#17 Lake Creek

Typical Lake Creek scenery

The next day after running Clear Creek, Clay, Greg and myself decided to head on up to Lake Creek and giver her a go. All I can say is that this was one of my favorite runs so far and I put it near the top of my list. That is without running the bottom four even. Now I won't give Jahvea the satisfaction of saying it is better than the Big South, but it is pretty damn good. It is definitely amazing as it opens up and you can see huge fourteeners all around. It is also nice because it is longer than most creeks and you are not done after a mile of boating which makes for a great day.

It was running at about 1000cfs which is pretty high, so we didn't run the bottom four which probably would have made it even better. The water was fast and we had no idea where we were going. I like runs like that that where you don't know what lies around the corner and you have to have good scouting and catch eddies. It really ups the stress and I feel makes you paddle better.

We got to tombstone and everything went fine and were then on the look out for NIMBY. Once we got to NIMBY we were greeted by a group who as I asked if we could scout on their land, had Tecate and limes waiting for us before we were even out of our boats. I think we need to rename the rapid. The owner then offered to let me use the cabin when I wanted. So if you want to hang out at NIMBY give me a call. The house overlooks the start of the rapid and is absolutely beautiful.

Big right boof on NIMBY

NIMBY is a long rapid with a boulder garden entrance for about 100yds and then crashes into a wall at a 90 degree left turn. You have to stay off the wall then make a 90 degree cut back through a narrow slot which is guarded by a boil you need to punch over. At this level it was a decent sized boil and backed up into a nasty looking hole/cave?. You then go down the slot and can either go right which has a good boof or left which is a tricky wave/hole punch to thread some rocks and then a smaller boof. We couldn't see what the bottom of the big boof looked like so we all went to the left and it went fine.

Clay pop-tarting his way through Toaster

The next big rapid is Toaster and I don't know what it looked like but it went pretty easy on this day. You have some boogie lead in with a strong curler to the right which can push you into the right shore or I am guessing at other times some wood. You need to turn 90 degrees to the left here and then you have to come through a narrow slot without getting pushed up into the wall on the right. Pretty easy.

The guide book is right on with its description of a monster hole that is hard to notice. I was in the lead for this section and we were worried about dropping into the big four at this point when all of a sudden I was looking down into a huge hole. I remembered that you were supposed to be left and tried to get there but just ended up gutting it down the middle and all of the meat. I took a big stroke and leaned forward and rode a stern squirt for about ten feet like I was poppin wheelies. Greg came through and got side surfed and i was worried he wasn't going to get out. He did and Clay went right and it was all gravy. I did here from a good boater that the next day this hole caused a swim.

Don't you wish you got brains like that?

Soon after we had some awesome boogie and then took out to scout and it was a good thing because around the corner was Brains the lead in to the bottom 4. I have a big head but not big enough for those brains. We then went and looked at Paralyzer. I think it gets its name because if you look at it at 1000cfs you don't move for a while, and if you ran it a good possibility that it is the last you run. One thing was not paralyzed at that point and that was my bowels which indicated it was time to end the run there.

If you are not regular this works better than ex-lax

P.S. I hear some of you like to run the bottom four at that level and big ups to you.