Daugherty Run

Here's a link to the new gauge on Muddy Creek:

https://www.wqdatalive.com/public/1128

Today Daug was 1' while the Muddy Creek gauge read 237cfs. Both Daug and Muddy are dropping.

Several days ago, people reported Daug was 2' while Muddy was reading about 225cfs—but everything was on the rise.

Safe to say, if you see 225cfs-250cfs on the Muddy gauge and it's going up, check Daug. If things are on the way down, probably look for 300-400cfs+ on Muddy for Daug to be running.

Looking into the mouth of the Daug Haus...... A low water look at the riverbed & rock arrangement......
Hope this helps keep paddlers out of the 'Daug Haus' ...
or if necessary, at least give ideas for rescue ahead of time.

The approach to the Sieve Rapid (with 'F-U' rocks;-)
This rapid is about 100 yds downstream of the bridge (in the background) of this photo: https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Photo/detail/photoid/2551/size/big/

Out-flow from the Daug Haus, looking upstream. A low water look at the riverbed & rock arrangement.
Hope this helps keep paddlers out of the 'Daug Haus' ...
or if necessary, at least give ideas for rescue ahead of time.

Daug Haus, where nobody wants to be.

Where everyone wants to go.

This is somewhere above the undercut/sieve rapid. There was 1.5 in. of rain/24hr at the AFWS gauge at Afton, WV.

John is where you want to be on the undercut/sieve rapid.
Kurt, in the orange helmet on river right, is providing safety at the entrance to the 'bad place'.

Last drop on Daugherty Run that can be viewed from the county road. There is a downed tree covering one third of the right side of the river just below the drop.

The seive in the seive drop after the wooden bridge is currently full of wood, some water still goes through it, so stay right. There are currently 2 bad logs on the run, if you see orange ribbon on the trees, get out and scout. The rest of the wood you can get by with some finesse. This creek is awesome! Goofy smiles abound;)

This was the typical scene on Daugherty.
It was a typical WV day. Sixty degrees and sunny at home, and 28 degrees and snow in WV. You've gotta love it.
This was one of the many strainers that we 'snuck.' A third of the flow was going under the tree. We only had to portage once, but there was a lot of squeezing under trees and avoiding encroaching limbs.

The first major drop involves a blind slot on the right to a pool with no place to stop to scout. A lot of water goes left, under an enormous undercut that can beat you up, but should let you go. Stay right.

This creek is small. Like 15' wide on average and maybe 30' at its widest small. Its steep, blind and very technical. We put in at the pipeline. You put in on a small pool, the creek looks like little more than a ditch, you turn right and start crankin because 5' downstream (litlerally) is the first boof. Its on...right away. Zero warm-up and it only get harder. Putting more than one boat in an eddy, most of the time is, is not an option, so know your groups signals.

There are some VERY nice slides on this run...many are back to back. The slots average 4' wide...many are boofs. The last drop is a phat launcher onto a suprisingly soft landing slide.

We ran it at about 2' over the bridge footer at the take-out. There were plenty of eddies and it wasnt very pushy. We also never went more than about 50' without banging a rock just under the surface (except on the slides of course). We had multiple broaches throughout the day, but none were serious due to such low flows and plenty of rocks to use your hands on and free yourself. The slides were a little sticky (grabby). I would have liked to have seen about another 3'. Put much more water into it than that and Im sure it would turn into a real bobsled run with very few eddies.

As of this past weekend, it was pretty log infested. We made 3 carries and a few spooky limbo moves. We didnt have a guide, so we scouted quite a few times (6-8 maybe) and still did this run in just over 3 hours. Most of the scouts were because we couldnt see what was around the corner and there were no eddies before going around that corner. Scouting can be tough with the thick rhododendron.

It really is a great run. I highly recommend it. But dont be fooled...class V skills are certainly required.

This rapid is near the top of the run. Daugherty starts out very small and picks up as it goes along. Even with good water this section could be just a little bony!

I'm the guy sitting in his boat on the left side of the picture. The guy standing is Keith. He's is talking about something. Keith is always talking about something - That's why most of us like Keith the best at night - 'When he's sleeping!'

This is a shot of the first rapid - Which is about 10 feet below the put-in.

This is the first slide on the creek and it comes out of know where!