Urban Creeking!

Newsflash -- the post below caught the attention of a Post-Gazette employee, and it resulted in a feature article in the paper's GETout magazine. Here's a link to that story!

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I'd been eyeing up Nine Mile Run (9MR) for some time. Actually, it had been about three decades.


I grew up just at the top of the hill from 9MR, but we called it Shit Creek because of the inevitable outflow of a combined storm runoff and sewage system. The stream's "source" is an approximately 20-ft diameter pipe behind the old Foodland, and the water that flows out comes from runoff of the roads and residential areas of Pittsburgh's East End municipalities of Wilkinsburg, Edgewood, and Swissvale.

When I first decided to take up whitewater paddling I had no idea of the outer limits of the sport. Creeking, for one, attracted me because of its exploratory and adventurous nature. Essentially, creekers go out after a big rain to find small, tight streams to paddle down. However, we typically do it in the mountains, where the creeks are steep and the water is (mostly) clean. Waterfalls are a plus, as are steep, narrow slots. Some inherent dangers are down trees blocking passage ("strainers"), tight squeezes between rocks through which boats or bodies cannot fit ("sieves"), or sticky hydraulics that tend to recirculate buoyant objects like kayaks ("holes").

After spending a few years building up the skills to confidently seek out and paddle some of the steep creeks in the nearby mountains I was then lucky enough to then spend a few years paddling those creeks.

But, the mountains aren't the only place where creeks run high with rain.

Don't get in the water is pretty much what this sign says

Urban creeking comes with its own set of thrills and hazards, and 9MR is the perfect prototype for urban creeking. The thrills and hazards of the urban creeks are not necessarily the same as they are where the gradient is steep. The holes on urban creeks here are generally not very retentive but we really have to prepare ourselves for things like E.coli and side-stream culverts gushing into pools of swirling water. And you have to watch for blunt objects shooting out of those culverts (like plastic kids' toys, for example). Strainers are possible, and are sometimes created by a discarded shopping cart or 60's vintage Buick. There is a lot of plastic floating about, and a bottle containing a mysterious pale yellow liquid gets me as nervous as a pinning rock. Then, some urban creeks go subterranean. That's especially disconcerting, and when the pipe that the creek disappears into will fit a boat, we tend to get squirrely. On the bright side, at least we don't have to contend with rafts.

Shit Creek gets its name from what the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association describes as "The Problem":

Why urban creeking can be hazardous for your health

"Most of the City of Pittsburgh uses a combined sewer system, meaning that both sewage and stormwater flow through the same pipes. . . This means that each time we have a rain that the pipes cannot contain, sewage spews from these overflow sites directly in Nine Mile Run. . . If you are around one of these sites during a heavy rain, you might see a "fecal fountain", or combined sewer overflow, pouring directly into the stream."

That's sufficiently gross, and so urban creeking isn't advised when the water is too high. Rather, we're looking for that sweet spot where the runoff is as high as possible without mixing with the sewage.

This is extreme kayaking; not for the faint of heart. While it may be class 2 whitewater, the funk factor kicks it up to class 3, maybe even 4.

The view from an eddy formed by a cage full of rocks in Thompson Run.

A year ago, my friend Matte and I ran something called Thompson Run in Penn Hills, PA. The put-in is behind the dumpsters of the Kidz Corner day care, and after passing the Home Depot truck docks and going under at least three roads, the take out is just upstream of an impound lot in Turtle Creek.

Today, 9MR was at that perfect level. I was lucky enough to have some time just as it got there. The two-or-so miles to the Monongahela River in Duck Hollow was surprisingly scenic. How often does one get to paddle under the skeletal girders of old bridges built to carry slag from the steel mills? And to do it at the foot of mountains of the slag is icing on the cake. The paddling was just exciting enough; each of the approximately 12 drops were simple pour-overs or short slides with a rock bounce or two.

When I got to the Mon, I ditched my boat to be retrieved later and jogged home, straight into the shower. The entire excursion took under an hour. Typically, people would be suspicious of a solo descent of a creek not paddled before when there is no photographic evidence or witness account. In this case, I have a feeling the kayaking community will just take my word for it.

Git r dun!

(disclaimer: I don't actually think I'm the first to run 9MR, but I believe I may be the first to admit it!)