Whitetop Laurel Creek Carnage Video Global Posts

Whitetop Laurel Creek Carnage Video

wildwildwes wrote 114 days ago:

Please allow me to set the scene for you, before you watch the awesome video below by Jamison Evans… Josh, Jamison, Jen, and I headed to Whitetop Laurel after church on Sunday to be greeted with a healthy medium/high flow! The group decided to head to Creek Junction to put-in which would make for a 9 mile bomb run of mostly class III read & run style rapids with two signature class IV rapids (The Slot & Big Rock Falls).

We put on a little before 3:00 P.M., so we knew we were going to have to boogie to make it to the take out before dark. We zipped our way down to the Slot and Jen & Jamison elected to walk it to not slow down the trip. Josh and I ran the drop with out to much incident, but it was a bite burly. Jen decided she was not comfortable with the pace at the bottom of the Slot and did not want to slow us up. So she walked back 1.5 miles to the car on the Creeper Trail. Jamison, Josh and I headed on down the river.

As we entered intoTaylor’s Valley Jamison got hung up in a small shallow bolder garden and flipped. He took two sharp hits to his head that left him with a bloody nose, a sore eye, & the decision to purchase a full face helmet! We quickly recovered him, his boat and gear and got him back on his way mostly unscathed.

Then we came to BigRockFalls… I have run this rapid many times and at many different water levels. I knew the lines well and I was mostly sure we could run it with out scouting to save some time (1^st Mistake). I told the guys the two options of lines for the water level we had and I decided to go left with a tree partially blocking the entrance to the right line. Josh and Jamison followed suit, but Josh going into the drop blindly was not sure where the lip was to pull his boof stroke so he went over the drop on edge and flipped at the bottom. Jamison was only a few boat lengths behind him and I’ll let the video do the rest of the talking…

http://www.vimeo.com/35528334

Lessons learned:

#1 – Don’t try to bomb a 9 mile run in two hours with a newbie. It causes extra stress on them! We should have played it safe and put in atTaylor’s Valley for only the 5 mile run.

#2 – Don’t undermine scouting class IV rapids with a newbie (My bad example and in retrospect would have probably saved us more time).

#3 – Wait till your buddy clears a feature before you enter, so you don’t ruin a great boof!

Thankfully we got Jamison put back together as quickly as possible and boated to the take-out with half an hour of daylight to spare! Good times, good times and alls well that ends well!