Sunlight Creek

Sunlight Falls to Old Highway Bridge

Difficulty	IV
Length	2.6 mi
Avg Gradient	n/a
Gauge	Clarks Fork Yellowstone River Nr Belfry Mt
Flow Rate as of 41 minutes	1910 cfsIV-Vhigh runnable
Reach Info Last Updated	July 18, 2025

River Description

Continous boulder garden creeking in a beautiful, isolated gorge. Gradient is steepest right after put-in and mellows throughout the run. Difficulty will vary significantly with flows. Watch for bears on the hike-in and be heads-up for wood hazards.

Take-out: Take FS296.3A to Sunlight Creek Picnic Area, location of an old bridge across the creek.

Put-in: Cross Sunlight Creek on the Hwy 296 bridge and turn right on Sunlight Road. In 3.4 miles, immediately after a stock fence ends, turn right onto FS101-1B. Take the right fork and drive to the end of the road. A hiking trail begins below the waterfall overlook.

River Features

No river features have been added

Trip Reports

Low water Sunlight Creek - Trent Pearce

Jul 18, 2025

Did this obscure run on 7/16/25 based on beta from the Stafford/McCutchen book, which got some of the access details a little fuzzy. Clarks Fork at Belfry showed a rain bump to 1000cfs, and this roughly correlated to a minimum flow for Sunlight. Easy class III+ boulder gardens at this level, and surprisingly all wood was passable at river level. The downstream gorge section below the take-out looked sick but was clogged with wood.