("Pressure" The Dogg Goes Creekin' Video: 17.9mb)
(Photos of Upper Cherry Creek: ChasingRain.com)
Upper “Cherry” Creek has been getting a lot of press lately for being the latest, greatest run. With all the hype, one might say that the Dogg was more than a little curious. Was Upper “Strawberry” as big and bad as everyone was saying or was it just something that adults made up to scare little kids like the Boogey Man, Mickey Mouse, or Barney the purple dinosaur. So, I flew to California during the summer of 2004 to try and run this creek. Having never done a multi-day trip before, I was not fully aware of what it meant to try to use 60-70 pound boat full of gear. More or less, I underestimated the magnitude of the situation. I opted to build my own backpack for the 11mile hike in and decided to leave the water purifier behind since my friends had several and I could just borrow theirs. To make a long story short, I fell behind my buddies due to the constant adjustments I had to make to my cheap backpack. Then, about 5 miles into the hike, my backpack broke. I left the boat and continued with all my gear but got lost about 8 miles in. I camped and was eaten alive by mosquitoes (one eye swelled shut). Being out of water and dehydrated the next morning, I decided that the best idea for my survival was to admit defeat, walk back, and live to fight another day. I may not have been victorious but I didn’t lose my head like Ann Berlin!
One might assume that I might leave that area of California and never return. Will you return, you ask? Your booger, I will! As with all great athletes or superheroes, defeat doesn’t sit well. The Dogg is not one for giving up and, in my estimation, Upper “Watermelon” had won that battle but the war wasn’t over. Did Superman give up when faced with kryptonite? Did Rocky give up when facing Mr. T or the Russian? Did the Red Sox give up when facing elimination against the Yankees in the 2004 playoffs? No, I think not! In all instances, the athlete/superhero came back to beat their opponent into an embarrassing pulp! Well, the Dogg is no different. Would I be the world’s most premier athlete and greatest kayaker EVER if I was going to be a quitter! No, it was time to step up to the plate and show “Grapefruit” Creek that if you bite the Dogg, the Dogg bites back! You mess with the Bull and you get the horns! When I come back, I’m crackin skulls! It’s TRUE! It’s TRUE!
Now, moving on to the summer of 2005, the Dogg was ready for redemption. I flew to Sacramento, where I thankfully stayed with Greg Speicher for a few days while Jeremy Laucks’ Chasing Rain Van could get some engine repairs. While waiting for Jeremy, I cruised around the Sacramento area to pick up chicks, a venture that I was very successful at. Since I appeared in People Magazine’s 50 most beautiful people of 2005 issue, the girls have been hounding the Dogg for some lovin. And who am I to deny them. After a particularly enjoyable rendezvous with the Sacramento Kings cheerleading squad, I decided to switch my focus back to kayaking and Upper “Blackberry.” Once Jeremy was able to pick me up, it was GAME ON! Who was Upper “Orange” to deny you, the anticipating reader, another work of literary greatness from the Dogg! The nerve! As Your Paddling Superhero, it is my mission to run SIK drops and save the world from boring kayak articles! We eventually headed to Upper “Kumquat” and were set to have perfect conditions for the run.
The Park Service gave us our permit and a list of rules to follow while we were in the wilderness. Most of those were things I already knew, like carrying my boat to avoid plastic shavings. I found it very funny that they wanted me to smear my poo on the rocks. I used to get in trouble with the law when I was a kid for lighting bags of poo on fire and leaving them on people’s doorsteps. Now, I had a viable legal authority telling me to go out and smear away! I told the ranger that he might regret asking me to do this but I figured, “What the heck? It’s not my local creek run!”
We drove through the town of Cherry Lake and I took the time to stop by the phone booth and transform from an ordinary citizen like you, the reader, into Your Paddling Super-hero! Once at the putin, it was time to put my game face on. Upper “Tangerine” had bested the Dogg once but that was not going to happen this time. Jeremy told me that he would keep me on a “short leash” to make sure that I didn’t get lost this time. Carrying a boat on a hike of this magnitude is quite a challenge. It is important that you have everything you need, you really have to cross your “t’s” and dot your lowercase “j’s.” However, to keep the weight down, it is a good idea to bring only the bare necessities. I decided to leave the black market stinger missiles that I had purchased at a government auction of seized contraband behind in the van down by the river. Although potentially useful if I saw a bear, they were not necessary and would have added a fair amount of weight. The hike took us somewhere around 8 hours to complete. Jeremy kept asking the question, “Does the fun ever start?” I told him to stop being a moon-faced assassin of joy because it wasn’t going to make the hike any better. Besides, the scenery was nice and the day wasn’t too hot. Prepared with a state of the art backpack, a water purifier, and high quality boots cured in Sicilian Sumac leaves, I smoked the hike in with no problems, a feat that should come as no surprise seeing how as I’m THE world’s most premier athlete. I warned Jeremy not to fall behind because stragglers have been known to get hit by trucks. I think that Jeremy was pretty worn out by the end of the hike because he started talking weird stuff, referencing Navajos, Hopis, and kachina dolls. I was getting pretty worried about him but he snapped out of it once we put on the creek.
