Life Outside Fall 2018 - 34

The James River and Kanahwa
Canal was one of George
Washington's worst ideas. He planned
and surveyed the canal, hoping to
link the far western counties ...

PICKLE POSES
Dick Pickle holds a nice
smallmouth that Bruce
Ingram caught on the
Glasgow-to-Snowden junket.

Kanawha Canal on river left. As Class IIs go, Little
Balcony is not overly technical with several passageways that are apparent from upstream. Pickle
and I zipped through there and soon afterwards
headed for one of the many campsites on river
right in the Face.
This is a fascinating area. Across the river is the
long, aforementioned manmade rock wall that is
part of the numerous remains of the JRKC that can
be found on the upper river. The JRKC was one of
George Washington's worst ideas. Our future first
president planned and surveyed the canal, hoping
to link the far western counties of what was then
Virginia but is now West Virginia with the eastern
part of the Old Dominion. The coming of the railroads and the Civil War doomed the project, and,
now, the canal remains are merely exceptional places
to fish because of their shade created depths and
the stones that have fallen into the river over the
decades. Today, ironically, railroad tracks follow

Fall 2018 \\ LifeOutside Magazine

the canal path that Washington's vision created.
Below the canal's remains come Balcony Falls-the
most daunting rapid on the James above the fall
line in Richmond.
But on the evening Pickle and I debarked, I was
quite content to leave off worrying about running
Balcony to the next morning, let Pickle set up camp,
and head for the mountains to look for places to
fly fish for native brookies. Earlier, Dawn Kirk,
the GWJNF fisheries biologist, had told me that
she had sampled a number of the Face's highland
rills and found brook trout but had not surveyed
many of the ones that empty into the James in
this part of the watershed. Kirk said I would likely
enjoy scouting one or more of these streams and
trying to determine if they held natives. Feeling
like an explorer with a fly rod in hand, I tied on a
Size 14 Adams and headed for one of the blue lines
on a topo map.
Sometime later, after dueling with a number of
chubs, I came to the conclusion that brookies were
either not present or my trout fishing expertise
was woefully lacking-with each possibility being
eminently possible. Still, I decided that the search
for "undiscovered" brookie streams would continue
on my next visit to the Face.
Coming back to camp, I told Pickle that I wanted
to sleep down by the river instead of there with
him and Skipper. My reasoning was that I wanted
to slumber close to the water so that when the first
hints of approaching dawn illuminated the sky, I
would awake and immediately begin fishing.
Dinner was only canned venison, not the elaborate dinner
that I had planned. Pickle wisely had talked me out of grilling
venison, saying that the smell
could easily attract black bears,
of which there are many in the
Face. Bruin populations have
sharply risen in Western Virginia this century, especially
in the national forest.
After dinner, lying down in
my canoe with an air mattress
and sleeping bag below me
for comfort, I was overjoyed
to watch the Big Dipper slowly form directly above me as
full darkness descended. Few
places I know of present such
deep, ebony darkness as the
Face. Soon the roar of nearby
Balcony Falls soothingly caused
me to fall asleep, and my last
thoughts were which birds
would be the ones to awaken
me at dawn.

Life Outside Fall 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Life Outside Fall 2018