Homegrown Locals

Daugherty Creek

The trip to Daugherty was all about the unknowns. It was raining hard in West Virginia and I was determined to get a good run in on something new. Originally, I intended to go for the entire three day weekend, however plans changed quickly as river levels rose. Scott Anderson a.ka. 'Great Tree Warrior', was off boating the James at high water on Saturday. I elected to wait for him to get back so we could head out to West Virginia together early Sunday morning.


We left around seven in the morning. It was rainy when we left and the weather forecast was looking solid... rain throughout the entire day and into the evening. On the road and riddled with anticipation, we sorted through the various options of where to go. There was discussion of runs on the North Fork of the Blackwater, Bull Run, Pringle, Red Creek... everything was running, so we really needed to decide on a drainage, the Blackwater or the Cheat. Twenty minutes into our trip we approached a car with a few boats on top. As we pulled up alongside of their truck, we rolled down our windows and shouted questions back and forth. They weren't sure where they were going either. They wrote their number down on three pieces of paper, plastered it to their window and gave us the signal to give them a call. We gave them a ring in hopes we could all come to an agreement about what to run... that way we would be able to set a shuttle.


Ten minutes later and we were on our own again. They elected to run the Upper Yough at high water. We were still determined to run something new. We decided to head to the Cheat drainage. Red Creek, our other most popular option in the Blackwater drainage, is only accessible by a fire road that is closed in the winter, so we figured we had more options near the Cheat and the Sandy. Scott was really fired up about Daugherty Creek, a six mile long micro-creek in a deep gorge that empties into the Cheat near the Albright power station. I was hoping to run the waterfall at Pringle, but it is a short run, so we decided to head to Daugherty. As we headed up the road, past a structure that was part mobile home, part barn, part shanty town, surrounded by a deforested muddy hill side, with chickens, bunny rabbits, cats, dogs, horses, and donkeys lumbering around, I was unconvinced we made a good decision. There was a wide variety of trash in the road and a large sign that announced the area was going to be cleaned up by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, obviously not yet. The dogs were chained inside these strange wire mesh cages and howled as we drove by. The horses had sad looks on their faces, like their favorite Saturday morning cartoon was just taken off the air. My mind began to wonder what anomaly of a human might be living in the lurks of the shadowy basement in such a structure. In reality it is a scene all to common in the many poverty ridden pockets of West Virginia where people are often placed at odds with their surroundings, impoverished and holding on to existence on desecrated land.


We pressed on, winding up the mountian side, past a field full of angus beef, and the strange scene of a burned tree, standing alone in the middle of farmer's field. We crested the hill, following the directions and bearing right at each junction. Finally, we made it to the put-in. We hiked down to the creek to have a look. It was tiny, flowed through a tunnel of rhodedendron, and there was plenty of wood. I was thinking we might go somwhere else, but Scott was still fired up and seemed intent. We scouted a bit and I changed my mind. It was six miles long, but the rapids looked fun and did not evoke visions of terror. Since there was only two of us, safety was a concern, so we decided it was our best bet. Once the final decision was made, I was quickly excited and ready to go boating.


There was portage early on. A large beech tree blocked the entire creek. We were not entirely sure of the nature of the creek at first, so we spent some time out of our boats scouting drops that seemed blind. We became more brazen as we pushed on, a bit to our detriment. The first few slides were fast and furious, but serviceable eddies were often in plain sight and stopped you on a dime as you dipped your blade.

The creek is continuous and the action constant. Somewhere toward the end of the first hour I recall one drop that had a large undercut wall on river right. We got out to scout, but it was nothing of consequence, a fun drop with an auto launch lip toward the bottom.


The creek pressed on and I started to relax, enjoying the bounty of slides and drops. The gorge was beautiful, a magical forest of rhodendron cast in an other worldy mist of rain. There was an unexpected eight foot waterfall, but the hole at the bottom proved gentle.


We rounded a corner and an extremely tiny creek flowed in from river left. There was drop in front of us with a log jutting out from river right. We were mostly boat scouting at this point. Scott decided to push on. As I waited in the eddy I was staring at the small creek flowing in and wondering if I could slide down the last drop. I looked back two seconds later to watch Scott emerge from underneath the surface, hand roll up, chase his paddle down and grab it. I realized the seemingly innocuous log must be forked.


Luckily, Scott was alright. The log hit him in the chest. He bear hugged the tree and swung himself underneath and pushed off the bottom. He declared he would no longer be running any drops blind in fear of more potentially deadly wood. I agreed that was probably a good idea.


After Scott's incident with tree wrestling, we drifted further on and into what I recall as being some of the more exciting parts of the run. There were a few slides that were a few hundred feet long, the river was shallow, but few sections where our boats scraped bottom. There were reactionary waves coming at you from many directions that made things interesting. None were super steep, mostly low angled slides, but you picked up speed with ease.


The spooky shelter near the confluence of the Cheat suddenly emerged in sight. We were near the end our Daugherty expedition, but as the river gods would have it, there was a price to pay for our finish.


The last main drop on Daugherty was an exciting eight foot boof onto a flat rock shelf. The drop was riddled with a near river wide strainer, but seemed straight forward enough, down a small chute, catch an eddy on river right, ferry back across, boof the lip with a little leftie and off you go. I headed out to run it first. I had a lapse in judgment on my entry into the first little chute, got blown too far right, decided I was not going to be able to make the eddy, and needed to try and get back left. It was too late, I was exactly where I did not want to be. I headed left, but all the current was driving straight into the tree. I saw it coming and right before impact I curled my body, tossed my paddle and wrapped my arms around this behemoth of a log. I was impressed and alarmed by the force of the water. Immediately, I popped my skirt kicked my boat down and tried to pull myself out of the water, but my vest was snagged on a branch. Worry began to seep through my veins. I reached for my knife to cut out, while I worked the snage with my left hand. I was free, but now dangling over the river on the log, my paddle long gone, and my boat terribly pinned. A simple drop gone horribly wrong with one missed stroke. You cannot complain though, that is the game you choose to play. I shook the tree, the boat moved a bit. I shook for a while, and tried to push, but could not get a good footing. Finally, the stern popped up enough for me to get both feet on it and push. I shook the tree and pushed at the same time and the current sucked it free.


I ran after the boat and quickly coralled it to shore. Scott tried to catch my paddle, but to no avail. It is likely still circulating beneath the low head dam at the power station.


We tried to catch a ride back to the Jeep by flashing dollar bills on the side of the road, but for some odd reason there were no takers. Apparently wet, smelly kayakers acting as if they were seated in a high dollar strip club are not seen as a chance to make new friends. It was cold and rainy, so we began our seven mile march uphill, past the spooky kooky house, the sad horses, and the German Shepard trained to a tree, that if let loose, would have surely loved to get a good much out of my buttocks.


It was an exciting day, one that will surely be remembered for shenanigans and oddities, but mostly a little creek nick named 'the Dog' that got a little piece of each of us.