CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The three week journey of Adam Swisher and Matt Kearns came to a conclusion on Memorial Day in Charleston. The two friends traveled the entire expanse of the Elk River. A trip they nicknamed the “Elkspedition.”
The trip started with a hike to the top of the Gauley Mountain and another hike back down the bed of Laurel Run to where the creek dumps into Slatyfork. From there, it was another mere five mile walk along an abandoned railroad until they reached a set of stashed bicycles which they used to travel the road paralleling the upper reaches of the Elk to Webster Springs. The rest of the trip, they were able to travel the way the first settlers to West Virginia explored the Elk, via canoe.
The weather on the trip was not their friend.
“We only had two days of the entire trip that it didn’t rain,” said Kearns on Northside Automotive West Virginia Outdoors. “One day I think it rained 10 seconds just to spite us.”
However, along the way they didn’t let a little rain deter them from trying to catch a few fish.
“We had a short hike along these abandoned railroads which looked a little bit apocalyptic in an area called the Slaty section,” said Kearns. “That’s all catch and release. It’s supposed to be real good and I actually caught my first native brook trout there.”
Swisher, who is from Maryland, decided to buy a license to fish the lower Elk after they were out of the trout water.
“I hooked into a total of three brook trout and one smallmouth bass,” Kearns said. “Adam caught three smallmouth bass and a largemouth down below Clay on the Elk.”
They very nearly didn’t get to fish much at all.
“We had a tragedy on the trip. When we flipped our canoe, Adam lost his fishing gear that was the only thing that wasn’t clipped in,” Kearns said. “We met up with a guy down by Clay who was actually one of your listeners who hooked us up with some gear, but we went several days without being able to fish.”
The purpose of the trip, beyond the enjoyment of taking the trip, was to draw attention to the Elk River as a drinking water source and a natural resource for the state as well as to promote the proposed Birthplace of Rivers National Monument in the Monongahela National Forest around the headwaters. Kearns came away from the trip with an education of his own.
“I think what I learned is the river surprised me despite some of the things we’re doing to it,” he explained. “Below the (Sutton) dam we saw all of these raw sewage pipes sticking out and we’d see signs where there were gas lines crossing the river and on two occasions we could smell natural gas leaking. We saw all of this degradation by pollution, which is sad, but ironically we saw tons of wildlife right above Charleston. We saw a beaver, and a bunch of gar and larger fish swimming in the shoals.”
They capped off the trip when they were joined by a number of paddlers on their final day and a picnic at Coonskin Park put on by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. The sun was setting on Charleston as the pair crossed under the last bridge over the Elk on Charleston’s Kanawha Boulevard and the Elk’s waters mingled with the Kanawha River.
Although an exciting adventure, the pair spent a lot of the time thinking about their next quest.
“I don’t want to over promise and under deliver, but we have plotted out a course to start at Spruce Knob and go all the way to the ocean,” said Kearns. “That would take us down through Washington D.C. and the Chesapeake Bay. I don’t think a lot of people realize that’s where more than a third of our water winds up.”
It will be an ambitious journey and something to look forward to.