Rock Creek

Rock Creek is a hidden gem located in the southern Bitterroot range of western Montana. The creek has remained fairly unknown through the years due to its location at the far end of a lake, requiring either a four mile paddle across the lake, or a hike around the bank. Being the resourceful people that we are, we borrowed a company jet boat, and lazed our way across the lake. Arriving at the far side, we had only a short mile or so to hike up to put-in. The creek starts off with a few low angle slides, and then drops into the main rapid of the run. With high flows, the main drop is a ten footer leading into a long slide, then some ledges and boulders, finishing off with a nice mini-gorge. The whole rapid was probably close to a half mile long. Below this was a nice sliding flume, and then an interesting spot where the creeks splits into two channels. The right side is a triple 15 footer set with a questionable landing, while the left side is a log choked double twenty foot falls. If we could get into this drop to clean it out, I suspect it would be one of the best drops in the state. Hope you all enjoy the photos by Rosalynn!

Drinking my booty from Graves Creek before heading up to run Rock Creek.

Beautiful scenery looking towards the South Fork of Rock Creek.

South Fork Rock Creek.

Terrible views on the hike into Put-in.

Stoked to be at put-in. The creek looked more like California than the typical Montana bushwhack adventure.

Frank and I scouting the middle of the main rapid. The log jam to the right looked nasty, but fortunately was not a deal breaker as so much water went to the left.

Frank Preston running the lead-in drop to the big slide.

Casey Wilcox about to hit the bottom kicker on the slide.

Casey, all smiles as usual.

Ryan Knight dropping in.

Ryan styling a fun boof below the slide.

Ryan just above the last mini gorge section.

Martin on the slide.

Hey, where are you going with my ball?

Looking back upstream towards the biggest rapid. Just downstream from Casey is a nice flume slide. We had some interesting carnage about five minutes after this photo was taken...

Casey about to hit warp speed.

Ryan, hot on Casey's heels.

Well this could get interesting...

After an unfortunate dual pin on a downstream rock, Casey and Ryan were both out of their boats and swimming. They managed to recover Ryan's boat rather quickly, but Casey's Burn was swept downstream over the triple 15 footer set. we found the boat pinned in a sieve half way down and after some creative rope work, managed to pull it free. Luckily, we found Casey's camera just downstream in some bushes, safe and sound in its Watershed bag. Whoop Ya.

Martin trying to catch up with the downstream swim team.