up the creek

"Now we've got a little pen torch, just in case, whereas the old pitmen's lamps used to have a little bulb, but if your battery fused you were up the creek really."

The dog team was barreling up the creek and was drawn in by his commotion, and I barely got the sled stopped and tied off to a tree before they got to him.

I gathered gear, left the trap triggered and hanging from a branch, and made my way back up the creek.

“We economists are up the creek without a paddle in determining whether dog food prices will rise more or less quickly than cat food and/or thousands of other items such as prices of rubber bands, peanut butter, shoes, cars, turnips, etc.,” said Walter Block, an economist who teaches at Loyola University New Orleans.

“It leaves them up the creek.”