Wilson Creek

March 14, 2010 at 0" to +1"

Steve's Wilson Creek Trip Report for March 14, 2010

Today Fast Fred, Craig and I ran Wilson creek for the second weekend in a row. After all the rain the river was running at + .5" - a good class IV+ from what I understand -as the river becomes class V at levels of +6". Last weeks run was at the -5" level, so it was a step up in action! We met two other fellas [Josh and Paul] to paddle with at the put in. The river was fun, pushy in places where it was not last weekend by comparison.

I had a nice little blunder in the mank above 10 foot falls. I bounced off a rock the wrong way, was leaned back over my left stern quad slightly and flipped in very fast shallow water. I executed a quick stern deck move and in Fred's words "styled the rest". I found myself in a tight eddy just above the drop for which I had little room to get out of in the correct orientation. I peeled out into the down stream flow, missed my mark and shot straight down the hero route of the drop which was scary as hell! But I came away unscathed without a crash.

The next bit of excitement was HUGE excitement. We decide to scout Thunder Hole. Below Thunder Hole was a large portion of a pine tree in the river that had been farther upstream last weekend. Today it was dead center of the river. After my last episode with 10 foot falls in the pushy mank I decided to portage here because of the pushy water and the strainer. One screw up would result in a swim into a strainer. A swim I did not want to make! The fellas asked me to set safety since I was not running it, and I agreed. That turned out to be a good decision.

Fred had a nice clean line through the run but as he exited the drop of Thunder Hole and cleared the hole, his down stream progress was blocked by Craig who was still battling the upstream current of the hole. Fred was quickly turned broadside in the river and flipped. Due to his close proximity to the strainer he wisely punched out right away. He was about 3 feet out in the screaming fast whitewater from me as he rocketed by, trying t o swim his boat to shore. Well out of arms reach. He ditched the boat just before broaching on the pine tree in the mist of the worst part of the current. His head was hardly above water and the boat was now giving him a real beating. I launched the rope. It passed perfectly over his right shoulder and he grabbed on. Hand over hand, pull after pull I pulled him in. He was out of breath and exhausted by the time the whole ordeal was over. He had taken all he could take and laid down on the rocks while a team of 8 of us freed his boat.

We all decided that the tree was too dangerous to leave in the water so we set up for a mechanical advantage z drag and removed the tree from the water before someone got killed. Fred was lucky in the sense that I followed my gut and chose not to run the rapid, and that I happened to have a throw rope with me. Fred himself said that when the rope came he was about out of energy. Had he lost his strength, he could have every well flushed under the log and drown.

So for any of you out there that do not carry a rope -CARRY A ROPE! You never know when you will need it! Boat safely! If your gut tells you not to run something, DON'T! And my final word of advise - if you are going to do a risky move -like run a rapid with wood in it, or pin potential -SET SAFETY IT PAYS IN DIVIDENDS! The rest of the trip was business as usual - a bunch of fun. There were some other nice hole trashings that happened in our group, but none nearly as deadly as Fred’s near miss by far. I had a swim -my first one in 2010, first one since November 2009 at Power House Rapid on the Ocoee. It was rather embarrassing. It was the last ledge hole, about a 5 minute paddle from the take out. Basically I got sloppy, hit the hole and flipped. I blew free of the hole and had several roll attempts that sucked and I went for a dip.

FastFred's Comments

Take a Swift Water Rescue class and practice your techniques. I took Edgar Peck's two day Swift Water Rescue course last year at Big Rock on the Nolichucky and it likely saved my hide. Almost within moments of removing the strainer another boater flipped and swam; he was not aware we had removed the strainer or he would have rolled.

Wilson Creek Rapids and info