First D Bullet Creek 09 May 2009
Mike “Louie” Lewis (OC-1)
Chad Lewis (C-1)
Mark Cumnock (K-1)
Fred Alten (I-K)
Special thanks to Chris King for helping with our shuttle.
Bullet Creek falls off of Starr Mountain in Tennessee and is a super steep creek.
You have ½ mile of flat-water, and a 1 mile Class II paddle out boogie water, and one mile of Class V with
Laurel and Rhododendron hades.
Morgan Creek on Walden’s Ridge is wide open compared to Bullet. We caught Bullet on perfect timing,
on our shuttle. We gambled on a
flash of rain from an approaching storm front. (Mobile SmartPhones Rock)
Our gamble paid off. Once the shuttle was set we watched the two local creeks come up, so Bullet was a
go. Once on Bullet, it was bush /limb dodging until we came to the first rapid, from there it picked up.
Once into the gorge it was full on Class V creeking, with Class V portages you earned every foot you
paddled and you earned every foot you scouted and portaged. The laurel was intense. The worse I have
ever experienced in my 20 + years of paddling.
Chad Lewis, Fred Alten and Chris King trying to figure out the location of the put-in with it
dumping rain.
Here is the first major rapid, the insult to injury? It lands into 1 ft of water. It’s a clean drop
except for the landing.
Here is one of the better rapids. This picture does it no justice, on river left is an over-hang undercut, (not shown)
with most of the water heading towards the undercut and the middle section of the drop is about a 15ft
than lands on a slab .Chad Lewis, nailed this drop , with a sideways hard landing due to the manky approach.
(not shown)
Fred’s attempt was less technical with straight-on approach with spectacular results
Chad broke his boat on this drop. Before the day was done, Chad would be getting even more new gear
after this run.
The next major rapid that got caught on a camera…(that doesn’t mean we were Japanese tourist : )
Also another rapid that the picture does it no justice….
This rapid had a very blind approach with 15 foot long slide for its entrance (not shown), then the water
tried to push you into undercuts, the run out landed into a <15 foot pool, with sieved out “death on a stick”
logs clogging the main chutes.(not shown)
The approach was also a hard left then haul butt to the right “get on the gas approach”, which was super
manky. Here Chad Lewis broke his paddle, and did a quick bailout, onto a rock, with a one-handed bear hug.
His quick thinking saved his hide. Running this with a broken paddle with the death sieves coming up, would
ruin your vacation plans.
This picture makes it look like Class III, It’s not …..
After a brutal portage of us crawling on our stomachs due to the thickness of the laurel, and rapids with
log blockages, we discovered this rapid. This picture also does this rapid no justice also.
The approach is long and is multi-moved and maked out into an major undercut, then you run the slide,
most of the water is heading river right into another undercut. The hole was sticky and you needed hull speed
to clear it. Here is the bottom section of the rapid.
Mike “Louie” Lewis running .50 CAL
(I named it .50 CAL ‘cause I wanted a sniper to shoot me after the portage.)
After another brutal and intense portage, we found Bullet Creek Falls; here is the approach to the falls.
The portage was very intense, the rocks were slick and if you fell in, it was your arse. The portage was just
as horrible. You had to “Chinese Fire Drill” your boat to your buddy, and then we crab crawled down
the cliff, while hanging onto tree branches, and lowered our boats to the next guy using ropes.
The approach had all the makings of a Toxaway Rapid, until we saw it’s landing.
Once at Bullet Creek Falls, we showered off and ran more Class V. Yes it lands on rock : (
Here is the Bottom section to Bullet Creek
Here it actually turns into fun. You finally have enough bedrock to actually start scouting
without fighting the Laurel and Rhododendron, here we got to pick up the pace, so even
less pictures were taken. This section has Class V boulder gnar. Pick your line, and take
the lick.
Once on Yellow Creek, it mellowed out, and it we paddled out to the take-out with only one mishap due to a strainer.
I will also be adding more intel about this run on the WaldensRidgeWhiteWater.com site in the following weeks.
Mark Cumnock