Crab Orchard Creek

We caught a good pulse of water and got on this creek with a guy who knows it well, and had a great day.  We launched at 11:45am.  The shuttle is so short that we ran up to look at the gauge before meeting the last of our crew at Oakdale.

There was one riverwide wood obstacle that took our 4-person boating party apart, snatching paddles and causing 2 swims and almost taking away the paddle of a 3rd.  It looked like you could crash through the brush to the right of a log sticking out from the left, but there were a couple of low and solid branches inside the brush that caused all the trouble...we will portage that one the next time.  It would be easier to duck at lower flows--we had 2.25 on the put-in gauge which we would call the high end of medium, or the low end of high.

Our friend knew when to take side channels so we banged down some alternate routes to avoid wood.  I don't think I'd find all those same channels again even if I went again tomorrow.  There was one rapid we scouted, called Russell's rapid because his photo is featured in the guidebook.  It has another name but I can't remember it.  It was high enough to run the far right slot instead of going center left over the slab, but next time I'll run over the slab even at high water because it was seriously manky downstream from that far right slot.

The surfing was incredible but we bypassed most of it because we knew it was a long run and it was a chilly day--we didn't want to be out there when the sun got low.  The last time I was on this creek (some 30. years ago?) I remember how long it felt.  On this day we made it to the Emory confluence in exactly 3 hours with only a little bit of surfing and the carnage mentioned above due to wood.  From there to the takeout was 45 more minutes, just floating and talking.