Daugherty Run

This creek is small. Like 15' wide on average and maybe 30' at its widest small. Its steep, blind and very technical. We put in at the pipeline. You put in on a small pool, the creek looks like little more than a ditch, you turn right and start crankin because 5' downstream (litlerally) is the first boof. Its on...right away. Zero warm-up and it only get harder. Putting more than one boat in an eddy, most of the time is, is not an option, so know your groups signals.

There are some VERY nice slides on this run...many are back to back. The slots average 4' wide...many are boofs. The last drop is a phat launcher onto a suprisingly soft landing slide.

We ran it at about 2' over the bridge footer at the take-out. There were plenty of eddies and it wasnt very pushy. We also never went more than about 50' without banging a rock just under the surface (except on the slides of course). We had multiple broaches throughout the day, but none were serious due to such low flows and plenty of rocks to use your hands on and free yourself. The slides were a little sticky (grabby). I would have liked to have seen about another 3'. Put much more water into it than that and Im sure it would turn into a real bobsled run with very few eddies.

As of this past weekend, it was pretty log infested. We made 3 carries and a few spooky limbo moves. We didnt have a guide, so we scouted quite a few times (6-8 maybe) and still did this run in just over 3 hours. Most of the scouts were because we couldnt see what was around the corner and there were no eddies before going around that corner. Scouting can be tough with the thick rhododendron.

It really is a great run. I highly recommend it. But dont be fooled...class V skills are certainly required.