TR Paint Creek

[Tony Daniel]

Date: Sun. Aug. 19th
River: paint creek kingston-above mahan
Level: a couple of inches below the low water bridge
Coordinator: none
Participants: Tony Daniel and Freeze (Doug Ackerman)
Comments:
After bailing on an upper New Trip and feeling the need to chase water, I went to paint creek hoping to hook up with some paddlers.

I stopped by "the waterfall" enroute to Mahan when Freeze stopped by. He saw my post and
decided to join the fun and we left my car at the usual take out spot.

We drove down to Mahan (no sign of anyone) so we headed up to Kingston and put on. I was pretty comfortable with just 2 of us, having done the creek a number of times, and Freeze and I do a good job of keeping an eye on each other.

Early on we came to some new wood where some old wood had been. Easy enough to duck under in an eddy. At the first island we went left and it was clear. At the second island we split up and both ways were clear but scrapey.

In one rapid I got spun around and then nailed another rock pretty good but neither of us (Freeze hit a rock as well) really got close to flipping. Just before dreaded drop we got passed by four kayaks- Freeze said a quick hello Todd R and Neal. Our runs were bumpy at dreaded as they tend to be at this level but we were on our lines.

We made it over the pipe (where the culverts used to be) and took a break. I spent some time attempting to tighten screws on my boat since I had been taking on quite a bit of water.

Westerly falls my angle was a little too far to the right but I stayed up while the back of the boat got surfed for a few seconds, I remembered the strainer below the waterfall and went right at the island.

I was a little surprised by the log on river right before the last drop of Little Heinzinger but we both did well. I noticed my boat was feeling really heavy.

The next couple of rapids I went through a bit out of control. Lots of water sloshing around.

I pulled over to dunp and the boat was more than half full. Found a hole in the hull under the seat, and used some firestarter (cotton balls, coated in paraffin) to plug the crack/hole in the boat.

Freeze patiently waited a couple more times while I dumped out water and reapplied a patch before we finished the run.

Took us about 4 hours to complete the 7.5 miles- not at all speedy but not bad given the circumstances of having to stop to empty.

Special thanks to Freeze for just showin' up and goin' my speed which is a bit slower than most other folks.

So how weldable are pyranha boats? I take solace in knowing a paint creek rock did it in, as opposed to me just dragging it across the parking lot or down a portage trail- all things I do with a boat regularly.

All in all a good day on the creek, guess I'll go boat shopping- the fence at gauley festival is coming up soon.

[Doug (Freeze) Ackerman]

You posted your TR while I was writing mine, so I'll just post a second one here.

Paint Creek Rock Festival

Tony's post about running Paint Creek interested me, but since he got no feedback on level, I figured that it was not running. Then Dustin posted that a trip was meeting at 10am, so I wolfed down some breakfast, loaded my gear, and took off for the (unknown) meeting place. It was nice of Dustin to organize this trip while on vacation at the beach. I decided to drive along the river to assure I would meet any others and I found Tony parked and checking out the falls. We decided that we two were enough to make a trip even if we did not find any others (which we did not). We set shuttle and launched ourselves into the turbulence.

Paint Creek was quite muddy, which gave it the appearance of a pretty decent, certainly not very low, level. However, it turned out to be rather low. It was about 2-3 inches shy of overflowing the low water bridge at Mossy. In addition to being rather deceiving about the level, the muddy water camouflaged many of the rocks. We became acquainted with a number of them, many masquerading as small brown waves. It was a nice day and we made leisurely progress.

In the first half-mile, we encountered a new downed tree behind a house on the right. We were able to sneak under the base of the tree on the right shore. This one may be a problem at higher levels. We continued downriver, massaging rocks with our kayaks.

Just above Dreaded Drop, the 10am trip that we had intended to join passed us. Todd Richendollar and Neal Poorman were running with two others at a pace much faster than our languid moseying. Todd cheerlessly stated that he had probably already removed a layer of plastic from the bottom of his boat. We talked a short while and they went on. We did not see them again.

Tony & I planned to get out at the bridge to carry over the green pipe across the creek. However, it had a tree laying on it that pushed it down enough for us to jump it, so we were not forced to carry around. But being two old men needing a break, we stopped anyway (we HAD planned to do so, after all). Tony also needed to drain a lot of water from his kayak, a clue that we did not immediately recognize.

Resuming our trip, we ran on down through the Falls and the next couple of significant rapids reasonably well. At this point, Tony wanted to empty water from his kayak again. He had 3-4 inches of water inside. I don't see how he was getting through any of this rockapalooza with so much water. It seemed a lot to have from just 15-20 minutes of running without much splashing. Turning his kayak over, we saw a hole under the seat about an inch long. Tony rummaged through his dry bag and found some oakum to plug the hole, and we resumed polishing rocks.

After this, we (mainly Tony) tried to take lines better suited to our kayaks' hulls. We also moved a bit faster so that we would cover more distance between sinkings. We still scraped many, many rocks.

In one of the steeper rapids, there was a new tree, somewhat submerged, on the right. Tony was surprised to find it in his normal line and he apparently had to scramble to execute Plan B. As I have not run this enough to have a normal line, it looked to me just like another rock to dodge, which I did. I did not realize it was a tree until Tony pointed it out from the bottom eddy.

We stopped one more time to dump water and to apply more oakum. Despite all our breaks and relaxed pace, we were back at the takeout less than four hours after first arriving there in the morning.

It was a fun, sort of lazy, day. I have run it a bit lower, so this may not be quite as rocky as I make it sound (though it is a good theme for a trip report, yes?). The hole at the bottom of the falls had plenty of oomph, so there was enough water to make good stuff when it was constricted. Overall, we had a good time on a run we don't get very often in August.

[Brent Samples]

That’s a good level for August. I figured out the difference ibetween the rock I use at Gallagher and the low water bridge at Mossy. When we checked the rock this morning it was probably all the water coming in from tributaries below 15 mile branch. Given the heavily localized rains yesterday and Friday and the high water event at Eskdale (Cabin Creek) which on the other side of the mountain. I think Piney May be a better indicator with these localized rain events. Paint Creek is always a treat in the summer time. Somehow it only runs in the summer on days that Durstim or I are out of town

[Woody Davis]

@ Tony.. made me think of ELF run on Dries..

Sounds like a fun day scraping paint

[Dustin Johnson]

Aug 19, 2018 19:54:04 GMT -5 Brent Samples said:

That’s a good level for August. I figured out the difference ibetween the rock I use at Gallagher and the low water bridge at Mossy. When we checked the rock this morning it was probably all the water coming in from tributaries below 15 mile branch. Given the heavily localized rains yesterday and Friday and the high water event at Eskdale (Cabin Creek) which on the other side of the mountain. I think Piney May be a better indicator with these localized rain events. Paint Creek is always a treat in the summer time. Somehow it only runs in the summer on days that Durstim or I are out of town

In case folks didn't know, the USGS gauge on Clear Fork has moved. 12.6' is now about summer base flow. There is flow now though, Clear was around 400 cfs last Saturday. I've been trying to get a new minimum on the new gauge, but as Brent mentioned, these summer storms seem to be heavily localized. There have been several times coming home from work, the creek looked almost runnable at the structure behind the abandoned gas station downstream at Mahan, but when I got to Mossy, all I saw was some turbid water and a lot of rocks. 

Still would have liked to run Paint in August.