Piney Creek,

Beckley to the New River at McCreery

Usual Difficulty	III-V (may vary with level)
Length	12 Miles
Avg. Gradient	80 fpm
Max Gradient	80 fpm

Gauge Information

Name	Range	Difficulty	Updated	Level
PINEY CREEK AT RALEIGH, WV
usgs-03185000	2.30 - 3.30 ft	III-V	00h53m	2.75 ft (rc= 0.5 )

River Description

Lat/longitude coords are approximate, from TopoZone.

From Chris Gorman, 2003-09-22 22:37:49
One thing about the river is the water quality is not great. It runs right past a sewage treatment plant that dumps into the river. It is a cool run though, it starts with about a mile of boogy water then there is a 5' drop onto a slide and some more boogy water (about 10' if you run the left). Then the pace picks up and it gets fairly steep and continuous. There were a couple slides into huge holes with undercut/sieves on the left side. Then there is one 8-foot waterfall that has a huge undercut on the left. There are some other cool rapids but everything is scoutable. The one drawback of this river is the length; it runs right into the confluence with the New and is some 3-miles of tiring rock dodging at the end. Railroad tracks run the entire length of the river.

Mark D'Agostino adds (2003-09-23 20:50:08):
We ran Piney on 9/20/03. It is indeed one of the nastiest smelling creeks I've been on, but still fun. At 2.6' on the USGS gage, the run was a solid medium level to me. The extended boogie sections are covered well enough to not detroy your boat. The short steeper stretches at the top (ending in big rock falls) and after the coal mine (flusher) packed some punch. Not the best run in the area but still worth a trip.