Linville River

This is Matt Kuckuk. I was in a group that ran the lower half of the gorge in April 1976, for what we believe was the first descent (exploratory) of that section. The group consisted of me (K1), Fred Young (C1), Mark Hall (C1), Harry House (C2), Bob Obst (C2), Dean Tomko (C1), and Mike Fentress (K1). As I remember we hiked in from the Wiseman Overlook trail and I remember seeing a formation called something like Raven's Rock or Raven's Head from the trail. We ran a lot of Cl 5 through huge boulder fields, no portages. One memorable drop that we scouted and ran, squeezed the water between a big midstream boulder and the right bank, making a sloping falls. Not sure how to line this run up with the descriptions of the sections here, just that we ran out the lower part of the gorge, probably the lower 1/3 to 1/2 after what we heard was an unsuccessful attempt to run the whole gorge by another party.