Dicks Creek,

1- First WMA Gate to Old Waters Creek Campground (Falls Section)

Usual Difficulty	V (may vary with level)
Length	0.75 Miles
Avg. Gradient	135 fpm

Gauge Information

Name	Range	Difficulty	Updated	Level
CHESTATEE RIVER NEAR DAHLONEGA, GA
usgs-02333500	2000 - 20000 cfs	V	09h22m	508 cfs (rc= -0.1 )

River Description

The Falls stretch of Dicks Creek is a little under a mile of some roadside park & huck gnarr. You can see it all from the road. Rather than staying on the water for the 1.5 miles of flat water to the old campground, most folks take out and walk the nearby road back up to run again.

Park anywhere near the first gate (open except from January 1 to about March 15) on Dick's Creek Road, but don't block the road. Restrooms are available on a side road jus off Dick's Creek Road on the nonriver side.

The well-known Waters Creek Campground is now closed: USFS has turned it into a day use area. Parking on the river side of the road is gone, but parking is available down the short dirt road across Dick's Creek Road from the old campground.

Starts with a gnarly manky drop full of undercuts on all sides with a nasty undercut rock and a few nasty potholes tossed in marks the top of this stretch. Its also got a log stuffed in the center.

This is followed by a big slide in the bend in the road.

Then the big, 20-something foot vertical falls. Watch out for the piton on the right side, and the undercut on the left.

Then another slide.

Then a slide, with another piton on the right and an undercut on the left.

Then another big slide, less steep, but with a big rodeo type hole in the middle, and a strainer where you would want to roll if you just flushed out of the hole.

All of these drops have fast moving flatwater between them. All of them are roadside. All can be portaged. None of them are particularly clean. After the last slide its about 1.5 miles of flatwater to the big slide above Waters Creek Campground, so we made that a separate run.

DIRECTIONS: From Turners Corner, take Highway 19 west just over a half mile and turn onto Dick's Creek Road. (Look for the "Mt. Pisgah Church" sign.) This reach begins at the ranger station or at the gate just uphill of it.