Rain Chaser 2: Laurel Hill Creek, May 28

By John Snitzer

After months of drought that left almost all the regional USGS gages marked varying shades of brown, signifying flow that is below, much below, and extremely below normal, we enjoyed a deluge: 4-6" of rain over several days that pushed all those gages into the dark blues, much above and extremely above normal. Thank you climate change. This created a wealth of paddling opportunities this week. Two club trips were developing: Passage Creek with its steep boulder section and Sideling Hill Creek with more modest gradient but in a beautiful forest. How to choose?

Then Miki Komlosh came up with a compromise, Laurel Hill Creek, with both the steep boulder section of Passage and the spectacular lush forest of Sideling Hill. And it had lots of water. Miki, Jim Pruitt, and John Snitzer (all K-1) put on at noon with 1,110 cfs at Ursina. It was a wonderful run. Running Laurel Hill Creek on a fine warm day is pure joy.

Laurel Hill defines "continuous." Nothing hard, generally Class II, but miles of class II with unrelenting current. At that level there are pourovers and holes. Surfing opportunities abound. The stream starts out just below Whipkey Dam as fast-moving flatwater, then picks up a few ledges and boulders, then becomes one long pushy rapid. Not too difficult but demanding concentration and attention. A swim could be very long. The three crux rapids all happen where the creek makes a sharp left turn through sandstone boulders. Everything was read and run, and we had a dry hair day. The continual waves push the paddler into a rhythm—almost like music running through your head. It is tiring for old people. Consider supplemental oxygen.

This creek runs through a fine oak-hickory-hemlock forest. Everything is lush and green after the rain. The ninebark and the mountain laurel were in flower. Impressively, the forest is almost uninvaded by exotics along most of the creek. This is refreshing after paddling through thickets of MF rose, Japanese knotweed, and exotic honeysuckle elsewhere. Trip was rated 11/10 as per Spinal Tap.

A note on levels. The Ursina gauge is just downstream of the run, so your level is lower than the gage when the creek is falling, higher when it is rising. Difficulty is due to the continuous character of the rapids, not the difficulty of any one rapid, so it is very level-dependent. I remember a run at 800 cfs as benign. Our run was good at 1,110. A few hundred more cfs would push up the rating. Plan accordingly. The takeout at the footbridge cuts off two miles of flatwater.