Not sure why people refer to this run as a &quot;safe&quot; or a &quot;beginner run&quot;. Ran it at 4.9' this past 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+.<br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> 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). <br /> <br /> 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 &quot;room of doom&quot; situation. It looked really nasty. Have to say Class V at that level. <br /> <br /> Overall, I'd say Valley Falls is a III-V run at 4.9'.

Ran this for the first time last week at ~4.5 on the gauge and found it very nice... I don't agree 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--

ACCESS ISSUE: On July 2, 2003 an AW member called to alert us that new steel gates have been 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.

kdavis wrote, in Boater Talk (http://boatertalk.com/forum/BoaterTalk/218315): <br /> &quot;thought i was going to drown today. pretty scary. <br /> &quot;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.&quot; <br /> <br /> Whoa. <br /> <br /> 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.