Check out Trip's video of the first descent!!

Rock creek is a seldom run northwest gem, and for a good reason. To run the creek you have to wait for rain, be ready to go big, and take some risks. You also have to really like waterfalls because there isn’t much in between them!

LJ Groth, Dave Grove, Karl Moser, and Amy Jimmerson of the Epicocity crew took a weekend to run the whole creek and came out psyched and awed by what we found. We first attacked the more often run section, starting with Heaven and Hell, a drop with a crucial line to hit and little room for error. A bit to the river right of the desired line, and it would be very easy to end up landing the 10 foot drop on a huge chunk of rock and getting trapped under it or behind the water falling over the drop. Next came Slide Creek falls, a 40+ foot slide that comes in on river right. This is a sick drop, but only when there is enough water in Rock Creek to fill the pool below it, otherwise it could be an ankle breaker!

Paddling downstream a few miles, there is one drop that the crew portaged, but has been run once, and my respect to the first descender! Next there are a few very minor rapids until the creek drops off a river wide 40-foot waterfall with a somewhat shallow pool at the bottom. Here, it is crucial to avoid penciling straight into the pool, and instead land at an angle in order to have a shallower re-entry to the water. We were all successful of this feat and Dave got a monster boof, completely separating from the water on the way down and landing flat at the bottom.

Next, we heard rumors of two 15-foot slides downstream with a 10-foot drop after them, and a few rapids above and below. No one knew if these drops had been run; so we went down to check them out. What we found was no 15-foot slide, it was an 80-foot vertical waterfall glistening in the sun and begging to be run by the crew. We learned later that a lava bubble had collapsed underneath the smaller slides, combining them into one vertical drop with a deep pool at the bottom. The drop had never been run and we made plans to return the next day and run her.

We spent much of the next day scouting and setting safety. With a crew of 10, we had all bases covered and after much contemplation, I decided to run the first descent of the waterfall we dubbed the Money Drop. Paddling the 50-foot slide into the drop I bounced a bit to the left of my chosen line, caught an eddy at the very edge of the lip, paddled to the perfect spot and set up. I fell for just over two seconds, long enough to think about many things, like "WHEN WILL I LAND!?" I finally did land in a perfect pencil position, surfaced, rolled and gave the crew the thumbs up. LJ was also up to the challenge and followed, repeating the exact line and styling it.

After the 80-foot Money Drop, LJ and I couldn’t look at any waterfall in the same way and couldn’t stop thinking how lucky we were to get the opportunity to experience such beautiful places and run HUGE WATERFALLS!