A
waterfall on the New River?!? Yes, and a pretty impressive one to say
the least. Sandstone Falls is 8 mile downstream of the town of Hinton,
WV. Hinton is tucked away in the New River valley, just upstream of
where the official New River Gorge begins. It took us over an hour to
reach Sandstone Falls from Fayetteville, WV; it really is an out-of-the-way park-n-huck destination.
Upon arriving at Sandstone Falls, you’ll be greeted with a nice
boardwalk that takes you over a couple bridges and out to the middle of
the river at the base of the main falls for a great view. On river
right is a massive rapid that few have ever run. In the middle of the
river is a wide 23? falls that lands on a mixture of sharp sandstone
chunks, shallow pools, and a few deep ones. You’d better scout real
well to make sure you’re going over a horizon line that does in fact
land in one of the deep spots. Approaching a wide waterfall like this
is always a little scary just trying to line up with the exact spot you
scouted, because it all looks pretty much the same from upstream. On
the river-left section are some smaller, scrapier drops that would be
fun a higher flows. We had about 7,500cfs and were thinking that we’d
like to come back around 13,000cfs when some more col lines would open
up.
Cooper
Lambla, myself, and Luke Hopkins did laps on different parts of the
falls, plus a lot of exploring since it was our first time there. This
was Cooper’s first time in the new Diesel 80, but it looked like he’d
been paddling it for years with how smooth his lines were. Cooper never
missed a boof in all his runs over the falls, and he skimmed over the
holes in the rapids with ease.
We all are looking forward to more rain this spring to check out
Sandstone Falls with even more flow. This place is reminiscent of Great
Falls on the Potomac in that there are a plethora of line to bomb down
at all sorts of different levels. The quaint town of Hinton is a gem to
drive through as well, and it just adds to the ‘lost-world’ feel of
exploring Sandstone Falls.
