Carnage on Coker Creek

February 8th (?), 2004

    After a second descent (?) of Conasauga Creek, we stopped by the Tellico Plains Hardee's for nasty, greasy food, and headed over to Coker Creek. Our caravan of vehicles got a bit separated, and we decided to head to the put-in. Upon turning onto the secondary road to the put-in, we met a truck with boats coming out. He rolled his window down and motioned us to stop. "You guys with Kirk"? We indeed were. "We just drove down and looked at it... Pretty huge... lots of wood." The fellow had a concerned look as we thanked him and continued down to the put-in. Upon arrival, Nick told us not to worry about it, it "wasn't necessarily true".         Whatever.
      

    While waiting for almost an hour to set shuttle, we scouted the first two drops. Pretty huge, but no wood. Very intimidating. Mucho gradiente in a short distance. Several folks in our group hum-hawed, debating if they were up for it or not. I was beginning to lost my mettle, cold and damp from the previous run and getting kinda tired. Several guys decided to run the first drops and hike back up, to have something to do. The rest of us watched intently as they made the 18 and 12 footers look easy. Shit, why not. We suited up as the shuttle gang arrived, and headed down.

    First up was Coker Creek Falls, consisting of a 5-foot entrance ledge, a short pool, then a broken 18-foot drop. The 5-foot ledge had a schweet auto-boof, and there was a big eddy on river left and a smaller eddy on river right. I smacked the boof and swerved into the right eddy. Not really remembering my landmarks, I got out to scout (again). I picked out what looked like a good launching point, then proceeded to miss it by about 7 feet. Shit. It's not really a straight drop, but more of a steep slide into several different ledges that shoot the water out, along with your boat. Slip down the slide, ramp the ledge... boof! Sweet.
   

    Next was Hiding Place Falls, with a 3-foot entrance ledge, a steep ass approach, and then a turning 12-foot drop with another auto-boof type ledge in the middle. I plopped over the entrance ledge and lined up. Several small ledges and water going DOWNhill brings you to the brink. There was a nice eddy on river left just above the drop which I elected to blow by at immeasurable speed. I decided I didn't want to hit the ledge in the middle of the drop, due to my piton paranoia, so I ramped over the pillow on the left side of the brink and dropped the steepest part, narrowly missing a nice, flat piton rock on the left at the bottom. Yikes. Next time I'll run the center and bounce that ledge.
   

    Downsteam is some fast Class III boogie which brings you to a small pool and another blind drop. This is Bubble Notch, where the creeks squeezes through a tight notch (about 5 feet wide) and over a small bump and then fans out over a 12-foot ledge. Off the drop to the center was a flat rock just a bit downstream with water flowing over it. To the right was the sweet line, and to the left were some piton/pin rocks and another small ledge. There was a nasty hole at the bottom which was partly backed by the rock in the middle, just downstream. I watched several folks run it with varying techniques before I decided on mine - go fast as hell and hope to miss that hole. I planned on rocketing off the center and then shooting left, which turned out to be a bad plan. I got some speed (as much as possible with numb hands), blew through the notch aimed left of center, then got stalled and turned right just as I went off the lip. Sweet, sidesurfing a hole below a waterfall. Why me? Someone shouted "Throw him a rope!" as I desperately leaned downstream and braced. Now sidesurfing nasty holes is nothing new for me, and I leaned onto my left side and sculled like mad to keep my edge up. Luckily the hole kicks right, so I sidesurfed it out and managed to keep my head dry and intact, to the cheers of all the spectating boaters.
   

    A short stint of more boogie water brought us to The Clapper, a 9-foot drop onto rocks with a tree laying across the top. No real way to run it: if you tried to get speed and boof you'd take the tree in the face, if you ducked under the tree you'd take those rocks in the feet. This was a short portage.
Just downstream was a horrific logjam, with a line to the left which slid down a shallow slide, through a small hole, and around a pillowed rock into the river right eddy. This was a crucial eddy to catch, because immediately downstream was Slidosaur, a nasty Class V at this level. I whipped into the eddy with a vengeance, and got out to take a look at the slide.
   

    What a f-ing site. Slidosaur started with a 4-foot drop onto a long, shallow slide with various boulders in poor locations. The slide was long and fast, and the water bounced off the sides and funneled into the middle, and was going FAST. At the bottom was a small hole just in front of a large mid-stream set of rocks into which ALL the current was blowing (later re-named Reynold's Rock...). There was a big, calm eddy to the right, but was guarded by a small eddy wall and virtually impossible to get into from the slide. To the left of the boulders was a tight slot with a 90 deg. turn to the right just behind the boulders, but this line was blocked from upstream by a large, slanting 4-foot drop onto more rocks. Really no where to run it at this level, as the mid-stream rock was nigh unavoidable.
 

    No sooner had I formed this opinion in my mind than I heard someone say "Watch this shit!". I looked upstream as Nick Reynolds roared off the entrance ledge in his big Gus, a crazed look in his eyes. He braced up on top of the slide, then tore ass down the middle and directly toward the mid-stream rocks. The hole at the bottom slowed his momentum very briefly, then he was blasted onto the rock bow first and dissapeared in a maelstrom of exploding water. Jesus f-ing Christ, there's not even anyone down there yet to throw him a rope, and he's pinned!, I thought. Within a few seconds he bobbed up to the left of the boulder and proceeded to swim through the rest of the rapid, another shallow slide and a 6-foot drop at the bottom. I then noticed the pillow on the mid-stream boulder had tripled in size as the current blew around his completely pinned boat. Needless to say, we spent a fair amount of time portaging this monster and attemping to recover his boat to absolutely no avail, and it was completely buried and out of reach. Resigned to defeat and losing ALL his gear save for what he was wearing, Nick headed up to the trail to the put-in. No sooner was he out of earshot that the pillow dissapeared and his battered Gus popped to the surface and headed downstream. After a bit of a chase, his boat was snagged. And upon my arrival from the ass-whooping portage, I looked downstream and saw his paddle floating in an eddy. Lucky baastaad. Sebastian, who was watching our progress from the bank and shooting photos, shamelessly and generously offered to carry his boat and paddle back to the put-in, since Nick was long gone. With all this mess taken care of, we saddled up and headed downstream, right around 4:45.
 

    After Slidosaur the run completely mellowed out, consisting of absolutely non-stop steep class III boogie and fun little slot drops all the way to the take out at the John Muir trail, just upstream of the Hiwassi Dries. This section went by extremely fast with no portages, strainers, or bank scouts. By the takeout everyone was grinning ear-to-ear and to our utter delight, some campers at the takeout had a massive bonfire burning, which they invited us to warm our frozen appendages by. After re-warming it was a short, steep carry up to the cars, and a long haul out the muddy washed-out road back to the put-in.