Published: September 06, 2008 12:14 am         

Thrills and spills

Gauley season ‘make it or break it’ for whitewater outfitters

West Virginia’s Gauley River fall whitewater season got under way Friday with the annual unplugging of Summersville Lake.

An estimated 150 commercial rafts gathered near the bottom of Summersville Dam to await the start of the season, which will run over the next seven weeks.

“This is Christmas to the retailer,” said Dave Arnold, a member of the state Tourism Commission and managing partner of Class VI River Runners. “This is where you have to make it or break it.”

The fall season officially starts when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opens the valves to start lowering Summersville Lake from its summertime pool of 2,790 acres to its winter level of 1,575 acres. The extra flows will continue on weekends until Oct. 19.

“Our goal is not to modify downstream conditions more than a foot,” corps spokesman Jim Schray said of the measured releases from the Nicholas County lake. If the water rises too fast, it causes safety problems for people camping and fishing downstream from the dam.

While normal releases for the Gauley’s whitewater weekends run about 2,800 cubic feet per second, dry conditions in August forced the corps to temper the dam’s early releases this season.

Flows will be reduced to 2,500 cfs — or about 18,705 gallons per second — for several days this year to ensure lake levels don’t dip too low to affect navigation on the Kanawha River, Schray said. Water from the lake is used to augment water levels on the Kanawha, which is formed at the confluence of the New and Gauley rivers at Gauley Bridge.

Before Friday’s release, water levels in the lake had fallen by 2.5 feet and were dropping as much as 6 inches per day. The remnants of Tropical Storm Fay brought heavy rains in the New River’s North Carolina watershed, increasing the river’s flow through West Virginia and allowing the corps to use less water.

Schray said some of the plans depend on rainfall, but the current projection is there will be enough water to augment the Kanawha and allow for whitewater rafting.

Arnold said the lower levels mean about an inch less water in the river.

“It means nothing to a guest, but it means something to a guide,” he said. An inch of water can make the difference between a raft gliding over a rock, or getting stuck.

The river drops more than 668 feet along 28 miles and features more than 100 rapids, which are classified by difficulty of navigation, from Class I (least difficult) to Class V (most difficult).

Last year, 46,787 people rafted the river’s two sections. Of that number, 15,895 rafted in the fall, according to the state Division of Natural Resources.