Tygart Valley,
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6. Valley Falls to Hammond (Valley Falls Section)
Class II-IV
1.5 Miles
sweet picture
sweet picturePhoto of Mike Kemp by Dan Anderson taken 8/29/04 @ 4.12
Gauge Information
River Description
This is a fun run for when not much else is running. Its sometimes called the last water in West
Virginia, after everything else has dried up. It's a relatively stress-free way to get some
vertical action. It's a shoulder shuttle: park, put-in, paddle, perambulate to previous point of
paddling put-in.
Due to an agreement between paddlers and park personnel, you have to sign in
before running the Falls.
Location: From I-79, take Exit 137, then 310 south for 7 miles. Turn right at the Valley
Falls State Park sign. Go two miles to the park entrance.
Paul Herring sez: "The state park named for the Falls is accessed from the river-right side of the
US 50 bridge in Grafton by turning on Rt 310, which parallels the Tygart down to the park. The
gauge to look for is at Colfax...You want to find the Colfax road for shuttle if running the whole
thing, which includes Hamburger Helper and several other wierd rapids but is mostly class I/II the
last couple of miles. A rough dirt road runs from downstream along river left, but the park road is
much better access."
kdavis wrote, in Boater Talk 2002-08-11(http://boatertalk.com/forum/BoaterTalk/218315):
"thought i was going to drown today. pretty scary. "second time down through the falls at valley
falls. dropped the top falls, and went sideways. side surfed into the curtain. windowshaded,
couldn't roll up. punched out, and went deep. i guess i got recirced about 4 times, being held down
around 30 seconds or so each time. finally came out far enough past the boil to grab the grab loop
on my friends boat. needless to say, this scared the hell out of me. i was completely exhausted
after all this. all i know, is i don't wanna go through that again. 'they' say valley falls is as
safe as it gets for learning, but it still has quite a bite if you f*up. got back on the pony and
dropped the lower falls. clean. but it took a while to stop shaking."
Even something with a relatively harmless reputation still has a nasty bite, if you screw up. The
top left side has a reputation for spanking the errant paddler pretty hard.
There used to be a race here in the late summer. Read
I Play Outside's coverage
of the 1998 race, with more than your fill of pictures!
Valley Falls State Park
StreamTeam Status: Not Verified
Last Updated: 2004-09-02 19:40:28
River Alert
User Comments
be quite false. It was pretty easy to find with a little poking around on the far bank. I think he
is just trying to avoid having any issues there with paddlers getting in trouble. Edit
running the whole section, but apparently the take out is completely INACCESSIBLE. The road to the
take out was washed out and has not been repaired. just fyi. Edit
great. The walk back is a real pain, but well worth it.
weekend. Main river left channel of the first falls was easy to boof; but major recirc if you mess
up - I give it a III+.
Ran the river right spout on the second drop. Easy and consequence free if you mess up. I give it a
III-. Then we ran down another little III- rapid.
Next we came to Hamburger Helper. At that level a solid Class V. This rapid (including the sneak)
is probably as tough as anything I have paddled on Upper Gauley or Upper Yough at normal flows.
Dangerous recirc and pin potential. Ran it through the sneak and had to roll up (3 times).
Then we came to Twist and Shout. Scouted it for a while and decided not to run it (even though I
have ran it seveal times before without problem). There was a big pillow rock near the bottom of
the drop that sent about 45% of the river into a bad pinning "room of doom" situation. It looked
really nasty. Have to say Class V at that level.
Overall, I'd say Valley Falls is a III-V run at 4.9'.
with the IV rating on the falls as we found it very straight forward... In fact the only must make
move, gravity took care of!! ;-) I also have some questions about the max that is listed on this
page as we were running above the MAX and the Ranger (who was VERY nice) said the locals run it
considerably higher???? (My guess is that this was copied out of a guide book sometime) It sure
looked to me that it could be run with a lot more water in it... HH is definately a IV and dererves
the name... UGLY... The Ranger only asks that kayakers sign in before running... 10 miles exactally
from the interstate... A great way to kill a couple of hours and test your wings ;-) --russ--
erected on both sides of the Valley Falls section of the Tygart. Access to the falls in the State
Park is still open; however boaters wanting to run the section below now no longer have access to
the take out. These gates are allegedly the property of Martina Mine.
"thought i was going to drown today. pretty scary.
"second time down through the falls at valley falls. dropped the top falls, and went sideways. side
surfed into the curtain. windowshaded, couldn't roll up. punched out, and went deep. i guess i got
recirced about 4 times, being held down around 30 seconds or so each time. finally came out far
enough past the boil to grab the grab loop on my friends boat. needless to say, this scared the
hell out of me. i was completely exhausted after all this. all i know, is i don't wanna go through
that again. 'they' say valley falls is as safe as it gets for learning, but it still has quite a
bite if you f*up. got back on the pony and dropped the lower falls. clean. but it took a while to
stop shaking."
Whoa.
Even something with a relatively harmless reputation still has a nasty bite, if you screw up. The
top left side has a reputation for spanking the errant paddler pretty hard.