East Fork of the West Fork of

A river section is going to be a bit obscure when it’s a fork of a fork. What happened to branches? Alf has been snooping around the upper reaches of Lookout Mountain with mixed results. But this is the prize run of the lot so far. This run is not a classic by any means but if the water is fairly high and you want tight without too much risk, it may be worth checking out. The first 3/4 of a mile is almost flat and has a tree or two. You then arrive at a fun eddy hop or sluice which is no problem at any level. It then mellows again before you hit Long Branch, which comes in right in the middle of the biggest drops. Eddies are small but available. At the bottom of the longest sequence a difficult to reach boof is just around a tight turn. Immediately after that the creek drops between and over some big boulders. The 6' drop on river right was a no go for us due to a bad hole and log combo. With decent water an easy line should open up on the left. The II and easy III is intermittent but fun down to the confluence with the West Fork proper. Then you have one or two mellow drops with a lot of flatwater and three dams. Each dam could be very dangerous and should at least be scouted.

There are pleasantly few logs considering the stream width and how bad some nearby runs are. There are a few to go over and walk, and several to limbo under. The shuttle is short and easy. The gradient is not easy to figure out since the USGS maps are in meters. It takes less water to run this than you might imagine. We ran it at low but acceptable water just after the West Fork gauge (now defunct - read approximately 20% of flow of LRC @ Blue Pond - editor) peaked at 360 cfs.