Beating the New River

On narrow creeks and wide rivers, Americans in unprecedented numbers are bobbing about in rubber rafts this summer. Many novices prudently do their paddling on calm waterways. The more daring seek the kind of white-water thrills and risks depicted in the movie Deliverance (though the protagonists used canoes). For these one must go to killers like the Colorado or the New River in West Virginia, which the Indians called the River of Death. Its violent rapids still claim inexperienced challengers almost every year (15 drowned in 1971, three last year). A number of guide services have sprung up along the New that provide rafts, equipment and expertise, though paying passengers still take risks and do their own paddling. TIME Correspondent David Wood recently navigated the New on a two-day trip. His report:

For $80 you get a yellow life jacket, the use of tents and other gear, and a seat in a 23-ft. raft. You also get a college-age guide who is a white-water veteran. That is reassuring, because the passengers lining up to fill five rafts are amateurs for the most part. They include a group of young nurses from Michigan, two retired couples, some long-haired young New Yorkers, a plump middle-aged woman from Virginia. All they have in common is a determination to travel the 30 miles between Prince and Fayette Station in the most dangerous possible manner.

White-water rapids are rated on a scale of one (grandmother could survive in her inner tube) to five (check your life-insurance policy). The New has a number of classic fives disguised by innocuous names: Keeney Brothers, Double Z, Upper Railroad. Only one name hints at reality: Greyhound Bus Stopper. The guide explains what to do before you hit a particular trouble spot: "You have to approach on the left side of the river. Then shoot diagonally across to just behind the big rock and slip past it on the right side. If we don't paddle hard on the right side, we'll probably flip over. Got it?"

It sounds reasonable, but when the moment arrives, all memory of the plan vanishes. As the raft speeds toward the tumbling water, you are too busy bracing your feet and straining to hear what the guide is screeching now. Pull right! Pull right! Hardhardhard! There is a temptation to hit the floor, which seems the only safe spot in the swirling madness. But the looming danger -at this moment an "undercut rock" -has its own fascination. Tons of water pour through a narrow funnel, eager to capsize us. Pull left! Digdigdig! Ten frantic paddles try to obey, and we pass the rock at a safe four feet. There is time to use the bailing buckets.

Around the next bend huge boulders constrict the New's width from 200 yds. to the size of a suburban driveway. The river accelerates to a frightening pace. The water plunges between razor-sharp rocks, whipped to a froth by backwashes, submerged logs and even a sunken locomotive that derailed into the river years ago. The trick is to veer away from souse holes -a vacuum on the downstream side of a boulder -because the swirl can pull the stern down and pop the bow up, propelling passengers into the drink.

That knowledge stays with you as a 7-ft. wave of green and white curls over the raft. Your world turns half water, half thunder. Afterward, you imagine that riding a roller coaster in a washing machine would duplicate the sound and the sensation. "No other way to go down a river!" a middle-aged woman shouts seconds before she is almost washed out of the raft.

Suddenly the water is calm. It is time to assess the damage: a gash in the hand, cause unknown; sunglasses washed away; a shirt or two lost. Here the river is guilefully serene. Beavers swim in the pools, a copperhead suns itself on a rock, turkey buzzards fly overhead. The guide will sometimes beach the raft and scramble up the bank to scout the next rapids; conditions can change overnight as the river level rises or falls. Soon the first leg of the trip is over. It has been six hours to the midway point at Thurmond. After a night in tents, we face another day of rapids. You can abandon the excursion here, but no one does. Beating the New River has been too exciting to quit without affording the water a return match.

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