Well, there’s really nowhere to begin except at the beginning. Saturday morning, 3am. Jason, Brian, and I are still awake, staring at the radar screen on the internet. We are scheduled to meet with the other rafting patrons at 7am (!) at the HPER building to raft the Big South Fork. Now, looking at the big stripe of red extending across the state, we’re having doubts. The BSF is already running at 3,000 cfs, and the plateau is scheduled to get 3 inches of rain in the next 12 hours. The next thing I know, the phone is ringing and I’m in bed, 6:45 am. Tim is on the other end, of course, cursing and muttering about how we said we’re getting an ‘early start’. So by 11am, we have all eaten breakfast twice, checked the gauges 25 times, looked at the radar, and rounded up Tim, Brian, and David over at my apartment. We decide to meet at the Wartburg Obed/Emory ranger station to check the gauges (again).

    We arrive there around 12:30, and look at the graphs of gauges. Wow, looks like Clear Creek is at 8,000 cfs and rising. Emory at Oakdale hasn’t caught up yet, at 9,000 cfs and rising. I suggest Crab Orchard Creek, since everything else is obviously going to be at floodstage. I am voted down, however, in favor of a high-water run from Jett to Lily. Ok, fine. So we head down to Lily Bridge, the takeout, as I curse and sulk. When we get there, to everyone else’s surprise except mine, Clear Creek is a brown, muddy, crashing resemblance of the Grand Canyon. Immediately, everyone except Jason changes their minds about running it. Once again, I suggest Crab Orchard Creek, which just begins to get good when the Emory at Oakdale hits 7,000.

    So we drive back to Wartburg, and then take the road down to Nemo bridge. We stop to look at Nemo rapid, which is completely, totally washed out. As in flat. Amazing. Head on across the bridge and up into Catoosa WMA. We cross the one-lane plank-board bridge over Island Creek, whose emerald green waters are cascading around the bend and out of sight. It’s probably a little too high for us. Head on up into Catoosa, on one-lane gravel roads, until we come to a large, iron gate barring further progress. “Area Opens April 1st”, the sign informs us. Shit. Probably within five miles from the put-in, we turn around and drive BACK to Wartburg, to take a gigantic loop around the plateau in an attempt to access the put-in from a different direction. 50 miles and about an hour later, we pull up to the Pine Orchard bridge over Crab Orchard Creek. It’s now 3:30, and dammit, we’re going to paddle today. David decides that since he needs to be back in Knoxville by 6:30, he will run our shuttle for us and then head out. Utterly grateful, we throw all our gear and boats into and on my truck, and cram all five of us in and take off. We speed off to the put-in, and three wrong turns and two map stops later, we arrive at Flat Rock Ford at 4:30. There are several other boater cars parked across the road, so this must be the place. Keeping in mind that none of us have ever been on this run before, we throw our gear on, jump in our boats, and wave goodbye to David as he pulls away in my truck, heading back to the takeout. No turning back now, we peel-out into the swiftly flowing current.

    The first mile and a half or so are uneventful, the only ‘rapids’ created by trees in the current. We paddling swiftly, trying to make good time since daylight is fading fast. Soon, there are some mild riffles, which quickly turn into waves, holes, and jets of current. Hmmm… all these rapids have trees in the eddies, big waves, and swirly eddy-fences. Maybe the water is a little high. Oh well, there’s no way out but down. We continue on, crashing through rhododendron brambles where the stream fans out and bends around corners. The rapids begin to increase in intensity, as the stream cuts deeper and deeper into the Cumberland Plateau. The scenery is magnificent, with luscious green rhododendron and conifers hanging over (and sometimes into) the stream.

    The rapids progressively get longer and steeper, until we come to a blind drop where we can’t see the bottom. Jason takes the lead, followed by Brian, myself, and Tim in the rear. As I fight through the standing waves, I catch a glimpse of Jason’s paddle sculling wildly in the air, a sure sign of a keeper hole. Then, when I’m virtually on top of it, I see it: a 2/3 river-wide, 4-foot high pourover, with one Jason C. getting severely trashed in. Not wanting to plow into my comrade, I backpaddle furiously, managing to kill all of my speed before I plop into the hole. Backender, flip, munch, munch, munch. Roll up, still in the hole. Wow, this is a big one… windowshade, munch, munch, munch. Roll up, still in the hole, sidesurfing. Damn, wish I wasn’t in a creekboat. Keep the edge up, scull, windowshade, munch, munch, munch. Roll up, still in the hole, immediately windowshaded again, munch, munch. Roll up, gasp, see Tim’s red RPM whiz by my head, windowshade, munch, munch, munch. Enough. Where’s that eject cord? I know this skirt has a handle somewhere, munch, munch. There it is. Eject. Lose the paddle, swim down to get out of the backwash. Resurface, gasp, look back at the hole. Wow, the creekboat is doing cartwheels now without me in it. Shit, another hole, sans boat. Swim, dive, munch. Resurface; hey, there’s my boat. Grab it, wash into an eddy. Tim has my paddle, thankfully. I look across the creek and see Jason clambering to the shore dragging his boat, suffering from the same calamity as I did. “Outstanding!” he shouts to me, quoting the description of the rapids we had read earlier in Southeastern Whitewater. “Outstanding” I manage, as I pour the 67 gallons of water out of my MicroBat.

    We continue on, shaken a bit. With a group of four boaters, two taking a swim is cause for alarm. Had it been three, we would have had a major problem. Brian and Tim knew this, and also knew that it could have been them in the hole, so this sort of dulled our mood for the remainder of the run. We came to Pat Hill’s Locker, the only rapid of note in the guidebook, where the stream tucks into an undercut right bank. It was so washed out that the undercut was easily avoided. We then came to the other rapid of note, identifiable by a horizon line. We pulled over to scout, and Tim immediately began dragging his boat through the brush, intent on portaging. After looking at the mess of pourover holes, roostertails, and shallow slides, myself, Jason, and Brian followed suit with the portage, concerned now with getting off the river before nightfall overtook us. The run kept building in intensity, with more and more perennial streams feeding the rushing waters, and rapid after rapid after shallow, ledge-hole rapid.

    After one more portage around a giant, river-wide strainer tree, we came to a large pool on the edge of a campsite. This was quite an unusual ‘campsite’, with a large 5th-wheel camper trailer parked in the trees, a playground slide rigged to slide into the river, and lots and lots of chairs, benches, and hammocks. Very Deliverance-esque. I could almost hear the banjo playing as Tim got out of his boat, walked up, and knocked on the trailer door to try and determine where exactly we were. No one home, about 15 minutes of daylight left, and having no idea how close we were to the takeout bridge, we decided to walk out. No sooner had we made the decision and got out of our boats than a giant widow-maker crackled, rumbled, and crashed into the river about 20 yards downstream. There is no doubt in my mind had we continued on that the tree would have hit one of us. Creepy. So we shouldered our boats and headed up the gravel road leading out of the gorge. About 2 hours and 2 ½ miles later, we crossed the bridge and walked up to my truck, parked near the Church where David had left it. After collapsing in the parking lot for a while, we changed clothes and headed back to Knoxville. Just another epic paddling adventure on the Plateau.

    A side note: after returning home, I checked the gauges to find that when we put on at 4:30, the Emory River at Oakdale was spewing 29,000 cfs of water, mud, and debris. I’m not sure exactly how this corresponds to the water level on Crab Orchard Creek, but I think it might have been a little high. I’d do it again, though.