off the pavement / By Seth Naman

Rattlesnake Creek

Paddling an engineered river

(Jan. 31, 2008) S o there we were, drinking beer in a stinky little white car at 11:30 on a Sunday morning, thinking about kayaking 15.8 miles down Ten Mile Creek into the South Fork Eel River. The rain pounded. We were in downtown Garberville waiting on our friend Ed, who was trying to get gas. The power was out in town and the gas pumps weren’t working, so to find gas he had to drive back to Miranda, 10 miles in the opposite direction.

The day had started at Damon’s house, where I met Leif — a big dude measuring in at 6 feet 7 inches, with a big mullet to match. He studies physics at Colorado State, and when I asked what his focus was, he stated, simply, “chaos.” A brief period of silence followed. After we cleaned some of the trash out of Leif’s car and loaded up our gear, the three of us headed south. We met Ed, a man of very few words, in Redcrest. He’s somewhat of an enigma, known to paddle difficult rivers solo and yielding nothing more than a simple nod upon seeing other paddlers.

Photo by Leif Anderson

GALLERY >

After a half an hour or so of waiting, I said, “Well, it’s 11:30, we still have an hour or more to drive plus the shuttle run, Ed’s probably sitting in a long line for gas in Miranda, this car stinks, and it’s raining really hard, what should we do?” Damon, always amped, said “I say we crack into those PBR’s!” So we started drinking. The situation was rapidly deteriorating. After Damon picked up the guide book and read aloud the account of four friends that paddled Ten Mile Creek together — a trip that involved multiple swims, lost kayaks, spooning each other in the rain all night and a helicopter rescue — we started to reconsider. The power outage pretty much sealed the deal. Ten Mile Creek was out.

And so we settled on Rattlesnake Creek.

Rattlesnake Creek follows Highway 101 for about six miles between Leggett and Laytonville. The highway crosses the creek twice as the two trace the same path together, dancing through thick forests mixed with Douglas fir, madrone, pepperwood and tan oak. On our drive, a bald eagle chased a crow through the rain, banking and twisting and diving high over the Eel River. In that moment, I felt scared for the crow. Usually I see crows dive bombing raptors, but this was different. It looked like the eagle meant business.

When we put in the creek was brown and happy, full of water from all the recent rain, thrashing up into the trunks of trees and grabbing at smaller willow bushes as it rushed by. Eddies, calm places to stop, were few and far between. When my boat hit the water it was instant action — dodging branches, trees, willow bushes and rocks. The rapids were pretty consistent until we reached the first sign of human intervention: a tunnel that was about 100 feet long, and about 20 feet in diameter, all dark inside with dingy concrete walls. The static perfection of the shape of the tunnel lay in stark contrast to the amorphous creek, constantly reshaping the streambed and the rocks and the plants that attempted to grow near it. As I paddled through, I could see there was a drop at the end of the tunnel and I made a quick move to the right, paddling down a tongue that made the five-foot plunge considerably smoother than it would have been otherwise.

After ducking under a downed tree suspended across the creek and some more willow dodging, we came to the first solid set of rapids. Part of the creek went left into some ugly looking boulders while the rest of the stream spilled about six feet over some bedrock into a small hole. It was a fun little drop and we all ran it without incident. This rapid was followed quickly by a few smaller drops and then lots more fast-paced tree-dodging, choosing channels when the stream split into fingers, and the occasional hole that required evasion.

We passed several tributaries that donated the liquid from their watersheds to Rattlesnake Creek, bolstering the size of the stream and changing its nature from a punky teenager to more of a grown-up river. Waterfalls constantly cascaded off the stream banks, spraying mist and making the air almost effervescent.

1 2 NEXT PAGE >SHARE