During the summer, we dream. We dream of the weekend after Labor Day. We dream of -you guessed it- Gauley Season.
In our dream of the Gauley River, we dream of cool weather and intense whitewater. We dream of rafts going through huge waves. We dream of sunshine and crisp water. We dream of waterfalls. We dream of going Big.
This is where you start. Cool.
Dreaming is fine, because we know that, eventually, Gauley Season is coming. It’s a magical time (not to sound too dorky, but it really is, like, unicorns-kind-of-magical) when everything that’s cool about whitewater is in one place: West Virginia.
And what exactly is Gauley Season? Well’ here’s a little bit of an explanation.
The Gauley has a big dam on it called the Summersville Dam. Behind the dam is, you guessed it, Summersville Lake. The lake is great, but we’re mainly concerned with the river on the other side of it.
Anyway, the dam is controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. All year long, they save water behind the dam for flood control and lake recreation and to create hydroelectricity.
In the fall, it’s time to release all that water. Not all at once. Gradually. So we can raft on it.
The reason the Corps is so helpful to rafting is multi-fold. First, they have to make room in the lake for big winter and spring storm water. The make room by releasing a lot of water through the dam into the river below.
Second, they used to do it all at once. Twenty two days straight of running white water. That used to be Gauley Season. But legislation introduced in the 80′s helped us spread those days out.
Now we run (this is the tricky part) 5 four day weekends and 1 two day weekend, for a total of -you guessed it- 22 days. But now they’re spread out over 5 Friday-through-Mondays and one Saturday-Sunday at the end.
If there’s extra water after that, we get -you guessed it- another weekend. That one usually coincides with Bridge Day, the big BASE jumping festival on the New River Gorge Bridge.
And that’s how Gauley Season works. So if it seems like, in August, we’re dreaming a little bit, well, that’s natural. We’re just dreaming about -you guessed it- Gauley Season.
You coming?
Tags: Adventure Vacations, Gauley River Rafting, Songer Whitewater, West Virginia Whitewater Rafting, white water rafting
So, in the fall dam release days, what class is the river? i don’t see it written anywhere. Me and my friends did theHudson, but would like something a little more exciting. Is it III – IV? IV-V?
thanks for the info.
Thanks for your interest, Denise.
In short, during fall release, the Upper Gauley is considered Class V and the Lower Gauley is considered Class IV.
The entire 26 miles of river has more than 100 rapids throughout. There are 5 Class Vs on the Upper, and 2 Class Vs on the Lower.
One thing I like to remind people in my raft of (which you might already be aware of) is this: the class of a rapid only describes how difficult a rapid is, and not necessarily how big a rapid is. This is especially true on the Gauley, where many of the rapids are what we call, in technical terms, “huge”, but aren’t Class V’s.
If you’re interested in more info, give us a call: 1-800-356-7238. One of our phone folks can tell you all about it.
S.Y.O.T.R.
(See You On The River!)