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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
Gradient Max. 375 feet per mile Min. : 235 feet per mile
Length 4 miles (depending exactly where you put on during your walk in )
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
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