Shohola Creek

The Shohola is an odd river. It begins with a runnable (with multiple lines) 50ft waterfall/cascade. Then goes through a box canyon with class III to IV water for most of it's 1/2 mile length. Then, after another 1/2 mile or so of good whitewater, it goes through a very flat period where relatively slow moving flatwater paddling is interspersed with a ledge occasionally. Finally, it finishes with some good slides and another box canyon with a good drop at it's entrance. The scenery is beautiful at times and nice the rest of the time. It's a fun creek, but if your plan is to run the whole thing, it can be a longish day, so get on early in the winter, when the days are short.

It can pick up wood (and ice in winter), so keep your eyes ahead and scout the box canyons from the rim (if possible) before entering. This is easy on the first one (there's a trail along the rim on river right), and not too difficult from river right on the second one. Hiking out from the middle of this run if someone gets hurt could be tedious, look at the map before you get on.

Nowadays most people only run the top box. It's the most bang for your buck. Just carry up the trail on river right and repeat offend. (It takes about 15 minutes down the river and about 15-20 minutes up the trail to complete a lap, depending on how fast you paddle and/or hike.)

There is also a lot of private land around here so be careful when scouting. Once a group of us was paddling on a rare, warm sunny day in April and we came around a bend to find a man lying naked on his lawn, sunning himself. He was a little surprised to see 7 of us paddle by.

There is now an online gauge on the Shohola itself, at Knealing Rd., above the last gorge, so that's the gauge to use now.

The gauge on the Bush Kill at Shoemaker used to be the main online indicator for this run.  It should be over 2.5', and gives a good correlation, but the Shohola drains a large swampy area above the lake and will genera

...