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The drive to the Russell Fork was excruciating. Five hours one-way to the Breaks Intestate Park on the VA/KY border. Trevyn Leighton, Edgar Peck, and myself drove up on Saturday and met Kevin Ratliff and Justin Culbertson. We camped, and would paddle Sunday. The release was 800 cfs.

The view of the canyon from the Park Lodge where we ate breakfast was otherworldly beautiful. The entire day I was amazed at the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. It’s a really dramatic gorge; big cliff walls and ridges with giant stone columns rising off the top in places. The leaves were also just starting to change (they’ll probably be peaking within the next week).

We put on the Upper section and paddled down to the gorge to warm up. There isn’t much in the upper. 20 Stitches is a cool rapid, but there’s a lot of flatwater up there.

Entering the gorge, the first rapid was Towers. We ran into so many pro paddlers there, I thought we were in a LVM video: Steven Wright, Clay Wright, Brian Kirk, Chris Gratmans, and others I recognized but don’t know.
Clean runs of the main line by Edgar, Trevyn, and myself. Kevin ran the left but got bumped right, surfed across the hole, and out on the right. Justin ran the sneak on the right.

Fist was nasty looking. This infamous rapid has a cave on the left, sucking about a third of the flow into it. Edgar ran the right and pitoned a rock hard, then eddied on the right. Trevyn ran the Fire Escape line on the right. The rest of us walked around. No spelunkers.

Triple Drop was cool. A five foot boof, followed by a chute ending in a powerful hole, ending with a sweet ten foot boof. Good lines by all.

The Maze is a cool boulder garden ending with a house-sized undercut to avoid on river right. Trevyn and I eddie hopped down first. At the undercut, Trevyn eddied left and I eddied right. This meant I had to ferry out in front of the scary rock to get out. The eddie was short, only about 1.5 boat-lengths, so I couldn’t get much momentum to punch the eddie line and make the ferry. I made it, but only with only a few inches to spare. Can’t say I reccomend that line.

El Horrrendo might be the most fun rapid I’ve ever run. It’s a big rapid with a HUGE hole at the bottom. Justin got briefly beat down in a hole at the top of the rapid, but he got away and ran it well. The rest of us ran it clean. Edgar and Trevyn walked back and ran it about four times each.

Climax was a tight little rapid. We ran the box move; a S-turn move that starts with a five foot flairing boof to the right, then turning immediately back left to avoid a big wash-up rock, finishing with a one foot boof between a couple of rocks.

After that it was just run-out, and big,big smiles all the way. Until we had to get back in the car for another much, much, much longer five hour drive back

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For more pictures look here:
http://gallery.me.com/ericds#100075
http://www.tlleight.com/russelfork/