We started down the creek in the early evening and headed downstream to get away from the hotbed of mosquitoes that is Lord’s Meadow (the putin). We were immediately greeted by some slides that created some white H2Ooooooohhhhh Yeah! The second good slide was long and dropped steeply, ending in a 15 foot falls. I flew down the slide and caught a major SIKy off the boof lip of the falls. Oh Yesh! It was SCCHHWWEEEEETTTT!!!! I wondered if it would be much more difficult to paddle with a boat full of gear but it wasn’t really a problem. I was a little worried that Upper “Rhubarb” would push me around like a Playschool Corn Popper but this was no the case. However, when you paddle the world’s best creek boat (the Fluid Solo) and you can leap buildings in a single bound like me, your worries quickly fade away!
After a few more sloping ledge drops, Jeremy and I decided that we had covered enough distance away from the mosquitoes and we decided to camp. The next morning, we headed downstream through countless slides and ledge drops. Most drops were boat-scoutable so we made excellent progress downstream. We were motoring along, beating the horse’s behind with a belt! Several of the rapids featured extremely narrow slots that the water was funneling through, which led to some excitement in a few places. We ran through a narrow slot off a 6 foot ledge and one of us was back-endered harshly into the wall. I won’t say who this happened to but we’ll call this paddler Jeremy L. Wait, that might be too obvious. How about J. Laucks? That’s better. It was in this part of the run that Jeremy and I passed a CREW of excellent boaters and young whippersnappers who had decided to hike in at night and do the whole run in a day. This feat strikes the Dogg as a very admirable accomplishment and I would someday like to try it myself, once I have learned all the lines.
It wasn’t long before we had entered the first gorge, which featured some steeper ledge drops. One drop was comparable to Gorilla on the Green Narrows but seemed narrower and sketchier. It looked like it would be a fun drop if you aced it but, if you blew it, you’d be in a world of hurt. Contact with rocks was a distinct possibility for the upsidedown kayaker. A blown line here would really put the lime in your coconut! Jeremy and I decided to walk and were greeted by more good drops downstream. One drop had a 2 foot ledge into a sizeable hole followed by a 6 foot boof ramp that you needed to get to in order to avoid a swirling vat of pure evilness recessed against a cliff. Jeremy and I both aced it but it was a pretty scary drop. Soon, we were out of the first gorge and many great slides carried us to the crux of the run, Cherry Bomb Gorge. We got out and scouted the entire gorge to make sure that we knew all the lines. Floating willy nilly, haphazard, or slapdash into this gorge would likely end in disaster!
Once in the gorge, the creek goes Richter! It gets funky like chicken, in the mix like trail, super like Mario! The challenges posed by this gorge can be quite scary but fear is not an option. Fear causes hesitation and hesitation causes your worst fears to come true! This gorge begins with a sieved out area that you have to portage around to get to Cherry Bomb Falls. I slipped on the portage and skinned my knuckles on a rock. Since nobody makes me bleed my own blood, I was determined to seek revenge at Cherry Bomb Falls. The falls was ominous sounding, like the sound of thin sheet metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. This falls is a very large and steep slide that banks into a wall at the bottom. How high you ask? Well, it was 10 stories tall if it was a foot! It probably drops a total of about 30 feet, going down a steep slope before hitting the launch ramp and falling into the short pool before the wall. I took a look at my watch and the big hand said that it was time to get SIK! Both Jeremy and I came down with left angle and caught major air off the launcher at the bottom. Oh YESH! It was NICHE! 100% Pure Adrenaline!
