Me and the boys managed to get on McCoy Creek (a tributary of Yellowjacket creek, which drains into the Cispus) this weekend, and although it could've used a little more water, a good time was had by all.  McCoy runs with heavy spring melt and it seems we're not the only ones who thought it might be a good idea, tho from the look of their pictures they had significantly more water.

 

Stuckmeyer's account was pretty much the only beta we had, and his telling suggests an intensity to the run that I didn't particularly feel, although I will agree that it's deeep in a gorge and portaging options at river level were all kinda sketchy.  The run itself is characterized by bedrock slides and mini-gorges, connected by shallow stretches of granite-boulder streambed. 

 

Fish, with his eye on the next ledge, coming quick

 

Paul had some good sequences today

 

Chinook falls was the most complicated runnable rapid on this reach of river- portage options were poor, and the lines that looked best were away from the main flow.  The final entry ledge called for a cross-grain move to the left in shallow water to make the middle-tier pool, and the main slide (which you really wanted to run far right) sent 95% of its water into a pothole that looked like it would be a little complicated to carry speed through- and, of course, the meat of the bottom drop was right there.

There was some trepidation in the scouting process.  This shot was taken from river left, downstream of the middle-tier eddy... a spot that was tough to get to.  Incidentally, more than one of the guys thought the traverse back up to the boats was the sketchiest thing we did all day.

 

 

After Chinook came this seemingly-unnamed falls... estimates of its height vary, but I'll call it 20+' and perfect.  OK, so it might really suck horribly if you end up far left at the bottom, but the move to get off center or right is very doable.  Oh, and ze boof is glorious.

 

From here, we had one heinous mandatry portage, followed by more fun (and stunningly beautiful) mini-gorges until the confluence with YellowJacket Creek, which tripled our volume and provided a solid mile of excellent read-and-run IV rapids before petering out into 3 final miles of class II.

 

For more pics, (and for full-size images) be sure to visit the gallery!