Clear Creek

Just by way of historical trivia, several of us--Andy Messer, Billy Parrott, Thor Bahrman, Derek Carlton, Tom Burroughs, couple of others whose names I don't remember--ran this on a couple of occasions back around 2001 or so. At that time, the rock dam at Gilligan's Island was intact--It's since been breached, whether by flood or human action I don't know--and was a simple, river-wide sloping drop that could be run most anywhere. Besides placing the 'Island' rock in the middle of the stream, the breach also narrowed the channel a great deal. There are now trees growing along river left on ground that was under water back then. We always considered everything from the dam down to the bottom of Right Hook to be a single long rapid, which we called Tunnel, due to its proximity to the old railroad tunnel on river left. We were later told that the person who did the probable first descent back in the sixties or seventies had named the rapid Wedding Ring, because the big undercut rock at the bottom had supposedly torn the wedding ring off his finger. Incidentally, the whole run is scoutable--with just a bit of bushwhacking here and there--from the rail trail officially known as the Clear Creek Hollow Trail and locally known as the Fat Track.