Kayaking Hyalite Creek

Hyalite Creek lies about 20 miles south of Bozeman and offers some excellent low-volume creeking. We were on it at medium levels. The run is a short and fast paced class IV+, with pinning, piton, broaching potential all over the place. It is a very bad place to be upside-down, and several of us were very thankful for our helmets and elbow pads. If you’ve never been down the creek but you’re thinking about going, I recommend doing it with someone who has been down it before and knows the lines. A class 5 boater could probably read-and-run most of the creek, but I had my hands full just following a seasoned veteran. The section is only 1.5 miles long, but it is full-on the whole time; we ran it twice. When it was all done, everyone had cuts and bruises. One person snapped their paddle trying to brace and ended up swimming a very difficulty section of the creek. We had to z-drag the boat out from a snag in the middle of the creek. It’s an incredible run and we were smiling in spite of our soreness.

Tagged: Powderfin, Outdoors, Outdoor Gear, Hyalite Creek, Creekbating, Hyalite, Bozeman, Montana