Nuttallburg - Ripple Effect Boulders

🔴 THIS AREA IS HIGHLY WATER LEVEL DEPENDENT, PLEASE SEE INFORMATION BELOW

Nuttallburg is the largest area with the easiest access for boulders on the banks of the New River. A long, beautiful drive down Keeneys Creek meanders past the bottom of Short Creek before ending at the Nuttallburg town ruins. The rock here is arguably the best in the entire region, bullet hard and often water polished. This guide has been split into different sectors within the whole of Nuttallburg, due to the widely varying directions and the long stretch of river encompassed by this area. Most importantly many of the boulders are water level dependent, best visited in late summer and early fall when the New is routinely at its lowest.

The Ripple Effect Boulder is special. It sits in the river at the top of the Double Z rapid, one of the few Class V rapids on the stretch of river referred to as the Lower New. The boulder is a large pancake with a steep roof on the side facing the bank, easily visible on satellite imagery. The boulder hosts a great range of difficulties with mostly roof climbing over a landing of river polished stones with water trickling around them. In between attempts or while supporting fellow climbers, it is a spectacular location to enjoy the beauty of the river and watch boaters navigate the rapid adjacent the boulder. The other couple of boulders in this cluster also offer great climbing. Not far upstream and downstream are more clusters to explore.

🚶‍♂️ Approach summary - Moderately rugged. 5 to 7 minutes.
💎 Notable problems - "Strainer" V6, "Ripple Effect" V7, "Wet Exit" V8, "Laminar Flow" V9
💧 Dry time - Hours. When the landing is not under water this area dries extremely quickly. No additional wait time is needed once the rock is visibly dry.
🍂❄️🍃 Seasonal Beta - Best in the late summer and early fall when the New River is at its lowest.
🌊 Water Level Beta - The Ripple Effect Boulder is highly water level dependent. The other boulders in this area are not. For the Ripple Effect Boulder, the water should be BELOW 0.5ft at Fayette Station and BELOW 3.8ft at Thurmond. Note that the Fayette Station gauge is not updated continuously but the Thurmond gauge is updated hourly. The two gauges can be found at:
Fayette Station --> https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Gauge2/detail/id/43472/
Thurmond --> https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03185400/
🚗 Drive from downtown Fayetteville - 33 minutes
🚗 Drive from Summersville - 46 minutes
🚽 Bathrooms - Pit toilets at the parking area.
📶 Cell phone service - 2/5, spotty. There is spotty service in the parking lot and on the bank just downstream of the RIpple Effect Boulder.
🐶 Dogs - Must be leashed at all times. This is National Park land.

Nuttallburg is an old mining town. Visitors can still see the ruins surrounding the parking and walk a (highly recommended by the guidebook authors) short, informational trail around the coal tipple and coke ovens. An excerpt from the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve Website at https://www.nps.gov/neri/learn/historyculture/nuttallburg.htm is found below:

"Nuttallburg was one of almost fifty towns that sprang up along the New River in response to a growing nation's need for coal

In 1870, England-born entrepreneur John Nuttall saw opportunity in the coal rich New River gorge and began buying land and building infrastructure along the Keeneys Creek drainage. When the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway was completed through the gorge in 1873, the town was ready for its arrival. Nuttallburg became the second mining town in the New River gorge to ship the "smokeless" coal, processed from a mineral seam hundreds of feet above the river corridor and shipped to industrial cities hundreds of miles away.

Nuttallburg was a bustling mining community by the turn of the century, continuing to thrive after Nuttall's death in 1897 under the direction of his heirs. The town became the focus of national attention in the 1920's when, in an effort known as "vertical integration" to gain control of all aspects of production, automobile industrialist Henry Ford leased the town's mines to provide coal for his company steel mills. The Fordson Coal Company made many improvements to the mine and town during the eight year tenure, but Ford's plan for "vertical integration" failed when it became evident he could neither control, nor afford to buy, the railroad that was responsible for transportation of the coal his mines produced. He sold interests in the Nuttallburg mines in 1928.

The mines of Nuttallburg passed through three owners after Henry Ford, with production limited to primarily local use in later years as the market for New River coal declined. Production ceased in 1958 and Nuttallburg became like so many other riverside communities that rose and fell due to changes in the industry. A collection of empty buildings and structure-less foundations, concealed beneath trees and vines, is all that remains."

[This is copied directly from the NPS website and is not meant to plagiarize. Please contact the guidebook authors through this app or @schlooder on instagram for its removal.]