Hicks Creek, Coal
Bank/Kelly Creek
Sequatchie Valley
Tennessee
Water Quality (1
bad 3 good)
Scenery (1
bad 3 good) 
Maps:
Watershed Map (to
find location and size of creek) Click
Here
Special thanks to Steve Zerfeos for making
the map.
Topo Map: Click
Here
A special thanks to Randy Hale of NorthRiverGeographic for
the map
Free Camping:
There is
paddling friendly camping at the Big
Brush Put-in
in the winter.
Click here and
follow our homemade map to the put -in
Camp at
the Put-in.
Gradient Max. 375
feet per mile Min. : 235 feet per mile
Length 4
miles (depending exactly where you put on during
your walk in )
Rain Gauges: 2.5" of rain
needed.
These rain gauges are nearby to help you figure
out how much rain has fallen.
Dunlap Rain
amazon.nws.noaa.gov/nexhads2/jsp/interactiveDisplays/createChart.jsp
Whitwell Rain
amazon.nws.noaa.gov/nexhads2/jsp/interactiveDisplays/createChart.jsp
Paddler Kirk Eddlemon Photo by Andy Dodson
Here is a shot of the creek once it hits
the valley floor.
Maps:
Watershed Map (to
find location and size of creek) Click
Here
Special thanks to Steve Zerfos for
making the map.
Topo Map: Click
Here
A special thanks to Randy Hale of NorthRiverGeographic for
the map
Class IV.7 - Class 7 :(
Okay let's get this one over with, this one
has lead to confusion. Other websites called
it by another name until this website came
out. .I have heard it called CoalBank...well
to my our old gang it was Stone "Cold" Coal
Bank,It's Stone Coal Bank, and we ran it
into Hicks Creek. Sorry for the sarcasm ,
but this happened on the Walden's Ridge run
for
Morgan
Creek, by others calling it Polebridge ,
it can lead to confusion and I'm afraid that
might have happened here. Hence why the
Sequatchie runs have been adopted on this
website. I think it can lead to people
getting hurt by putting on the wrong creek.
This past spring a father and daughter
put-on
Hendy thinking
is was the
Piney.
So I want to make this page accurate.
Okay
back at the ranch...
Look on page 24 of your Tennessee
Gazetteer , look for Hwy 28 on you
gazetteer, , then look for Cartwright Loop
(road) ...this is a pretty cool road , and
takes you right to the take-out.
The put-in...is off of Daus Creek and in
this day and age, you should use a GPS and
mark a waypoint to get you as close to the
creek as you can off of Daus Road.
Please be mindful of the landowners...
This run I believe was first discovered
by Mark Cumnock and Brian "Cock-o"
Collins.Stone Coal Bank starts off small and
you can screw yourself if you put-in too
high like you can on Deep
Creek. Kelley
Creek helps
this one flow. Speaking of which you can use
Kelley as another put-in,
this is my preferred put-in but it's not for
the lazy. Once "Stone Cold" and Kelley join
hands tighten your ratchet straps.
It has some very neat one-of-a-kind
rapids, it's a micro creek for sure, and its
gradient is a little on the weird side, it
reminds of the run out on Allen
Creek ,
but it still keeps it drops and rapids.
Also note this one is very hard to catch,
even back in the decade it rained (the early
90's )
If you catch this one you will be
rewarded with big drops and cool eddies with
penalty points.
Stone Coal Bank:
Let me say this, we called this one a Class 7
tiny creek, the pictures that Andy Dobson
donated doesn't tell you everything. Once past
these pictures it's a "game on "sieved big drop
game day. The big rapids aren't run by mere
mortals so we kept the classification down on
this one knowing not most would run it. IT'S A
TOUGH RUN. I could go into descriptions about
this run. "Slide here ,catch this eddy here",
and use my thesaurus. If you can paddle this
one you don't need a guidebook :) Trees abound
in here, 15-20 footers with penalty points are
what you will be facing. And on top of that
there are some holes on Coal Bank to keep you up
at night.
The Run Out:
Is fun, and it's mainly Class III-IV paddling
that is fun on creekin'. It may seem less to you
due to the serious rapids you just faced on Coal
Bank. You need to be on constant lookout for
trees. The section stays small, and not much
rain here helps the creek hold it's trees.
Overall:
You will run this one time and then , start
looking at other runs. It's worth doing once,
but only if everything else is blown out.
From Andy Dobson:
The rapid they are running
was the first in a series of three. We only ran
the first. The second was ultra gnarly and was
feeding into the third drop super hard (the
picture of the falls with no kayaker is the
third drop, 50% of the flow goes under the rock
and the lead in is a fast turn pushing left). I
am not sure exactly where we put in, but it was
def on stone coal bank, and not Kelley. The
level was high, we drove to by Little Brush and
it was at 4 feet, totally cranked out. Then we
drove to Pocket, but was too low, so we set our
sites for something in between, the rainfall
varied significantly north to south. I looked
at all the gages on your site and the nextrad
precip estimate that morning to get an idea of
what was going on.
The class V in the run is
comprised of the aforementioned drops only, the
rest of the run was scary III/IV with some bad
wood (kirk swam off a log) and some nasty sieves
and holes. It was definitely worth doing once.
If someone was real hungry and it were similar
circumstances, I might go back in.
Paddler Kirk Eddlemon Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler
Caleb Paquet Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler Kirk
Eddlemon Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler Kirk Eddlemon
Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler Caleb Paquet Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler Caleb Paquet Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler Caleb Paquet Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler Caleb Paquet Photo by Andy Dodson
Paddler Caleb Paquet Photo by Andy Dodson
Photo by Andy Dodson
