Daniel Creek,

to Bear Creek

Usual Difficulty	V+ (may vary with level)
Length	4.6 Miles
Avg. Gradient	81 fpm
Max Gradient	170 fpm

River Description

According to "thebigone," in Boater Talk, this has been run a few times. It needs a lot of water, and the driving force for running it is not too strong, because by running it, you miss some of the kewl drops of Bear Creek, including Stairway to Heaven, Surrealistic Pillow, and Big Bang.
The takeout for this reach would be the same as the takeout for the Bear. The last couple of miles are on Bear. (The listed mileage includes that part of the Bear; the gradient comes only from Daniel Creek.)

There's some info on the area in the Cloudland Canyon State Park site.

A neat feature of the park is that there are caves located under the riverbed. If you hike down to the falls in the summer/dry season you can hear water in the creekbed draining into some underground grotto.

Some more info: In the early 90's there were some access issues with Bear Creek that AWA was able to work out. The short version of the story is that the park rangers were not crazy about people risking thier necks kayaking thru a state park.
Local kayakers had been boating Bear for a number of years discreetly before a visiting group of boaters from out of state pulled into the park and asked the Rangers where the put-in was. The Rangers reacted by banning all boating thru the park.
One look at the topo maps will show how difficult an evacuation would be. The good news about Bear Creek is that it starts outside the park, and ends outside the park.

To run Daniel Creek will mean pulling into the main parking area in the park, then carrying all of your gear down about twice as many stairs as there are at Tallulah to get to the Put-In. This will probably be in full view of tourists and rangers. My advice would be to be discreet.

These is an option of putting on the creek outside the park. To do this will involve more climbing and rappelling than boating. Bring good ropes and a harness.

Bradley