THURSDAY PADDLE - We were 10 - and the level was one foot, which keeps the rocks well padded. No spills. but the geography has quite changed at the big rapids. Home by 5:30.
TL Jenny Thomas, Kim B, Cotton, Jim L, Mark B, Bob Maxey, Keith Merkel, Bob from Missouri, Chris from Ft Royal, and me. 2 canoes, the rest K1s.
Departure from Manassas just 6 mins after the 9:00 meeting time; I drove up with Cotton. Like you, there was fog on the way in - you couldn't even see those three crosses from I-81. Arrived at the WV55 put-in at 10:30, having stopped off at a hardware store in Wardensville. Looked at the gauge for Ron - 13". Bob & Chris did not know the Lost, so Jenny gave them a chalk talk. I'd sent her the Canter map for further distro to the group, but had fouled up in transmission - luckily I'd brought a paper copy.
Group stayed in one pod, Keith as probe, Jim & Jenny as sweep. I went through my nemesis Triple Drop w/o getting out to scout - no one did - found the first of those rapids to be the worst. But at the last Giants Staircase two big drops that I hadn't remembered. Lunch as usual at the LWB while looking at the little rapid below. Showed our out-of-towners how the Lost becomes the Found River, then 7 of us dragged through the woods to left of Landslide. Why?
There's now a DANGEROUS big log stretching 3/4 of the way across the river about 35 yards down from Landslide. The rapid itself, however, has had the major rock on the left come loose, making that route somewhat easier. (We reported this on Paddle Prattle and AW, and on the Hazards section of the CCA website.) - [May 2018 - this log is gone.]
Jim, as ever, paddled alone down the rest of the rapids - past the potato-patch lady's - to his pre-positioned car.
NB: Tony Allred has a new "virtual gauge" for the Lost on the AW website, which was showing 483 cfs at 6 AM and 433 at 7 PM. I'm going to be following it with interest over the next two days. The most wonderful part of the run was putting in in the Winter and taking out in the Spring. But to the nitty-gritty of water levels, it appears from Tony Allred's "virtual gauge" for the river that we hit it at practically its peak - 493 cfs - equivalent to 13" on the Rte 55 bridge abutment. By the next morning it was down to 343.