Coal Creek palmer

Casey and I dropped down into the Matanuska,just up from the parking area, where the creek can be seen across the valley. We crossed and hiked up, river left,right side walking up, on a great trail, and crossed a couple of times when the trail ran into canyon walls, until the valley opened up. The creek was continuous class II-III, at a flow of 200-250cfs, with a couple of sections of class III+. The lower canyon section is interesting,no major drops, it has blind corners, but clean routes, friendly rock, and I really liked it. One section was very narrow less than 10 feetwide, was pretty steep, and would be a handful at higher water.
The hike, and trip over all, was easy, and I want to repeat it next year to see what we missed upstream. (2 hours hiking upstream) Better than I anticipated, even though I am not sure if we made it to the really steep section mentioned in Embicks guide, but I will know more next year.
I’ll post a youtube when I get a chance.

You will see it’s fairly steep. Higher water will turn this into a fun ride. Of course, we did not get pics or vid of the best part, we were looking down instead.