John Sweet was determined to do what no one apparently had done before -- paddle a canoe over a 12-foot waterfall on the Gauley River in central West Virginia.

Mr. Sweet, then 29, a former and future member of what was then known as the U.S. Slalom and Wildwater Team, paddled over to the left side of the river to scout it, an essential element in making a clean and safe run.

The water was relatively smooth as it approached the lip of the falls, but it was roiling below. Although many rapids run straight ahead, this one is angled to the left. And you can't see what you're falling into until you are on your way down.

"It really is a blind drop," said Mr. Sweet, of Mustoe, Va. "But it's a perfectly clean drop as long as you miss that pointy rock."

Ah, yes, the pointy rock, a piece of sandstone called Ejector Rock for its ability to eject passengers from a raft into the churning water below.

Mr. Sweet said the Gauley (pronounced "gawley") was running about 1,200 cubic feet per second when he ran the falls 40 years ago on Sept. 1, 1968. That's less than half the flow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now releases from the Summersville Dam for Gauley Season on extended weekends in September and early October. And the waterfall was more of a straight drop than it is at higher water levels when the flow gives it a sloped appearance.

Mr. Sweet was the only one who went over the falls that day. His five companions opted to carry their C1 canoes and kayaks around it because there was no "sneak" route.

So how did it go?

"It went fine," Mr. Sweet said. "It was a clean drop."

The rapid, now known as Sweet's Falls, is one of the most exciting rapids on the Upper Gauley, a 13-mile section of Class I (beginner) to Class V (bodacious) whitewater that begins just below the dam. In addition to Sweet's Falls, it includes Insignificant, Pillow Rock, Ship Rock, Lost Paddle and Iron Ring.

The Lower Gauley, which begins at Koontz Flume, a roller coaster of a rapid, flows 15 miles to the town of Swiss. Along the way, rafters, kayakers and canoeists encounter more Class I to IV rapids, including such major ones as Canyon Doors, Mash, Junkyard, Heaven Help You and Pure Screaming Hell.

The river drops 668 feet from the dam to Swiss and creates more than 100 rapids, 60 of them rated Class III, IV and V. Paddling all that whitewater in one day can be exhausting, especially because the last few miles consist of flatwater and sometimes an upstream wind.

"We were tired and hungry when we finished that day," Mr. Sweet said, referring to himself and his companions -- C1 canoeists Norm and Jimmy Holcombe, kayakers Jim Stuart and Jackson Wright and another C1 canoeist, Miha Tomsic, a member of the Yugoslavian national whitewater C1 slalom team.

C1 canoeists kneel in their covered boats; kayakers sit.

Mr. Sweet said he became a C1 canoeist because that is what was available at Penn State at the time. He said he wouldn't have been able to paddle a kayak because he can't sit comfortably with his feet out in front of him.

And a C1 canoe just happened to be the type of boat his roommate was building in the basement of a rooming house they shared in State College while attending Penn State. Mr. Sweet earned his Ph.D. in chemistry there. He was a caver at the time and was drawn to Penn State because of all the caves in that area.

Mr. Sweet, who turns 70 on Sept. 27, said he and his companions were too busy "concentrating on what we were doing" to name any rapids during their trip down the Gauley. When Jim Stuart returned to the Gauley in 1969 with a group of fellow members of the Canoe Cruisers Association of Washington, D.C., he named the waterfall after the man he saw go over it.

It was a waterfall Sayre and Jean Rodman of Oakmont wanted nothing to do with in May 1961 when they and four others -- David Barbour, Ken Hawker and the husband and wife team of Kay Thompson and Ralph Krischbaum, all of Pittsburgh -- became the first to raft the Gauley. They were afraid the rocky rapid might tear the bottoms of their World War II surplus rafts.

Mr. Sweet said he had heard that the Pittsburgh group had rafted the Gauley. He wanted to be among the first to run it in a C1, a closed-deck canoe, and not have to walk around any of the rapids. "I wanted to run everything if I could," he said.

And he did.

The thrills, chills and spills that the Rodman and Sweet parties got on their first trip down the Gauley now are experienced by Americans, Canadians and Europeans who visit Summersville to run the river, most of them in rafts. Last year, 46,767 whitewater enthusiasts rafted the Upper and Lower Gauley with professional commercial outfitters.

"It's an exhilarating ride with incredible scenery," said Dave Arnold, managing partner of Class VI -- Mountain River, based in Lansing, W.Va. "Experienced guides in each raft share their stories of the river and explain how the rapids got their names. And the annual release of water for Gauley season is the result of the cooperation of government officials, the Corps of Engineers and the community."

The cost of an Upper or Lower Gauley trip ranges from $130 to $175 per person. Mondays are the least expensive -- and the best day to go because it is less crowded -- and Saturdays are the most expensive. The price includes bus transportation to and from the river, the services of a professional guide, life jacket, helmet and paddle and lunch.

Mr. Sweet, who was "married to whitewater" for several decades, now is a semiretired industrial distributor with five grandchildren and one great- grandson. He last paddled whitewater about 12 years ago "because it got to the point where I had to do it more often or stop doing it.

"I'm back to exploring caves," he said.