I guess I will always remember it as the day that Jim Sheppard died, although it was much more than that. It was a day of true learning, a day of reaching for goals. It was a day when lots of good paddlers around here bit off perhaps a bit more than they should have...a day of good luck and bad.

It was pretty warm that morning for a day so late in fall, and the water was surging to heights we hadn't seen since, oh, August anyway, which was a long time for us to go without water around here. Long enough for the lazy stolen summer tan of Gauley season to have faded from our arms, and for the tightness of the neck gasket to be almost familiar again. The day started with the usual early morning ritual of answering many phone calls and starting to stress over the fact that you have told way too many people that you would paddle with them today, and that each person you told has this friend who wants to go along... I'm not antisocial or anything but when I go for a taste of creeking I prefer an intimate dinner for two or three over the big water banquet hall. Eight people in all. yikes.

We were going to head for the West Fork of the Pigeon (picture), but it was too huge to contemplate. I said I knew of a smaller stream nearby whose first descent had been a goal of mine for years. Maybe it would be running high enough to do today. We headed up U.S. 276 to the Big East Fork trailhead, and were encouraged to see a few hundred cfs blasting down the tiny riverbed. We changed there as the temperature began to drop a bit.

By the time we got to Graveyard Fields, the wind was picking up and I reluctantly decided to put on the wetsuit as well. We eyeballed the map again, and I repeated my assertion that it looked like about 400 feet per mile for the first couple miles, then a mellower gradient for the last two or three. Chris told us of some waterfalls that he was sure we would have to walk around in the first half mile, but told us he was game as long as we were done in time for him to make work back in South Carolina. We walked down to the river and looked for a place to put on.

The level was about right, so we carried around the first waterfall before starting, cringing at the 100+ foot drop that sent ever cooler spray onto us as we waited for the group to reassemble. Three of our number made the wisest decision of the day and decided to back out and go run the class III lower section, and the rest of us were glad for the smaller group. We put on after 1:00.

We cruised through some pleasant class IV stuff for the first half mile, bopping down almost continuous whitewater littered with little 2-4 foot drops. I fell back in the order and ended up last, watching as everyone else swung into an eddy nervously close to an obvious horizon line. It was a scary scramble onto steep wet rock above that terminal 150 ft monster. Our hands started to feel that first tingle of numbness as we grabbed the loops to look for a route around the behemoth. It was me, Caroline Brown, Ed Chapman, Eric Stritmatter, and Chris Harjes.

The portage was steep, so steep that we had to lower the boats with ropes, and the mud and wet rock kept us slipping and sliding the whole way. I got my boat to the bottom fairly quickly and headed back up to help the others. I was almost brained when Eric's Freefall came flying down at my head. An old rock climbing instinct saved me as I leaned in close to the slope to let the boat bounce over me. It didn't stop for a long way.

The bottom of the falls proved to be no respite, and we shouldered our boats to carry through the Rhododendron thicket around the next couple of steep, boulder and log choked drops. The portage took us about an hour in all, and it was starting to spit snow as we looked over the first potentially runable drop in the gorge. It was a quick shot through a slot then an aggressive move toward an eddy on the right. After that, a peel out which should take you over the main twelve foot vertical drop in the center, avoiding the rocks at the bottom on both sides. The lower drop was easier, just a boof around a hole on a two foot ledge. We all regrouped in the eddy, satisfied that the runnability of the water was starting to look up. It wouldn't last.

In fact, it ran out almost immediately. The next section was choked out with boulders again, so we shouldered the boats. At the bottom of that drop, there was a short section which I put in for. The others didn't even bother... We ended up carrying for a quarter mile or so before I once again hit a spot that I thought looked like a 'go'. I put back in and cruised down the slotty first drop, wished there was an eddy in the short flat spot between, then moved hard toward the right to avoid the tree in the next eight foot drop, being careful to jerk my nose back left at the last second to avoid the pinning rock.

Caroline dropped into the top as I hit an eddy, and nailed the piton rock on her way through. A bit dazed, she missed the eddy and washed into the next drop backwards. I peeled out to give chase and blew the line in the bottom of the rapid, ending up wedged vertically in a slot far too narrow for my Cascade to get through. I pushed up with both hands off the rock, and tumbled upside down into the pool at the bottom, losing my paddle in the process. Luckily the bottom was only a couple feet under, and I managed a roll off that.

"Did you see where my paddle went?" "no, I was watching you". How upset could I be at that? Well, I was pretty damn upset at the idea of being stuck in an unknown wilderness gorge in the snow in late afternoon with no paddle! I spent about ten precious minutes looking downstream before returning, resigned to carrying the boat out. That's when I spotted the blue of my poagie barely showing out of the water at the base of the drop where I had been wedged. There was a little hope as I picked up the paddle and the boat.

It was a hike of several hundred more yards through steep, rhododendron choked terrain before we found a place that looked worthy of putting back on. Everone was starting to get tired, and a bit panicked as well. We were not even to the confluence that I knew was two and a half miles above the take out from having walked up to it in the past. It was after four, and the sun had been below the rim of the gorge for a while.

Luckily, the next quarter mile or so was not that bad. Maybe class IV, if very continuous, but it felt good to be moving at a normal pace again. We had even started to relax when the seemingly innocent drop alongside the huge rock turned into a strainer nightmare. From the top all you could see was the entrance to the drop, and the natural reaction was to head right to keep away from the undercut that was probably hanging out under the huge rock on the left. All the water seemed to be going that way, which is a creek boater's first signal to head in the other direction. I came over the top of the drop and almost lost it when I saw the log wedged across the right side of the drop about stomach height above the water. Somehow I managed to get back left and smash my shoulder off the rock. I swung into the eddy below to watch for the others.

