Friday, April 25, 2008
Running the Roanoke
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Bolstered by recent rains and dam releases from an upstream reservoir, the Goshen Pass section of the Maury River was a roaring whitewater heaven Wednesday.
But when he loaded up his kayak for a quick afternoon trip, paddling fanatic Kurt Sisson of Boones Mill headed instead toward a spot that was quite a bit closer to home.
Sisson and a few friends wanted to run the Roanoke River from just below the Niagara dam to the placid beginnings of Smith Mountain Lake, a section of the river sometimes called the Gorge.
"I paddle this section about once a week," said Sisson, a lineman with Appalachian Power. "It's got every kind of rapid you want, just on a smaller scale."
While the section might not tempt extreme kayakers, it's a nice piece of moderate water that's suited well to novice and intermediate paddlers. It features some decent whitewater -- which varies in difficulty depending on flow levels -- as well as a fair amount of still water. Some of the rapids offer decent play holes for surfing.
A big appeal is the convenience.
"You can be here in 15 minutes," Sisson marveled.
The shuttle is a short 3 miles, while the 3 14-mile trip on the river can easily be accomplished in a couple of hours, even with stops to fool around on waves.
The biggest challenge of the trip may be getting to the water.
Photos by Mark Taylor | The Roanoke Times
A couple of miles into the float the rapids disappear as the river hits the quiet waters of Smith Mountain Lake, where kayaker Kurt Sisson shares the water with a trio of fishermen in a johnboat.
Jeff Wold (right) cuts into an eddy after running though a rapid known as Texas Tavern.
At modest flows the Roanoke River Gorge section offers a nice mix of Class I and II rapids. For flow levels visit the USGS online.
From the parking lot on the Blue Ridge Parkway just south of the bridge that crosses the gorge, the hike to the river is about a quarter of a mile down a winding trail.
With a 35-pound kayak, the trek isn't too bad. Carrying a canoe down the trail is a little more of an undertaking.
Mike "Mo" Byrd has one trick that helps. A handrail lines the trail for the first 40 yards or so, and Byrd slides his boat down it.
"I cheat when I can," he said, smiling.
In kayaks and canoes the half-dozen paddlers set off down the river a touch after 3:30 p.m. The water was a murky green and smelled fishy.
Paddlers have just a short warm-up before the first challenge, a nice little rapid the paddlers call Texas Tavern.
"Do you want chili with that?" Byrd joked as he approached the slot, his four-legged companion Blue perched in the front of their well-worn Old Town canoe.
Everyone made it through cleanly and headed downstream.
And so started a pattern.
For the next couple of river miles the paddlers eased through slower water then slid through the rapids.
The water level at Niagara was about 2.6 feet according to the gauge maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Jeff Wold, a canoeist from Salem, said the level was about the minimum for a decent trip. As the levels rise, the fun factor does, too.
"At 3 feet it starts to get spirit," said Wold, a project manager with Trane. "Then at 4 feet it seems to wash out. At 5 feet it comes back.
"And it comes alive with a vengeance."
The paddlers don't come just for the water, though.
"Saturday we saw the bald eagle," Sisson said 30 minutes in. "It was just around this corner.
"I hope we see it today."
The eagle wasn't where it had been over the weekend. But as the boaters swept around another corner Sisson perked up.
"There it is," he said.
The bird was perched in a big riverside sycamore. It flew when the invaders were still 100 yards away, but there was no mistaking its identity. The bird was spotted again downstream, and this time the group was able to get within 50 yards.
The trip also yielded sightings of two osprey, a muskrat, a slithering water snake and a Canada goose on her nest.
Also conspicuous on the river banks and in quiet eddies was evidence that the river flows through the largest urban area in Western Virginia.
"I wish we could do something about the trash," Wold said, shaking his head. "If we cleaned it up, the trash would just come back when the water gets high again."
After a final little drop, below which four anglers stood casting lures into the current, the paddlers hit the quiet water that marks the upper reaches of the lake.
The take-out is about a half-mile farther downstream, at Rutrough Point.
The paddlers were loading their boats by 5:30 p.m.
The trip had been short, but it had been sweet. Like usual.
