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.

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