Mayhem Part I

All Hail Cron! The rains have returned!


May has proven to be one of the wettest months that the SE has seen in at least half a decade. The action started off with a skunking at Pocket Creek into a mission on a lesser run "jewel" known as Stone Coal Bank Creek. There was plenty of water, but only a short stretch of three point five uber-gnarly burlefesters. We chose to probe the first of said three and opted for the high line round the other two due to instantious decapitation consequences.

Here is Captain Kirk looking for the bottom

Caleb in flight

The next morning we returned to the greater Chattanooga area with Pocket Creek in mind once again, but The Bear was 16" and rising, so we decided to take the bird in hand. Putting on The Bear whilst it rains at 16" can be a Hair raising experience. The water finally caught up with us around Revelations, just in time for the hardest part of the run. You know it was scary when the cameras stay dry. Charge.

The next day it was back to Rock City for some more LLTrust action. We had an enormous group, but thanks to our previous days warm up, our ninja skills were already on the razor's edge.

Will Chargit Pruett



Howard Tidwell, West Prong Legend, forgot his lifejacket

If you're into evil you're a friend of mine

Cloudland Canyon has an incredible tractor beam on it at times. After a day off it was back to the Bear for a solid 15 incher. For reference I will send you to Paul's headcam footy posted previously...

Stairway sans paddler

Back to Chatty. Next day. Time for some bday margignar on downtown Signal Mtn. I've been thinking about this one since I heard tale of Ralphy's last decent. We got in there at around 1 foot, and it was not enough water. The kayaking in there is fringe. There are some really good drops and some really scary ones. Bring your nutsack. It needs a little cleaning and 4 -5 more inches of water before I go back. Trip highlight was definetly my subterranean swim out of 9mm. No one fired up Superman.

Rainbow Falls could be oh so good

Kirk and Caleb above Sierra

Caleb in the ultra tech seal line at Sierra Slide

Clay and his crew member

These drops would be awesome with more water

The week was rounded out by what my have been the "second successful descent" of the Trail Fork of Big Creek. Tony and Kirk put a good bit a of work into this one, and I'll be damned if they didn't finally find something worth a damn. Those who dare will be rewarded greatly by 500 ft/mile for two miles, if you can catch it. Stupid fun, but watch for wood.

Part I of the opening set "Ernesto"

Mikey's sickass mystery sequence

Penalty Box, low light, bad pocket hole

Link Up

Paul put together this headcam footage of some of the drops in Bear Creek:




Below Neil gives Zoltan a run for his money:

Photos: Ted Hayes
Rescue: Paul

Survival Mode

The first weekend of survival mode started with Jerry's Baddle a combination kayak and bike race in the Green River gorge. Its always fun to paddle the Green and see the NC folks.

I was pretty slow in the kayak but for being in a short boat where most everyone that places well uses a long boat I felt ok with my time. I got the second fastest bike time.
Cory Hall made up a ton of time on the river and passed me in the flats after the standard takeout. I caught him toward the end of the bike ride and we were able to work together through the false flats and headwinds on the last portion of the course. Cory took second place. Javid beat my total time by 4 seconds. Everyone that raced the "Greenman" from Chattanooga took finishes in the top 10.
View the results here: RESULTS

The following week we got a little more rain and got some runs in on Suck Creek with good water. I tried to do a little bike training when I wasn't working or boating to get ready for PMBAR This year was my second year doing the event. We try to stay laid back and not blow our wad early in the race. Alex and I seemed to pick a route that almost no one else was doing, which was fine with us but I believe we put in more miles than we needed to.

Our route was something like this:
blk mtn> Buckhorn Gap> 476 > FS 5018 > Horse Cove Gap> Cantrell Cr > S Mills> Bradley Cr> FS 5015 (to Yellow Gap) > FS1206 > FS 5000> FS1206> Laurel Mt > Pilot Rock > FS 1206> HWY 276> FS 5041> 475 B> FS 225> 475 B> 5041> 276> FS 477> 5058> 5022> Black Mtn> Finish



It took us around 13hrs. We rode around 80 miles in Pisgah and completed all the check points. We finished late and stayed the night in Brevard at Nate E's house.

