Posted by John Hayes on May 09, 2008 at 16:09:02:
Sir David Ritchie and myself successfully ran the lower yough this past weekend. I ran the whole thing in my all-star and had not a single problem. The only time I had any problem was when I was caught off guard at the beginning of entrance rapid. I was talking and caught an edge. My combat roll got me up first try and at ~4ft I made it through all of the other rapids without any problems. We got to swimmers and stayed there for about 45 minutes and it was a really fun, very retentive wave that was fairly similar to center chute wave. All in all, I felt that the LY was easier than a gorge run at 4.5 since all of the rapids were pretty straightforward without too many weird currents. A few z-channels were the only real difficult spots and even those weren't too bad with a decent brace.
So now I am feeling pretty confident and want to get something to set my sights on. I think that getting back into my diesel and paddling some gnar out in WV might be the next step. Lower Big Sandy maybe? Does this sound like a logical next step? Also, if you or anyone you know is going to be paddling anything III/IV after May23, please keep me in your emails. Thanks.