FAYETTEVILLE - Paddling through the 18 major rapids that churn through the 14-mile stretch of the New River Gorge between Stonecliff and Fayette Station is not for the faint of heart.

Neither is investing $4 million in a new lodge, more than 40 new guest cabins and a new zip-line canopy tour to attract more visitors to the New River during the toughest economic times to face outfitters in the 32 years they have been guiding paying customers through its rapids.

Fayetteville is no town for shrinking violets, though, and both activities are well underway near here, as the 2009 New River whitewater season heads into its official opening weekend.

"I like this kind of stuff," said Griffin Appel, of Versailles, Ky., a high school sophomore on spring break, as he suited up with safety gear for his first raft trip on the lower New on Wednesday with his dad, Max.

"I feel old, but I don't think I'll panic," Meg Higgins said with a laugh, as she posed for a group photo before boarding a raft guided by Doug Ludwig, with her daughter, Kat, and granddaughters, Ana and Lexi, all of the Indianapolis area.

"We decided to roll the dice and not wait for the economy to turn around," said Rivermen owner Brian Campbell, as he walked visitors through a new lodge complex surrounded by 42 new cabins, all under construction and scheduled to open June 1. "I think we are well positioned to bring in people who want an alternative to an expensive vacation."

"This kind of construction activity is not happening anywhere else," said Dave Arnold, managing partner at Class VI River Runners. "It's fun to be a part of it, ... and it's fun to know that, across the country, everyone in the industry - which has had its business fall off by as much as 40 percent in some places - is watching to see what happens in West Virginia."

The new infrastructure development going on atop the 170 acres of clifftop forest owned by Class VI came about following last spring's merger of Arnold's company with Rivermen and Adventure Mountain River under the umbrella of a holding company called Adventure West Virginia Resort.

"I've been carrying around in my head this idea for a new lodge for 15 years," said Campbell. "Now we have the cash to make it happen."

In addition to investment capital from the holding company, they have the professional management talents of Paul Buechler, its president and CEO. Buechler, the former vice president for finance at McJunkin-Red Man in Charleston, moonlighted as a whitewater guide on the New and Gauley rivers for more than 20 years before taking the reins of Adventure West Virginia Resort last year.

Following last year's major restructuring, virtually every West Virginia whitewater outfitter is now sharing at least some element of its business with a former competitor to split costs and operate more efficiently.

Neither is investing $4 million in a new lodge, more than 40 new guest cabins and a new zip-line canopy tour to attract more visitors to the New River during the toughest economic times to face outfitters in the 32 years they have been guiding paying customers through its rapids.

Fayetteville is no town for shrinking violets, though, and both activities are well underway near here, as the 2009 New River whitewater season heads into its official opening weekend.

"I like this kind of stuff," said Griffin Appel, of Versailles, Ky., a high school sophomore on spring break, as he suited up with safety gear for his first raft trip on the lower New on Wednesday with his dad, Max.

"I feel old, but I don't think I'll panic," Meg Higgins said with a laugh, as she posed for a group photo before boarding a raft guided by Doug Ludwig, with her daughter, Kat, and granddaughters, Ana and Lexi, all of the Indianapolis area.

"We decided to roll the dice and not wait for the economy to turn around," said Rivermen owner Brian Campbell, as he walked visitors through a new lodge complex surrounded by 42 new cabins, all under construction and scheduled to open June 1. "I think we are well positioned to bring in people who want an alternative to an expensive vacation."

"This kind of construction activity is not happening anywhere else," said Dave Arnold, managing partner at Class VI River Runners. "It's fun to be a part of it, ... and it's fun to know that, across the country, everyone in the industry - which has had its business fall off by as much as 40 percent in some places - is watching to see what happens in West Virginia."

The new infrastructure development going on atop the 170 acres of clifftop forest owned by Class VI came about following last spring's merger of Arnold's company with Rivermen and Adventure Mountain River under the umbrella of a holding company called Adventure West Virginia Resort.

"I've been carrying around in my head this idea for a new lodge for 15 years," said Campbell. "Now we have the cash to make it happen."

In addition to investment capital from the holding company, they have the professional management talents of Paul Buechler, its president and CEO. Buechler, the former vice president for finance at McJunkin-Red Man in Charleston, moonlighted as a whitewater guide on the New and Gauley rivers for more than 20 years before taking the reins of Adventure West Virginia Resort last year.

Following last year's major restructuring, virtually every West Virginia whitewater outfitter is now sharing at least some element of its business with a former competitor to split costs and operate more efficiently.

Wednesday's New River float by the Appel and Higgins families, along with Nassau, Bahamas, resident Andrew Higgs, his wife, Jennifer, and children, Travis and Savannah, was a good example of a commercial New River raft trip in 2009. The trip, which departed from the Class VI campus, made use of a Class VI bus and driver and a Mountain River raft and guide.

"One company putting a small trip like that on the river would have lost money," said Arnold. By sharing a bus, trailer, equipment and personnel, "we probably at least broke even," he said.

Higgs' family has lived in the Bahamas since the 1700s, but the New River trip wasn't his first visit to West Virginia. He took up football while attending boarding school in Pennsylvania, and later became a defensive tackle for the University of Louisville. He played against WVU several times in Morgantown during the Major Harris era.

Rivermen's new lodge building will include a retail store, recreation room, video-viewing center, wrap-around bar and an adjacent barbecue restaurant. Within easy walking distance, 42 new guest cabins are nearing completion, ranging from Spartan, camping-style accommodations to larger, fully equipped Amish-built structures. A new campground also is being built.

This summer, accommodations at the Class VI-Mountain River-Rivermen complex will range from no-frills camping to rentals in one of Class VI's new upscale houses at its Wild Rock development.

Scheduled for a May opening, a short walk from the new lodge is TreeTops on the Gorge, a zip-line canopy tour in which harness-wearing participants clip onto cable-mounted pulleys to slide from treetop platform to treetop platform, sometimes at 70 to 80 feet off the ground.

"Our goal is to keep customers here for a week, by giving them a better value on lodging and providing activities they will remember for the rest of their lives," said Campbell.

In addition to rafting, the Higgs family planned to do some four-wheeling, horseback riding and rappelling while in the New River Gorge area. The Higgins family planned to take a walking tour of Thurmond after their whitewater trip.

Kat Higgins decided to return to the area with her daughters, after driving through West Virginia on a trip to North Carolina. "It's beautiful here," she said, "and the kids have never seen mountains."

While the number of people riding the rapids on the New River peaked during the 1990s, the merged Class VI-Mountain Rivers-Rivermen last year handled 53,000 customers, meeting their goal for the season.

Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 348-5169.