Brunet
Hanson Road to Hwy.27 at Town Line Road (6.5 miles)
| Difficulty | I-II(III) |
| Length | 6.3 mi |
| Avg Gradient | 12 fpm |
| Gauge | Brunet River Approximation |
| Flow Rate as of 26 minutes | 28 cfsbelow recommended |
| Reach Info Last Updated | March 2, 2022 |
River Description
Running parallel to (and being the next adjacent watershed East of) the Chippewa River, the Brunet runs through some fine scenery.
Paddlers may look at starting further upstream, below the dam at Winter Lake, adding 3.65 miles to the trip. While there may be some whitewater interest in the early going, the bulk of this distance will be more like lake paddling. (The river drops only 20' in over three miles for ~6 FPM).
The stretch we recommend is 'front loaded' ... very early on, there is a half-mile with and effective gradient of 54 FPM. Unfortunately, it is followed by very nearly 2 miles of fairly flat water (5 FPM). Things perk back up a bit for three miles (14 FPM), then revert to just 7FPM for the final mile.
Expect to find some fine class I-II boulder-garden rapids, and one possibly class III-ish ledge.
River Features
Put In
Drainage area: 73.5 square miles
As calculated by USGS Streamstats V4.3.11, drainage at our listed put-in is 73.5 square miles.
By our take-out, it is 88.7 square miles, an increase of ~20%.
NOTE: Since the Brunet has no active online gauge, we have set up a 'virtual gauge' using the S.Fk.Flambeau near Phelps, using relative drainage areas.
While that gauge is ~20 miles away, and the Chippewa at Bishops Bridge near Winter is much closer, 'the Chip' has dams regulating the flow (resulting in a very artificially 'stepped' flow pattern), whereas the Flambeau is not subject to that drastic regulation.
As with any virtual gauge, it will not have nearly the accuracy for portraying boatable flows (compared to a real gauge on a section of river). Therefore, EXPECT that there will be (perhaps numerous) occasions when the virtual gauge will be wrong (showing this section as 'runnable' when it is not, etc). That said, we feel ANY sort of gauge/indicator should be better than having NO gauge/indicator.
Take Out
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