At this point, we were down in the heart of the vertical-walled gorge and escape would have been nearly impossible. The drops are fun ledges of 5-8 feet, some with some sizeable hydraulics. The most formidable of these is called The Weir, which falls about 4 feet into a dam-type hydraulic trapped in by the canyon walls and a boulder downstream. It is extremely important to get to the left after landing off the drop. I don’t want to even think about what might happen if you got surfed here. Soon the gorge opened up and the creek raced down a very long slide that I reached the speed of exactly 734.3975 miles per hour, using the new high-tech Fluid radar gun that will be introduced at the OR Show. The long slide carried me into the Teacups, which were a series of 6 perfectly shaped drops of 6-12 feet in height, all in a row. These were so sweet that I had to carry up and run these several times. Yeah buddy! I was happier than a kid who just got a quarter from the Nose Fairy for leaving a nose nugget under his pillow!
We decided to camp a little downstream from here on the right since the Park Service told us not to camp at the Flintstone Camp. It was still early evening so we decided to just hang out and kick it like Pele. It would have been nice to have an Eskimo Pie at this point but, because of the heat, the only treat that I could have was a package of astronaut dry ice cream that I bought on E Bay. The warm weather was relaxing and welcomed me to jump in and swim, which was very refreshing. This was all good and fun until I got bitten by an ill tempered large-mouth bass! If you’ve ever been bitten by one, well, citizen, I don’t have to tell you what it feels like! I occupied myself for the rest of the evening with a mini yo yo that I had packed. I must say that this may be the best invention since pay toilets! For dinner that night, Jeremy decided that he was going to cook some mushrooms that he had found in the woods. I warned him that eating them might not be a good idea since they might have been toadstools.
The next morning, after a good poo smearing session and another run of the Teacups, I was ready to head downstream and do battle with the lower part of Upper “Kiwi.” After a quick portage around a sieved out falls, we came to a clean 30 footer. It fell down an 80 degree slope into a beautiful deep pool. This was followed by a narrow boulder drop that fed right into Double Pothole. Double Pothole goes down a steep slope before falling off a 15 foot falls into a short pool followed by a 12 foot cascade. This drop requires a certain amount of precision to avoid the pothole in the center and line up for your boof. I developed a keen eye from my days as a professional boar hunter in Punjab and this skill served me well here. I knew that I would ace this drop because when the Dogg zones in on a drop the outcome is always success. It is an exact science, consistent as gravity! I came flying down the slope and launched a SCHWEET one off the falls and then flew down the runout cascade! Oh yeah! This rapid is top drawer, first cabin! I emerged from the drop with my hair glistening in the morning sun like fresh snot on a nose hair after a sneeze!
Immediately below Double Pothole, Upper “Apricot” entered another gorge and went down another series of Teacups. This one had 4 drops of 5-15 feet in height. I must say that the 2-3 miles from the start of the first gorge to the bottom of this third gorge contain some of the finest drops that this super-paddler has ever seen! For my money, it doesn’t get any better than this! It can get kind of crazy because it never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming, there’s never a let-up. It’s relentless. And then the bar code reader breaks and it’s Publisher’s Clearing House day! I digress.
We go out below the teacups to scout the rest of the gorge. There was a cascady 20 footer into a steep walled section. Below the 20 footer, the run sieved out into a boulder field before exiting the canyon off a 40 foot falls called Dead Bear Falls. Jeremy and I knew that portaging the sieve in this vertical-walled gorge would be almost as difficult as trying to milk a gnat or teach Japanese to a monkey so we opted to walk the whole shooting match. Running this section at this water level was one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard of. Oh yes, it is terrible! However, a group of guys ran the gorge as we were portaging and, when conversing with them later in the trip, they confirmed that the portage was as miserable as we had imagined!
