Anyone who knows me would, by now, know that I live hardcore. Everything I do (or atleast every physical activity), from kayaking to playing kickball with the 8 year olds that I teach everyday, I attack with an all out, no holds barred attitude (by the way, for those in the dark, I am an elementary school intern this semester). So it would make perfect sense that Manns Creek would be my favorite creek of all time. It is just about as hardcore as they come and it keeps going for a long time. Some might say that me and Manns Creek were made for each other and I wouldn't disagree.

With that intro, you could imagine how excited I was when Joe Stumpfel and Chris Skalka wanted to go run Manns Creek on Friday, March 5. We headed down Thursday night and arrived in Fayetteville at around 2 o'clock in the morning. Luckily, we had the nice shelter of THE GHETTO to sleep in that night. By the way, The Ghetto is the storage building next to Starrk Moon. We awoke the next morning frozen in our sleeping bags (or I was but I have a cheap bag) and ready to paddle. My buddy, Kurt, from Accident, MD rolled in to join us as well. We went and ate breakfast but, afterwards, Kurt's vehicle wouldn't start. We wasted an hour trying to find a mechanic and ended up giving a push start to get the thing going. That lost hour would later come into play in a big way. We ran our shuttle and made our way to Babcock State Park where we putin. We started at about 12:30. Manns Creek is a 7 mile run according to the guide book (the locals say it is 5) and it drops at a rate of 280 feet/ mile. The creek was running a sweet -2 inches (it was -3 the previous time I ran it). I decided to go upstream and run a sweet slide into the 15 foot Grist Mill Falls. I also got a sweet boof off the 10 foot dam just downstream. I headed downstream on a gentle slide to meet the others who had decided not to run the 2 drops upstream. We headed through some rocky drops and a sharp bend into a 7 foot drop onto a slide before getting to the first scout, Gladiator. It was a weird angled small drop into an 8 foot drop followed by a runout pillowing off into a 6 foot drop. A sweet rapid in my book although I thought that the small drop above the 8 footer was kinda tricky. Joe ended up flipping in this drop but redeemed himself with a rail grab off the 6 footer. We all had nice lines here. After several steep boulder drops, we came to Pillage and Plunder. This rapid goes off an 8 foot drop into a rock then through a tight slot and off a sweet 6 foot boof to the right. The top drop was a little tricky and I ended up with a slight piton. Everyone else appeared to have a similar line here. Chris got a sweet boof off the bottom drop. The boof was to Joe's offside and he ended up going deep headed to the left and pitoning hard enough to disconfigure his nose cap a little. We snuck around Mystery Hole because it looked a little sketchy but I would like to try it someday. In the sneak, I ended up a little too far left. I eddied out above an ugly drop on the left and decided to ferry through a slot in the center. I got pushed against a rock and my edge caught which sent me over this 2 foot drop/slot upside down. It was kinda wild under there to say the least but I rolled up smiling. Soon, we were out scouting again and I recognized this drop as Goliath. It is very steep and is one of the sweetest rapids on the run. We scouted from the right bank but I told everyone that there was a sweet boof ramp on the left so we went over there. There was a tree above the ramp but I thought it was jumpable so I jumped it and launched a kickass boof off the ramp. Everyone had nice boofs here and Joe did a sweet rail grab. The next part of Goliath necks down into a slot, heads at a rock and makes a 90 degree turn off a 5 foot drop that has ugly pin sieves around it. I totally aced an awesome boof off this drop (It was NICHE!) and I'm sure that my hooting and hollering could be heard all the way down in Cunard. Everyone else followed going a little deep and Joe had a decent grab here. It wasn't long before we were at the footbridge that signaled the last easy place to walk out. It was now 3:00 and it had taken us 2.5 hours to do the first mile and a half. I thought that the run would calm down some after the bridge but boy was I ever wrong. The steep boulder piles continued on for what seemed like forever. We came to one drop that was clogged by trees. We portaged the top drop on the right because of the trees but decided to run the nice 5 foot drop below. Joe walked on the left and noticed that the far left part of the tree was sawed off to make the drop runable. We'll