Scott, Clay, Frank, and I were all loaded up Friday night and had plans to roll out for Russell Fork Saturday morning, little did we know those plan would soon change. We awoke to a beautiful Saturday morning about 6:30 to find that it had rained 3 inches in Boone, we scrapped the Russell Fork trip and chose to go creeking in the high country instead. After some decision making and some map reading we decided to head for Steels Creek. After about 2 1/2 hours of driving around we found the takeout and what we thought was the putin. As it turns out where we put in was not the actual putin, rather it 2 miles above the correct putin. This lead to about 3 hours of hellish portaging (with two defined rapids one unrunable 100 footer and A fun slide) through everything from 600 fpm boulder gardens with just enough water flowing over the rocks to make them devilishly slick, to roto-dendrin so thick you can't see a bright yellow kayak 15 feet in front of you, and finally walking down class 2 rapids dragging a kayak on a safety tether. The creek started to gain a little volume and our hopes of finding runnable rapids increased. We finally came upon a fire road that crossed the creek and had the revalation that this was the intended putin. Finally having enough water to paddle with actually got IN our boats and began making down stream progress we were overjoyed at finding a beautiful (runnable) drop about 1/4 mile downstream we had finally hit the goods. There were huge slides mixed in with drops and portages this is truly an incredible river. There were some incredible, fun, and sometimes huge rapids in the gorge. To finish the day off we found that we had parked the car way to far down the takeout road and we had an invigorated 2 mile walk down a gravel road after 7 hours on the river. Totally exahausted, cold, sore, but grinning, we had it made back to the car. We concluded that the river was awesome and incredibly beautiful but putting in a little lower next time might be a better idea.
