Coal Creek

BETA

Stream: This is an obscure Oregon stream up in the headwaters of the Middle Fork Willamette near Diamond Peak that provides an adventure style challenge to the type of local boaters who enjoy that kind of boating.

The first mile is steep, dropping about 400 fpm.  There is a larger rapid in the middle of the run that marks a transition to less gradient (still 150-200 fpm) marked by a boulder garden leading into a vertical wall on the right and the most significant drop of the run.  There are no committing canyons or features out of the ordinary on this creek, and I recall being able to deal with everything at river level.

The lower portion of the creek is more open, and on our trip had a fair bit, but not overwhelming amount of wood.  The run is bridge to bridge.
  


Flows:  Not sure, but we were able to guess a good exploratory flow from intuition so it must run when the stuff nearby is running.






Access:  Take Hwy 58 SE out of Eugene past the town of Oakridge, then take NF-21 up the West side of Hills Creek Reservoir.  Eventually you cross a bridge over Hills Creek Reservoir, 10 miles later turn right over a bridge across the MF Willamette and stay right after the bridge onto NF-2133.  1.3 miles after the bridge a road to the right leads to the take out bridge ( 43.4943, -122.4231).

Put In:  Backtrack from the bridge and continue upstream on NF-2133.  In 4.4 miles Coal Creek goes under the road through a culvert at the put in (43.4401, -122.424).

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Trip Report
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Ben Mckenzie and I had been chatting about this one for awhile.  The gradient was good, and it was a sister drainage to Staley Creek.  At some point Ben got a chance to get out there and scout some of it at low water.  He said it looked neat, and had some bedrock and ledges.  Ben also said he only thought he saw a couple pieces of wood, but that he was also daydreaming for a lot of it so may have missed some.

That was enough for me, so we went and checked it out at some point.  The access was good, we parked at a bridge and drove up to another bridge over a culvert.  This culvert was a fun way to start the trip!

We knew the first mile was the steepest at 400 fpm, and expected to be portaging a fair bit in here (Ben had not scouted this part).  We were surprised when it was pretty much all runnable, even if there was some strange in there.  I walked a couple of the sections that Ben ran.

At the end of this steep section the stream matured and spread out a bit.  There was one long boulder garden that dropped down into the tallest boulder ledge yet with a vertical right wall below (we portaged left) that marked the transition from steep and tight boulder rapids to more open ones with the occasional steeper rapid.  This transition period had a few large boulder ledges, Ben still reminisces about one of those boofs to this day.  It was also down here that the wood started to play a larger role.   Ben started to recognize some of the stuff from his scout, but was surprised by the wood, validating his earlier hypothesis that he may have been daydreaming during the scout trip.

The gradient eased off some more and we made it to the take out bridge well before dark.  Ben scooter shuttled, and he only had to push it up a couple steep hills.  In hindsight the stream was a lot more runnable than I had expected, and a nice little adventure.



   -jacob