Deer (Black trib.)

We ran this yesterday (4/22/2022) at 2k on the correlation gauge (East Branch Fish Creek).

At 2k, there was only a tiny bit of scratching and it could largely be avoided. I'd say difficulty is probably similar to the Salmon river in the gorge. Maybe a couple of easy III's or hard II+'s. We only had one strainer we had to portage which is kind of miraculous considering how long the gorge is. It is very continuous. There are eddies to pull off into every once in a while but it kind of just goes and goes and goes. It's a pretty section, but there's not much relaxing. It would probably be spectacular in the fall as it's just choked with sugar maples (and there's a large sugar bush operation at some point down in the gorge).

There are some proper III's in town. The biggest direct drops are the two 3 foot ledges at the bottom of the rapid, but you can T up to them and run them pretty cleanly. The top two are a little more technical (make sure you scout all of the rapids there). The one under the bridge seems like it may be the meatiest of the four. There's a tongue on the right I'd advise if you're in an open boat, otherwise the laterals and waves at the bottom may knock you over if you bomb down the center (that's what happened to me). After the bridge drop, there's another drop maybe 10 yards after but it has a clean slide on the left side. There's an eddy at the bottom you can catch too if you do dump. The next two ledges you'll have to scout depending on water level. My partner ran them both on far river right at 2k. At higher water pretty much everything would probably go, but the ledges may turn into river wide holes. Its a bad place to swim pretty much on any of it so know your limits. There are some shallow spots to maybe stand up if you ended up swimming, but it's slick and going over the drops without a boat would probably suck pretty bad.