remember that for next time. The 5 foot drop that we did get to run was pretty sweet. I ran a little too far right and landed against a rock where I bashed my paddle and my elbow (one of these days I'll get elbow pads). Everyone else ran further toward the middle and had sweet boofs. In one boulder rapid, Joe flipped coming into an eddy and rolled up just next to a boulder that prevented him from going downstream into the rapid. Soon, we were at On Ramp which was quite a rapid. It was a sketchy 7 foot boof in the middle of the river followed by a tight boulder garden. I aced a schweeeeeeet line off the boof and I think everyone else did too. We got out and scouted Off Ramp which is a sketchy 4 foot drop over a rock with pinning sieves on each side. Getting to the scout rock required hanging onto a log while jumping across a channel of water. After the scout, none of us were real thrilled to run that drop so we walked it. However, the log became unstable on the jump back over and it almost tumbled on top of me as I barely made it across. I had a little luck on my side because I didn't want to be swimming in Manns with a log on top of me (I wouldn't want to be swimming without the log!). The next drop that we were looking for was Lunatice Fringe. However, we had several tough drops before reaching that one. We had a tight boof through a rock pile with some turns and a tight slotty rapid leading into a sloping rock that we had to run up on to hit a tight 6 foot boof. It was offside for Joe so he ran a nice right side line but Kurt, Chris, and I all launched killer boofs through the main part. We took a look at Lunatic and it looks totally insane! It is a 10 foot drop into a rock that looks like you would piton and stick in there for the rest of your life. However, from experience I know that you will come through without hitting anything as amazing sounding as that is. But experience wasn't going to over rule my gut so I walked this drop along with the rest of the group. After some more steep bouldery stuff, the run mellows out to Class 2 for a short while. Then, it picks up again with some more steep boulder drops. On one island, there was a sweet 10 foot drop with an awesome boof that Kurt and I totally nailed (it was sooooo NICHE! YESH! It was!). There was one drop where we eddied out above it on river right to scout. Chris flipped trying to catch the eddy and ended up running the rapid blind after taking a good head shot and hanging in for the roll. Kurt screamed directions and words of encouragement as Chris was able to navigate his way through the rapid. I never got to look at this drop because the rest of us ran a right side channel and totally avoided the left. Soon, the run goes back for a second helping of Class 2 which allowed us to make good time against that ever-setting sun. In one small drop with a nasty hole and a log, Kurt got pulled back for a surf and, after several nasty windowshades, he had to swim. His boat stayed in the hole for a long time before washing out and then it took a lot of effort to get the boat to shore. Kurt redeemed himself, though, because there were several rapids with trees and he would always paddle ahead and boat scout the trees before usually finding a way to bust through. This saved us a lot of precious time. It wasn't long before the rapids picked up again and we were forced to do more scouting. We came to a 6 foot drop with a log pinned parallel to the current and rocks on the right and left forming an ugly slot. I boat scouted and it looked like you could boof so I went for it. I didn't get a boof and went a little deep with a slight piton. I felt myself being pulled backwards by the hole so I grabbed the log next to me and hung on. I did a 45 degree tailstand and came shooting out of there. I told Kurt that he needed to paddle real hard to jump the hole but he ended up bouncing through as well. Joe and Chris had seen enough to know that that drop wasn't worth running so they began their arduous portage on the left. Soon we were at the area where I pinned at the last time. It is a small rapid but Joe accidentally got a full backender splat in the slot that I had previously pinned in. Not long after, we were out scouting again. This drop was a 6 footer followed by a steep boulder rapid with a right and left channel. We scouted from the right bank so we could only see the right side but it looked good to go to me. I got in my boat, launched a schweeet boof off the 6 footer, eddied out and headed for the right side channel. As I entered it, I realized that it was going to be tight for me to make the turn to avoid the tree pinned on the right