Most of them made it. I couldn't get to a position where I could signal to them concerning the log, so all I could do was watch as each one crested the horizon line and madly started paddling left. Caroline came last, and slowed down from the cold, missed the move and wedged under the log. I jumped out and clambered onto the big rock, dropping a rope down to her to help keep her head above water. I was in a useless spot for pulling her out, so had to just wait while Edward headed up the far bank to pull her boat out of the pin. He got her out...scared, cold, and wet, but we were ready to move once again.

We began to carry down river right for a change, and soon a foot bridge came into view. We had no idea what trail it was, of course, and so started the first debate of the day. Upon finally maneuvering to reach the trail, Chris said that he thought hiking up and trying to hit the Parkway was the only choice so late in the day. I argued that it could be miles to the Parkway that way, and that upon reaching it in the dark and the snow, one could freeze to death on the Parkway just as easily as in the gorge. We knew the car was downriver, and should keep heading that way.

Chris became irate and stormed off up the trail. We talked for a minute more, and Edward definitely agreed with me, but felt he should go catch Chris. Caroline, being wet, was near hypothermia, so I decided to get her moving by hiking along the river once again. Eric would wait for the others.

A couple hundred yards into the hike, Caroline was having too much trouble with the boat, so I told her to leave it (it was my boat). We moved on down the slope to the river, and It looked like easy class II cruising. A new plan was formed. I would paddle down the river (so I wouldn't have to carry my Cascade any more) and Caroline would walk along the bank in case I needed her. So I paddled off. We stayed together for a half mile or so.

The water picked up, jumping first to class IV and then V, with big blind drops that I would marginally boat scout then barrel over, rushing in the already lost battle against the darkness. Caroline disappeared, and I began to worry about her lost in the cold and dark, but on getting out and jogging along the trail (I don't know when that appeared) I couldn't find her, so I paddled on. About a mile down from the separation with the others, I came to the confluence that I had been to before. It was mostly dark as I pulled out onto the bank and stashed the boat. I headed off down the trail, hoping to catch up with Caroline.

I was fifteen minutes behind her when I wandered into the backpackers' camp in the pitch black. They had given her a flashlight and tried to talk her into staying, but she had taken off again. I thanked them and headed out into the dark one more time. Ice formed in a sheet all over me as I walked, and I was thankful that I had decided to put on that wetsuit. I had a drybag full of dry clothes with me, but they were useless on a high speed night hike through a soggy National Forest. The wind was really blowing, wind chills below zero, and I eventually lost the trail and ended up thrashing through the edge of the river, groping at the ice covered trees and rocks along the edge.

I made it two and a half miles out in about an hour, arriving at the truck after 7:00. I was less than five minutes behind Caroline. Kev was just starting after me with a flashlight and blankets. It took me ten minutes to get the frozen zipper on my PFD unstuck. We warmed up in the heat, and heard the story of how the Parkway had turned out to be only four hundred yards up that mystery trail. The others had been back at the cars before dark.

The day started with a phone call, as usual, nine am. It was Chris Bell, wanting to know if I had been paddling with Jim Sheppard the day before. He told me the news of Jim's death. I laid there stunned for a while before levering my sore body out of bed for the day's chore, made that much more so by what I had just heard. I dressed and got in the truck, heading up toward the Big East Fork trailhead once again.

There is a numbness of the mind the morning after the ordeal somewhat akin to the numbness of the heart when hearing of the death of a friend. My tired body eased into the routine of the walk while the rest of me shut down. I suppose I should have enjoyed seeing how the trail looked in the light, and looking for the landmarks I had used in the super alert state the night before, but I just pounded out the miles as quickly as I could, stopping only to give the startled hikers their flashlight back.

The sun was up when I got to the boat, and it was almost pleasant by the riverside until I started pulling on the wet wetsuit. Fully geared up a few minutes later, I rammed my hands into my frozen poagies and slid into the river. I ran two class V's almost immediately, getting flipped in the entrance drop to the second, a ten foot falls. I got out to drag the boat around a strainer and put back on. It was a crisp day; the clean reality ran into the fog in my head and left me swimming in the crystal glitter of a day that I could only barely perceive. I was scared. Alone in the glory of the gorge with my thoughts, which took me onto rocks at the bottom of each of my mind's rapids. I paddled.

If you ever get one of those days where the water is too high for anything else, and you want some serious class V creekin', the Big East Fork of the Pigeon is the run for you. It is amazingly beautiful, continuous whitewater. Make sure you put in where the Mountains to Sea Trail crosses, NOT in Graveyard Fields. I can't tell you much about that last two miles except that I ran several rapids I should have walked, and walked several I should have run. I vertically pinned one time and folded the boat, barely getting out before it got forced all the way under the water. The stumble up to the truck was too relieved to be truly satisfying in the first descent sense, but the goal was finally achieved.

Caroline got away with frostbitten toes, and that was the only physical casualty of the trip, except that it will probably be harder for me to find wilderness first descent partners in the future. There were casualties for me as well, things lost inside, but I guess there were things I found down there too. Hopefully the next new creek for me will be an easier one to find.