After waking up and having a huge breakfast at The Barrel I made my way back to Chattanooga where I headed straight to Bear Creek. The Bear was at 24" so we ate some more food, hiked around Cloudland Canyon and generally wasted time until it dropped down to about 20-20.5" and put on late in the day. I was exhausted from the Pisgah race and almost opted out but couldn't pass up on the opportunity to paddle The Bear. I knew that I didn't have the energy to handle a major beat down but that at 20+" the chance that there would be some action was high. We headed down stream and we ran Surrealistic Pillow for the first time in a couple of years. At Fishbowl I headed for the left line and didn't quite get left of a small piece of flow so I missed the boof and augered in deep. I resurfaced on a back ender that moved me toward the center of the hole. From there I had a few window shades and back enders and decided to pull while I still had a little energy. I swam for the surface but couldn't get there, I went for about 2 recircs before I came up and was able to swim over to the ledge on the left. Bryce got my boat on river right and my paddle floated right over to me. I got my shit back together quick and we blazed into Knocking on Heavens Door> Stairway to Heaven> Cosmic Trigger> Big Bang

I needed a rest day on Monday but went back to the Bear after work and caught it still running at a low but fun 8". I met Clay W. over there and we paddled with Jeff W and Dave L. who were doing their 7th lap. Tuesday Suck Creek held all day long at around 4.8-4.6' so I headed over there after work. . Rain again on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning brought The Bear back up to 15". Again I headed over after work and had a great day, catching it around 14" which was just what I needed to get my head right about that run after my swim over the weekend. I plan on doing some resting tonight and it looks like more rain on the horizon but what I should really be doing is working on my house...

April Showers

steeper than it looks, down the gut of Rock Creek, Lookout Mountain

Rain has consistently been in the forecast here in East Tennessee, and its apparent in things like relationships, to-do lists, and other "responsibilities". Water off a ducks back you might say, because its been nothing short of a chargefest 'round here. Last weekend tKnoxville made it over to Mr. Watty's for a little adventure kayaking. They hiked over the mountain and pulled a big scoooooop on all the other boaters that showed up at Anaconda just in time to watch 'em charge 'er down the gut, no scout. No time for pictures. "Hiking over from the Straight Fork is the only way to go." -N. Helms

This weekend it was a little "after" work West Prong Friday, followed by an alpine start on a Lookout Mountain "gem" into Classic Cain mission Saturday.

Insurance Bluff



Rain Lankin back in action

Lovely Lula Lake Falls: Big ups to the Land Trust

"How many portages did you do?" -Lane


backyard stomping ground

fully charged from the warm-up

Rock Creek warm-up

Rock Creek has been off the radar screen for most Chatt. boaters for a long time. Bryce and Brent went in for the first decent around 10 years ago and never reported that there was much too it. It took a Knoxville boater going back in on a solo mission to really open the eyes of everyone of the quality of the run. Access is on private land and permission is easy to get, but required before going into this creek. The land managers have been very open to the idea of having kayakers as an additional user group here. Rock Creek has probably seen more decents in the past two weeks than it has over the past 10 years. It is a steep but relativly clean run, but still reminds the paddler of runs like Middle Creek and North Pole. The only requests of the land managers thus far is to stay low key, small groups (which I think we are pushing altely) and don't get hurt.