so I made a last second eddy move. This helped me line up better and I went flying down a neat flume of a rapid which continued well downstream with a boulder garden and a 5 foot boof at the bottom. I eddied in the middle to try to see if the left was ok for the others. The left was runable but you had to be far left to avoid a pin rock and I was too far away to communicate that to the group. They all walked the top part and met me for the bottom part. Soon, we were at Bouncing Betty which was an 8 foot drop into what appears to be a piton rock. It is very similar to Lunatic and takes the faith of knowing you won't piton to make it through. Otherwise, it doesn't really look runable. I decided that I was going to run it and had an awesome line but the rest of the group walked to save time. It was almost dark at this point so we needed to move. We snuck some trees to the left and then came to the top of another steep rapid. I made a quick scout and assessed it as good to go. It was a sweet sloping ledge into an 8 foot boof. Kurt, Chris, and I all had hot lines down this one. The next drop was a 6 foot boof to avoid a rock pile but there wasn't enough daylight to justify attempting it so we all got out and started hiking. We made the mistake of hiking out on the right. I figured that we couldn't be far from Liquid Drano which is about a half mile from the end. There is a road on the left side but it is a steep climb to get there so I figured we would be better off hiking the right bank. It started off as a plateau for a ways before we reached a steep section that we had to lower our boats down. Kurt went down and grabbed the boats as Joe lowered them with a throw bag. Joe let my boat go a little too fast and, when he reached the end of the rope, the boat almost pulled him down the hill. We struggled for awhile walking a lot of steep slopes and avoiding hard to see tree branches. Then, we reached a super steep area with a steep climb up and the river bed down. Chris and Joe went ahead without boats to see if there was a plateau anywhere soon. I looked at the huge boulders in the river bed and with the roar of the creek came to the conclussion that we were at Liquid Drano. That was kind of frustrating because we had thought that we had past Drano about an hour and probably 3/4 of a mile ago (the entire walk out would have been frustrating for me except that I was so pumped up from the creek that it didn't seem to matter to me). Chris and Joe came back and said that there was a plateau but they didn't know how long that it would last. We contemplated stashing the boats and walking out without them. However, we would have had to walk across a railroad bridge when we reached the New. This didn't sound real safe so we shot that idea down. We knew that if we didn't get somewhere quick that we would have to sleep out in this wilderness. We huffed it up to the plateau and followed that for awhile. I was ahead of everyone and I started heading up a small hill. At the top of the hill, I noticed that I had stumbled onto a road! Excitement once again filled my body! We were going to make it out of there! We were going to be saved! We just had to pray that the road would take us to the New River. We were able to move quickly down the road which paralleled the creek for the most part. At one point the road head back upstream which started to take the wind out of my sails. However, it soon turned back toward the New and the vehicles. We finally made it to the railroad tracks along the New totally exhausted. We had a sweet slide down the bank into the river and then a ferry across against a strong current from the high river ( I think the New was running 8 feet). We reached the banks and were finally able to hoot and holler about what a day it had been. We had been put to the ultimate challenge but we were able to rise above. The creek had challenged us but we took our time, scouted when we needed to, and ran what we were comfortable with. The walkout was hard but cooler heads prevailed. There was no arguing or finger pointing, we knew we had to keep going to make it out of there. We arrived at the cars at about 10:30, loaded up, and headed to Starrk Moon to let Dinver know that we were still alive.

Everything about that trip was a hardcore challenge, from getting down the rapids to getting off the river to the takeout through the dense forest. Men with weaker wills would have been crushed by the challenge. We knew that we had taken some setbacks but we got past them. It was a lesson on how to enjoy the fun parts, handle the tough parts, and, most of all, become a MANN!

Bobby
Starrk Moon Kayak Platoon