Tallulah to Dries

Last weekend started with a eight hour drive to the Tallulah river, a river that only releases four weekends out of the year. We (New River Academy were stoked to get on this creek after being told it wasn't going to release in the spring then surprised when we heard the spring release was back on. The first day, we got on the water in the morning and took it slow since it was the first time even creeking for some of the people on our group. Luckily everything went smoothly for everybody. There the exception of a few dorked portages for people hiking back up for a second lap on Oceana, The largest slide on the run. Those ended in two people sliding down the side of Oceana, and diving in to a hole at the bottom.

Tino Looking down the middle line at Oceana(above)

Myself on the left line of Oceana(2nd from top)
Tino on a fun auto boof early in the run(top)

Once we got off the river and our calves had recovered from the 1127 stair hike in, we hustled back to the put in and made it just in time to volunteer to do the sweep run. Now that we all were comfortable with the river we could bust down for the sweep. Unfortunately the American Whitewater people didn't tell us that someone had hiked out of the gorge and left their boat, so we spent about 20 minutes at the bottom of Oceana confused calling for someone who wasn't there. The second day we only had time for one lap of the run and some video and photos. Then left to head back to W.V.
We got in late Sunday and woke up Monday only to find that the New River Dries waves were in. Most people would take some time off after hiking so many stairs, boofing so many drops, sliding down so much rock and sleeping in leaky cold tents, but it was the Dries. So after two days of great creeking it was two days of sick play boating.

Sam Fulbright goes for the Clean blunt.

The first day of shredding had three big waves lined up in the middle of the river. The first two were touchy and would green out, but the last one had a huge foam pile and dished out some huge moves. People threw down whatever they could blunts, panams, air screws, pistol flips, etc.

Tino hucks his stuff.

Sam Fulbright reaching back to panam.

The second day gave us one wide wave in the middle and several smaller more inconsistent ones behind it. Further down stream was the kahuna waves as well, which are not quite the Dries but you can still go huge on them. After the two days on the Tallulah and two on the Dries I went into a coma from exhaustion and woke up to write this update.