cheating a little death

Had a little fun last weekend.....headed down to West-by-god-Virginia.....little did I know......

"The Upper Gauley is highly technical, requiring great skill to negotiate its narrow chutes and machine-gun rapids. It ranks in the top five in the world for whitewater adventure. The Upper Gauley offers tremendous Class III to V+ drops in steep, turbulent chutes such as Pillow Rock, Iron Ring and Sweet's Falls, and rocky routes that demand constant maneuvering such as Lost Paddle and Shipwreck. This section of the river requires experience, concentration and teamwork - plus maybe just a touch of craziness, too!"

Basically, it was about a 360-ft descent over roughly 12 miles through 75 distinct rapids.

Here's our boat.

These aren't videos of our boat, but here are some snips of where we were -- gives a pretty good sense of the entire day -- pretty much exact conditions. First one is Pillow Rock, mentioned above. Here's Lost Paddle, and here's Sweet's Falls.

Excellent fun! I gotta do much more of this -- guess I really HAVE to learn how to swim.......nonetheless, I stayed in the boat until the last rapid -- and I'm alive to tell the tale.