Hiking in to No Name Creek.

The first thing we encountered was a deep, vertical-walled gorge. After taking a brief look everyone except Keel decided to put in below it, and even he spent a lot of time looking at it.

The gorge started off well with a nice double falls totaling about fifteen feet, but then things get ugly. Just below the double falls is a nasty pinched-off flume that crashes into the left wall before dropping down into a flat rock on the right side.

We looked at the bottom drop for awhile and could see no way to run it without taking a big hit, but Keel shrugged it off. "That's why I wear a helmet." he said.

The first big drop in the gorge section.
If you look carefully you can see Brad downstream scouting the crux, a horrible-looking pinch drop that falls into the wall.
Photo by Ryan Scott

Finally everyone was ready and Keel came flying down. He sailed off the entrance fifteen-footer with ease and then squared up on the final drop. He drove hard towards the middle to try and punch straight through but ( more or less as expected ) he got tossed headfirst to the right, where he smacked the wall with a loud crack. Fortunately he was ready for it so he tucked hard and took most of the hit on his knuckles and back, but it looked painful!

Keel styles the entrance falls..

Keel squares up for a big hit at the narrow exit drop.

Downstream the gorge walls peeled back slightly and the creek became wider and more open. We encountered a series of ledges on this section separated by long stretches of rocky class two. The first of these ledges required a tricky right-to-left boof, landing sideways in the boils below to avoid a large rock in the landing. Ryan went first and styled it, and the rest of us followed..

Ryan sets up for the big boof to avoid the rock shelf in the landing zone on the first ledge below the gorge.

The next rapid was a fun double flume with a little hole at the bottom of the first drop that was surprisingly sticky and caused some minor problems for Grace. She surfed it for awhile and then worked her way out on the creek-left side..

Brad runs a fun series of slides.

Just below the double slide we encountered a fun-looking series of slides that were blocked by a log halfway down. I scrambled downstream and tried to move the log, but it had a huge rootwad attached on the far side and wasn't going anywhere. Finally Jarred came down and helped me hold it up while everyone ran the drop..

Keel runs a drop downstream while Jarred and I hold up the log to let everyone past.
Photo by Ryan Scott

The creek ended with a wide-open double slide that was really fun, and then we were at the take out we had selected ahead of time.

Ryan runs a fun double drop right above the take out.

Megi runs the last fun drop just above the take out.
Photo by Ryan Scott

The hike back up out of the creek was pretty hot ( the day had warmed considerably at this point ) so we took our time and enjoyed the explosion of spring flowers along the way. Overall No Name Creek was a nice adventure, but I doubt any of us will go back. The amount of effort required to get into this one was not justified by the number or quality of drops, but I'm sure other kayakers will probably run it some day.