Once around the gorge, I was contemplating carrying up to run Dead Bear Falls. My mind was going back and forth like a weather vane in the wind. Ultimately, I decided that, in order to get the maximum SIKness of the run, I had to run it. How could I look you, the fans, in the face if I had not gone out there and given 110%! You, the fans, expect nothing less from the World’s Greatest Kayaker! The water was flowing under, around, and through the boulders that were perched on the lip of the falls. There wasn’t a space large enough for a boat to fit through. However, I was not going to be denied. I decided that I was going to seal launch off one of the boulders and run it. Jeremy kept calling me a tool and saying that it wasn’t a true run of the falls. Well, I’m sure this subject could be debated until we’re blue in the face but the bottom line is that I descended the falls and it was SIK! I got in my boat on one of the boulders. I seal launched 2 feet, landing on the lip of the falls, took two controlling strokes to line up and plunged 40 feet straight down into the beautiful, deep pool below. I resurfaced perfectly and was beginning to start to celebrate when I got pushed into the bowled out wall on the right. I got flipped against the wall and the current held me there. I tried several unsuccessful roll attempts that were held back by the wall. I was contemplating a swim but then I realized that, as Your Paddling Hero, I must fight through and save myself from the face of danger. After all, when you are stronger than steel and faster than a speeding bullet, there is nothing that can’t be accomplished. I was able to muster the strength to right the kayak and paddle away from the drop in full celebration mode. Being the scofflaw that I am, I eschewed the rule about keeping the whooping and hollering to a minimum and got jiggy with it! That’s the kind of drop that’ll make you stand up and yell, “DOGGPOUND!”
Heading downstream, we continued with more fun slides and drops for another mile. Soon, the run flattened out for a nice pastoral stretch that allowed us to look around and take in the gorgeous scenery that surrounded us. We must have passed a dead animal carcass at some point because a disgusting odor perforated the air. It was a smell that could gag a maggot, even stink would say it stinks! After about a mile of this, the river bottom changed from sand back to rock and we entered a junky section of creek with a lot of sieved out areas. There were a few portages involved and a lot of scraping. All this miserable paddling had me thinking that this section of the run might be the biggest ripoff since the Neverending Gobstopper! However, cutting Upper “Rasberry” a break, it is quite a lot to ask a run to be perfect for 12 miles.
We finally entered a narrow gorge and the water appeared to be staying a little more floatable. We mostly boat-scouted the drops, which allowed us to make good progress. We came to a questionable drop and Jeremy decided to just go for it. The drop fell 10 feet and pinched into a narrow slot with a nasty recirculating hole at the bottom. I didn’t like the looks of it so I scouted. Jeremy was stuck in a swirling mess at the bottom which was circling around near the drop and apparently had a guard rock on the exit. He attempted several times to exit but was sucked back towards the drop several times. Finally, he yelled at me to do something so I grabbed my rope. Before I needed to toss him the rope, he was able to climb out of the eddy and get downstream. I’m sure that all the park n play sessions in Colorado helped with the stamina to hang in there and escape that evil snare. I opted to walk the drop and seal launch in below.
The last mile of the creek contained a lot of steep boogy water, with several slides and a 15 foot falls. Once within sight of the lake, the run kicks it up a notch for one last steep section. Though not outrageously difficult, these drops can pack a wallop to the paddler who has gone to sleep and placed the kayak on autopilot (The trips not over until the boat is tied to the car, complete with bow and stern lines!). Below the falls, there is a 10 foot angled drop into a nasty hole backed by an ugly boulder. A good right boof was required to get through this, which we both aced. Right above the lake, there is a narrow slide that funnels into a powerful hole. Jeremy went deep into the hole and was gone off the surface, disappearing like a beer fart in a whirlwind. I got up some speed and plowed into the hole, hitting it hard like Dick Butkis. The hole slammed back and stood me up on my tail before depositing me upside down in the pool. The final drop is a 12 foot double drop run down the middle onto a clapper shelf and then falling into the pool. We were able to celebrate after that since we were out of the wilderness area and thus wouldn’t be ruining anyone’s “wilderness experience.” Once in the parking lot, Jeremy and I were keeping it real, homie, by blaring some fresh hip hop from the subwhoofer in the back of the Rain Van and each firing up 40’s of Steel Reserve. Only the highest quality beverage for us! We then popped a keg and the girls came rushing in from Cherry Lake. It was like a hummingbird feeder! However, the party ended abruptly when the scary lady with sideburns showed up.
Upper “Peach” was a great run that featured some world class whitewater and covered some very challenging terrain. I am proud to have accomplished a run down this creek and will certainly come back to run it again. The difficult test of carrying a fully loaded boat for 11 miles was definitely worth it. Upper Cherry is as fine of a specimen of steep whitewater as I’ve ever seen! You might want to run it soon, when word gets out that a famous celebrity like the Dogg has been here, they’ll probably start charging admission!
Unfortunately for us, Upper “Pear” is a late season run and we couldn’t find much to run after that. The rest of the California trip featured lots of hanging out in parking lots during the repairs to the Chasing Rain Van and driving around, looking at unrunable (too low) creeks. But that is another story…
Signed: The Dogg
