The past few days in West Virginia have been some of the best I’ve had on the water in a long time. With huge amounts of rain falling in a short period of time everything in the state was, and pretty much still is, going off! I didn’t expect the rain to bring things up as fast and as high as it did but with the added snow melt at higher elevations water levels sky rocketed. With the dries and tons of amazing creeks running at prime levels the next couple of days were action packed.

Getting ready to screech like a little girl! (Photo: Kate Belanger)

I’ve been looking at Captain Crunch on Laurel Creek for quite some time now and have wanted to run it since I first laid eyes on it, with water levels finally cooperating I got my chance. Although I would of preferred to run it with more water I saw my line and knew I could hit it. The great thing about this drop is that a couple hundred feet downstream lie the put-in waves of the Dries.

Me and the Captain making it happen (Photo: Bryan Kirk)

After me and the captain made it happen I finally got to surf the middle wave of the dries at its prime. Every other time I’ve surfed the dries it’s either been too high or too low for the middle wave…it’s always been the middle hole! Surfing this thing is one of the best feelings in the world! It’s really big, fast, wide and surges to really steep resulting in some of the biggest air you can get anywhere. My first few surfs I couldn’t help but giggle, front surfing this wave gave me the feeling of sliding down the pinch slide on Big Timber at mach speed! Almost every move I did was followed by a fist pump and a girlie screech!

Another giggler (Photo: Bryan Kirk)

Pan am on the little wave (Photo: Bryan Kirk)

The next day Manns creek dropped to a manageable level of 6” and a group of us got up early for another full day of paddling. Manns empties into the New directly across from the put-in and with the New still running at around 55 000cfs we decided to run it as well. With sunshine and warm weather we were all excited that we got on the river in time to make this run happen. We were even more excited that by the time we got off we still had time for a session at the dries!

Gearing up at the Manns put-in (Photo: Jeremy Laucks)

Enjoy the water!

Kelsey Thompson