Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 8, 1990 TAG: 9007100014
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Few things are as satisfying as enjoying a meal - inch-thick, barbecued pork chops in this case - after having successfully coped with danger. And, while doing so, watching others run the rapids, which for some is akin to suddenly being thrust onto the back of a Brahma bull.
So a tree-shaded flat just below Foster Falls in Wythe County was the obvious site for lunch during the organization's recent VIP float on the New River.
Even at the put-in point, a couple of miles upstream, Foster Falls was on the minds, if not the lips, of the river runners as canoes were slipped quietly into the water.
After all, this is the heaviest punch of the New in Virginia.
While it is no "River of Death,", a term correctly applied to the New River gorge down the way in West Virginia, Foster Falls have a nice buzz, although meaner in imagination than reality.
So it would be more than just a place to eat pork.
When you run a river, you search for a good tandem companion, and Mack Whitaker, who lives on a farm in Floyd County, fits that description. He is mature, in both age and river experience, a man who has been paddling Virginia streams for 20 years, even before it was fashionable.
A balding math professor at Radford University, Whitaker initially was drawn to rivers by bass. Before too many years, the challenge and charm of live, flowing, vocal water had grown greater than the desire to tangle with the tail-walking smallmouths that called it home.
"I had too many days I couldn't catch anything, I guess," he laughs.
"I started paddling in 1969-70, and for a long time didn't see anyone on the rivers," he said.
That wouldn't be the case this day.
Float Fishermen of Virginia outings are gregarious events. The annual VIP affair is the biggest of all, designed around a time of floating, fishing and feasting for members and their guests. The guests happen to be General Assembly members and anyone else who might be called on the make a decision concerning a river. The nine-chapter organization is smart enough to know it is easier to win friends on a river than in the halls of the General Assembly.
Whitaker is one of about 50 members of the Roanoke Valley chapter.
His canoe, a 16-foot Perception Chattooga, has been pulled across enough river banks, scraped enough rocks and gone head-to-head with enough rapids to mirror the looks of an aging heavyweight who stayed in the ring a few years too long.
Canoes are a simple craft, once made of bark - how much simpler can you get? - but like athletic shoes they now manifest complicated contemporary design and jargon.
In a rudimentary sense, you can say there are canoes that are sports cars, canoes that are family sedans and canoes that are mini-pickup trucks. Some are for white water ballet, others for family recreation and still others are for guides to haul moose meat out of the Maine backwoods.
A cruising-type canoe, designed for tandem paddling, is a prudent choice for family fun on streams like the New, the James, the Shenandoah, the Rappahannock. That's what Whitaker had.
Canoe sales along with interest in running rivers has been growing for more than a decade. Many drawn to the sport are aging baby boomers with environmental interests. They have discovered that a canoe is both a rowing machine for exercise and a quiet, ecologically sound way to harness the spirit of moving water for an escape into the wilds.
Virginia has numerous and quality opportunities to do this.
"There is a lot of little stuff that we can run in the spring," Whitaker said, singling out the Maury River in Goshen Pass as a favorite.
When the small streams are muted by the stingy rainfall of summer, the New always is accommodating, and if you want a real, tooth-jarring challenge, the gorge in West Virginia is just down the road. There is no place where things have been happening around rivers longer than at the New.
A canoe is a bit like a stylish riding horse, always ready for a romp, never complaining, faithful, adventurous, pleasurable, yet not above humiliating you if you let your guard down for a moment.
Foster Falls is a good place for that to happen.
The trick is to run the left chute, but the river tries to pull you toward the middle. Although you can portage on the right side, for Whitaker that isn't even a consideration. He will run it. If his partner decides to portage, then he will do it solo.
Whitaker's companion discusses the options: Portage on the right; run on the left. Voices rise in response to the river's increasing loudness. Before long, the river has made the decision. It has lured the canoe into its galloping current, and there is nothing left but to accept its challenge.
The New river is a big and powerful stream. Wide in some spots; deep in others, it flows through a backdrop of pastoral scenery. At Foster Falls, it suddenly goes on a gallop as if in a hurry to make a downstream romp around a sharp bend between sheer rock cliffs.
This day it is running well above its summertime average, spurred along by upstream releases from a power dam.
For people like Dave Vicenzi, who operates the New River Canoe Livery at Pembroke, the river's dangers are overrated. He cringes when headline writers put "New River claims another victim" over a story about a drowning.
"The river didn't do nothing," he huffs. If you are drunk and aren't wearing a life jacket and fall overboard and can't swim, who is responsible, the river or the victim? he asks.
Whitaker is one of the first to reach Foster Falls, his adrenalin rising with the roar of rapids. He reads the white water expertly and sends his canoe threading through it with skill. After all, here is a man who has taken a roller-coaster ride through the "River of Death" 20 times, and lived to tell about it.
Not everyone is successful. One legislator is coming downstream behind Whitaker with his father in the bow and his young son in the middle. He is too far to the right of the chute.
The bow of his canoe suddenly pops up on an unseen boulder, which grasps it like Velcro. For five seconds the canoe does nothing, except hang there, then it begins to whirl clockwise, dumping its occupants and scooping up a cargo of water.
The granddad tries to grab the craft, but it is a beefy, free spirit now, and it drags him headfirst downstream, his face in the water.
Midway between two frothing ledges, he lets go and struggles to his feet, coughing up river water.
When you are up the river without a canoe, and the water is too swift for you to wade out or to be reached by your companions, the only thing left is to take a seat in the current and ride the rapids feet-first as if you were coming downstairs on your rump.
Phil Bailey of the Roanoke Valley Float Fishermen must do some shouting to convince the stranded canoers that they have no other choice. When his voice exerts more authority than the rapids, they come bobbing downstream.
Soon, everyone is eathing lunch.
The rest of the trip is elementary. Even so, Whitaker paddles most of the way from a kneeling position, rather than a seated position which exposes both white knees and inexperience.
Occasionally he eases the Perception into the shallows and beaches her on a sand bank to stretch his legs. He removes a cigarette from a waterproof ammo box and takes a quick smoke away from the canoe, as if out of respect to a valued friend.
Only a couple of modest ledges, mere speed bumps in a high school parking lot, remain. Whitaker thumps one too hard and his bow drives through it rather than ride over it.
Several gallons of water are in the craft and camera equipment is swimming about.
The ancient stream has gotten in one of its licks at an unexpected moment.
That's usually how it happens.
by CNB