Level: 7.4' at Webster Springs
August 19, 2000
Paddlers: K-1: Andy Reese, Susan Klimas, Jon Beyer, Turner Sharp, Ken Cooper, Cheng Ling; C-1: Don Beyer

It has been four long years since I last paddled the Three Falls section of the Back Fork. Here we were, five boaters crowded in a four-boat eddy trying to look nonchalant right above a 12' drop. That's when I first saw it crawling right toward me, trying to climb onto my boat and it was much bigger then I thought it should be. Known as Cryptobranchus Alleganiensis, aka Hellbender, it certainly lived up to its name. It was beady eyed, it was appropriately slimy, it was 18-20" long, and when I picked it up my hand did not even come close to wrapping around its body. I caught several boaters attention when I picked it up and that's when it happened. Susan Klimas caught my eye. The years just peeled away. I was 12 years old again and there was another Susie. I had a big green tomato worm. It went down her blouse and it got squashed before I thought of any consequences. She was a farm girl, she pitched hay bales and she had a collection of older brothers. Thus immediately her fist collided with my eye. I appreciated the fact it was not my nose. I treated the black eye as a sign of affection for three weeks. I don't think she did. But this Susie sitting in the eddy was not a farm girl, didn't have any older brothers and maybe, just maybe this Hellbender could accidentally squirt out of my grip and land on her spray skirt so she could better appreciate it at closer range. But folks here is what maturity and years of paddling experience can teach you. Basically it boiled down to location. Susan had it, I didn't. I was on the outside of the eddy pointing upstream, she was on the inside and reading my mind. She was probably remembering a hellgrammite incidence and looked very serious and I had visions of being forced to run the drop backwards with a Hellbender for a paddle. So considering the consequences I let the Salamander from hell crawl away. We ran the drop. Six out of seven of us flipped. Maybe I could have done it better backwards. (Note from Susan: Yes, Turner would have gone for an unexpected backwards trip over that waterfall if that hellbender had come anywhere nearer me than it already was! My paddle was already in position to push Turner out of that eddy.)

We had great water for this trip. The Webster Springs gage had peaked at noon the previous day(8/18/2000) at 9.1' with 7,700 cfs. The following day for our trip it fell from 7.4' (3,800 cfs) to 6.0' (1750 cfs). This was the highest water I had experienced in four trips and it actually made drops cleaner to run with not to much extra turbulence in the plunge pools. It also seemed to reduce the vertical height of several of the drops. I still do not understand the "Three Falls" name as it appears in the "Wildwater West Virginia" guidebook. I believe there are six significant drops in this section. Leo's Ledge toward the end of the run was well scouted by everyone but run with out incidence. I have always been cautious at this rapid but believe it is probably safer at the higher water level. Our put-in was on Sugar Creek. Here the water level did cause what luckily turned out to be a humorous situation. This higher water level caused a wave train to form in the constricted entrance section above the 8' drop and thereby hiding the horizon line. Kenny Cooper eddied out. I thought he was going to surf. I also did not know where I was so I quite casually led five boaters right over the drop with nary a hint it was there except I probably disappeared from sight. It produced one flip and one blown skirt and some big eyes. At least three of the boaters had never done a waterfall before. I heard some muttering about getting voted off some island.

Although I had never viewed the Back Fork as a play river the normally class two sections had delightful hydraulics and wave trains that were perfect for playing. Kenny Cooper was the only one with a clean run. The first ledge on the Back Fork seemed to give the most trouble. Cheng got involuntarily sidesurfed right on the lip and liked it so much that he tried it again. Susan Klimas landed upside down at the bottom but rolled up. Three boaters behind us turned out to include Richard Hopley aka Oci-one Kanubi who was just coming back from an extended 30+ day western paddling trip and just happened to be passing through Fayetteville and caught this. Andy Reese was still tickled to get bragging rights by a couple of hours over Richard.