often railroad buffs who wait hours to get the perfect shot of a locomotive roaring by the train station, beautifully restored by the National Park Service (70 miles of active train line remain in the park, including the CSX main line).
Changing times
From the river, the gorge's rich history is almost invisible. Floating downstream, it's possible to catch just a glimpse of the rooftops of the abandoned buildings of Thurmond, and the stone foundation of the Kaymoor Mine's company store. Nature has worked quickly here, erasing everything else man-made. The canyon walls, lush with maple, hickory and mountain laurel, look undisturbed.
That's fitting, because the New, despite its moniker, is one of the world's oldest rivers, 65 million years or more, almost as old, scientists conjecture, as the Nile. The Appalachians that squeeze the river are the nubs of what was once a range that towered higher than the Rockies.
It's this unusual natural history that earned 53 miles of the New protection as a national river 20 years ago, and that still draws people today. They come, if not for the rafting, then to scale the sandstone cliffs of Endless Wall, or to mountain bike along the rim of the gorge, or simply to walk through an Eastern hardwood forest, where lady-slippers carpet the hollows with pink in the spring.
"There's so much diversity in the spring, before the poison ivy leafs out," says Meredith Gregg, a botanical illustrator who lives in Fayetteville. "Wildflowers are abundant, both common and rare. There's never a shortage of subject matter. I moved here from the Southwest four years ago, and find West Virginia wonderful, with its soft, balmy evenings and most mornings full of life at every turn."
Chris Dragan remembers 30 years ago, when he and his brothers pioneered white-water guiding on the New as a way to support their river-running habit. Now their Wildwater company draws paddlers from thousands of miles away to the New and the Gauley, an even more challenging river that's runnable only in the fall, when the Summersville Dam releases water. (Outfitters want novices to tackle the New before they attempt the Gauley.)
"Fayetteville is like Mayberry, U.S.A.," Dragan says. "The chief of police is like Andy Griffith."
But the rafters are changing Fayetteville. Where Court Street was once the turf of coal barons and judges, it now features galleries and Cathedral Cafe and Bookstore, a former church that shelters latte-sipping patrons in T-shirts and Teva sandals.
"They don't dress like ordinary people," allows Ed Bennett, who favors bow ties and Panama hats. "They're in the beer hall instead of the church. But I've gotten to know a lot of them, and they're pretty nice people."
It's funny. Dragan says the same thing about Ed. In New River country, old and new, nature and civilization, seem to get along. It's what we long for, but rarely find: the pleasure of the wild, with human comforts and company. I'm already preparing to return to run the Gauley in the fall -- and to have another try at that other great New River sport, porch-sitting.
WHEN YOU GO ...
Getting there: To reach Fayetteville, take Interstate 70 west to Interstate 81 south. Follow I-81 to Interstate 64 west and take I-64 to Interate 77 North. Get off at exit 48 (U.S. Route 19 north) and follow 20 miles into Fayetteville.
Lodging: The County Seat Bed and Breakfast: Ed and Pat Bennett, 306 W. Maple Ave., Fayetteville, W.Va. 25840; 304-574-0823; room rates $65 to $75.
Food:
* Cathedral Cafe and Bookstore: 134 S. Court St., Fayetteville; 304-574-0202. Serving breakfast and lunch daily and dinner Friday through Sunday. Hours: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 9:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Meals from $6 to $15.
* Breeze Hill: Lansing Road, Lansing, W.Va.; 304-574-0436. Serving dinner daily. Hours: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Entrees from $10 to $25. Optional outdoor dining with a panoramic view.
* Sedona Grille: 106 E. Maple Ave., Fayetteville; 304-574-3411. Serving lunch and dinner daily except Wednesday. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Tuesday and Thursday, and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Entrees from $8.99 to $16.
Exhibit: Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine in New River Park, Drawer AJ, Beckley, W.Va., 25802, 304-256-1747. Open seven days April 1 to Nov. 1. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission: $8 adults, $7 seniors, $5 children 4 to 12, 3 and under admitted free.
Outfitters:
* Wildwater Expeditions, P.O. Box 155, Lansing, W.Va. 25862, 800-982-7238, www.wvaraft.com.
The National Park Service provides a list of all outfitters in the park. Call 304-465-0508 or check out its Web site: www.nps.gov/neri.
Shopping: Tamarack: The Best of West Virginia. A 59,000-square-foot cultural arts center in Beckley, selling crafts, art and cuisine exclusively West Virginian. Located at Exit 45 off Interstate Highways 77/64; 888-262-7225 or 304-256-6843.
Information: For information on Fayette County food, lodging and activities, call the Southern West Virginia Visitor's Bureau at 304-252-2244, or check out the Southern West Virginia Tourism site at www.visitwv.org.
Pub Date: 04/04/99