How high is the water? Many people ask that question and wonder how we know that. Well, with this post I hope to answer that question and maybe generate some more questions.

The New River has its beginning in the high mountains of North Carolina near Blowing Rock. It works it’s way north through North Carolina and Virginia before entering West Virginia near Hinton, Summers County. During this part of the journey, the river is wide and lazy. After leaving the mountains of Carolina, the river travels through the rolling farm valleys of Virginia passing near Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech. Gathering volume and warmth, the New River enters West Virginia as one of the major rivers in the Eastern United States.

Once the river enters West Virginia, the character changes dramaticly. Becoming one of America’s Best Whitewater rivers. As the river enters the New River Gorge, it begins to narrow and gain velocity. When this happens, Whitewater!!!

Now back to our original question, how high is the water? We use a variety of gauges to determine the volume of water we are going to raft on a particular day.

The New River has 2 main tributaries, the Greenbrier and Bluestone Rivers. Each is a unique river system of its own and have a direct impact on water levels. Both of these rivers are undammed over their entire length. So what rain falls runs into the main stem of the New River.

New River drains over 4500 square miles from three states and has 2 dams that control water flows. In Virginia, Claytor Dam is mainly a power generating facility and passes through flows on down stream. Flows fluctuate here daily as demand for power changes with the weather. Bluestone Dam, in West Virginia, is a flood control project with huge storage capacity. Being able to store over 100 vertical feet of water, this facility has saved many downstream cities from flooding for almost 50 years.

We look at the amount of water in all three rivers to determine how high the water will be. As our rafting section of New River is below the confluence of these three rivers, we need to determine how much water is coming downstream from all of these. Water is measured in cubic feet per second (cfs). So how much is that? Think of a cubic foot as the size of a regulation basketball. Not very big, however we need to look at flows to give you an idea of how big that really is.

Today, March 24, our trip on New River rafted the Lower Gorge, the main whitewater section, at 7,000 cfs. That means 7,000 basketballs per second went past a given point. Wow!! Yes, that is a lot. New River flows can vary from 1,000 to 35,000 cfs during a spring and summer season. All of these flows are raftable and are loads of fun.

As you can see, how high the water is can be a tricky question. What do you want to know about flows? Let me know and I will try to answer your questions?