I have been trying to stay off Suck Creek lately opting instead to get after work runs in on Cain> North Chick. which is classic and allows for more of a river running experience by offering the possiblility to stay in the boat for 9 to 10 miles rather than short 1 mile laps.
T. Martin you still owe me a booty beer, don't think I am going to forget or let it slide! Your photo will be on this blog soon enough.

he's gonna be a daddy soon

Of Boojum and Bicycles

Back from the desert with all fingers and toes attached. Started the trip off with a Hueco crushing sesh with the Danimal into tequila sipping at secret radium hotsprings. Drove to San Diego for crew rendevous, then pushed the muff for about 700 miles from Ensenada to Loreto all detours included. With the additional "blue blazing", we made it from San Diego, California, United States of America to La Paz, Baja California, Sur, Mexico in 19 days. Highlights include our all day ride into 30 mph headwinds in the high desert plains, secluded beach camping with natural, tidal hotsprings, the start-up of Crusher Industries (look for the spring line-up "Photo-op One" to be dropping in department stores too soon), and new prophetic incarnations of the prophet boojum, who is not. who is. who. (insert elightenment).

Click here for the full photo spread from eye of Rodson

Middle Creek

A long slow drizzle that started late Friday the 13th and continued through Saturday only got a few creeks in the Chattanooga area up to a runnable level. Suck Creek got up to around 4.5' North Chick. Creek ran at a minimum flow, and many rivers on the plateau came up as well.
I met Jeremy at the takeout for Middle Creek to asses the level. The new gauge was reading 1' and we weren't sure if the creek would have enough water, but it is a thin margin between not enough water and too much. A coin toss determined that we would drop into the gorge... "best two out of three?" Just then Nick pulled up fired up about trying something new and with the nudge of his enthusiasm we headed up the mountain.
We hiked down past Rainbow Lake and stayed on the trail until we got past Rainbow Falls and proceeded down to the creek.



Every time I go in here I tell myself I am never going back. I tend to go back about once a year, I must forget. But after this trip I find myself not coming to that conclusion. Having enough flow and it being cleaned out minimized the portaging to only two mandatory portages due to wood. Next time I think we'd all like to bump it up as far as the water level goes, and with a little more work with a saw and another motivated but small group I'd go in again.



The run is about a mile long and drops around 700+ feet. I think we managed to run just about every runnable drop amongst our crew. There were probably 2 others out there that would go but you'd have to take the hit, and someone else has already taken the hit for that glory.



I am not going to provide any sort of river description other than to say its steep and dangerous; full of sieves and undercuts. In fact just to give an example there is water flowing down stream to the entrance of "shoot me in the face with a 9" that is coming across the top of some boulders which pours into the rocks at the runnable line, below those boulder is a pool (fed by a sieve above) with a falls that falls into the back of one of the caves near the landing of the first drop, this falls actually falls back under the flow going towards the entrance. If that description doesn't make sense it is because the structure of the rapids and sieves that create them often don't make sense.















Sierra Slide



First Decent of the center line of "Dirty Willy"- Nick M.




Superman Slide is a full on chargefest. There are two drops that make up the entrance that are still unrun and remain there for the taking... its only your face...

tighter than the picture makes it look.

A little more boogy gets you to Craze Maze. The top drop has been run before, this trip was the first descent of the second drop, the third portion of the drop, which consists of a three drop series and is really the best part, has been run but was portaged due to bad wood.



Setting Safety to avoid a 25 foot drop into a sieve:

Andy D is riding in Mexico- check his progress here: crazyguyonabike

We got some rain and got to go kayaking in Alabama, saw lots of friends paddled a few river miles, good times, no photos, no video.

A great cyclist was lost in Chattanooga, our deepest sympathy goes out to David's family. Below are several links to check out on this:
Chattanoogan
Suck Creek Cycle Blog
Suck Creek Cycle Blog more
Drunk Cyclist: Rider Down

Our boys at LVM did a feature on squirt boating on their "monday morning mad house" series and the video featured some TJ action, watch the video here:
Lunch Video
check out their other stuff on the link to the left.

Got a report back from the annual march get together, which I was bummed to miss this year, that there was good water and nice weather for a green run and heartbreak ridge ride. It was also reported that "the big game hunter" now has a bike. Look out fat bottomed girls!



Stay bright, be seen and crack a cold one.