Caney Fork

Scott's Gulf Wilderness State Park is Tennessee's newest state park. It includes both sides of the Upper Caney Fork run minus the first mile or two. It includes both sides of the bottom 40% of the Bee Creek run. It includes the both sides of most of the Lower Upper Caney Fork run that puts-in at Scott's Gulf Road.

4/2022 - winter flooding the last few years scoured the gorge clean of the big log-jams and scrubby stuff growing in the river, so it's easier than ever to boat-scout your way down. You'll see the big flat stone bench on the right above Devil's Kitchen and be able to boat-scout your way down finding new channels and lines .. as you can see further downstream without brush / log piles blocking the view. This is a great window we have to explore a bit - ran several new channels yesterday that had previously been blocked from view or blocked by logs. At 1.4 on the gage, the ''entrance ramp'' rock center right at Hell's Kitchen was quite an up-hill hump, and there's plenty of water going down in front of it again. Consider a different entrance at lower flows, as it would be hard to access a pin here except from the middle eddy below it. When you get the the creek blow-out / avalanche on river right in the bottom 1/4 of the run.. consider a scout river right as the old ''wing-dip'' boof river left is gone and the hole in the middle is as sticky as ever. The road work on Scott's Gulf take out was substantial - thanks Friends of Scott's Gulf ! - but it is settling a bit now and higher clearance / 4wd or AWD still preferred. We made it in 2wd with a big truck but the puddles are growing and ruts re-forming this Spring. The only wood to report was the far right channel after Polly Branch - and it was river wide but we just snuck under it river left.

This is a good run at this level, with some long pools punctuated by class II+ Rapids. The pools seem to be created by man made log dams that can act as strainers. We went over one and pulled out of two others that were not passable at this level. These log dams are located at places where huge boulders narrow the stream to the bank. The run took us about 4 hours with Caney Fork's gauge showing 1000CFS. I plan to run it again to get some pics. Ronnie and Linda Cox made the run.

This wave comes in around 3.2' and gets great at 4'. There's a smaller wave / hole upstream at lower levels, this was 5' guesstimated.

Recent floods opened up the river from brush, couple new rocks in play but nothing major I noticed. Branch sticking out of bottom left side on Hell's Kitchen, easy to miss but scout if low water in case it's connected to something. . New log in narrow slot at the bottom of ''first hallway'' - easy to see from above and miss to left. Road better than usual but last right turn too rutted and rocky for low / SUV type vehicles, can walk up from bottom in about 20 minutes on road or blue blazed trail up from campground. Dec 4 2018

Caney Fork: Quality boulder garden class 3-4. It starts with a nice slide (if you scrape good on the slide its pretty low flow), Then there is flat water for about the first mile. When the boulders start it gets steep pretty fast. I remember a hand full of class 4's throughout the run and lots of class 3 boogie, feels like over 50 rapids throughout the whole run. It is continuous, with small pools and lots of rapid’s, the longest pool was just before the takeout. The shuttle takes about an hour and 10 minutes depending on how long you spend 4x4ing to the takeout (about 20 min of class 3+ driving). This run would be a big day for U and crew, it’s a long run (13 miles) and there are lots of technical rapids. It would be doable with a more in depth safety setup than we usually employ.

One of the last drops is 'thread the needle' and as of 5/14 has a tree just blow the main squeeze. Easily ducked on the right, marked with orange tape you might see if you are looking for it from the top.

There is a tree in one of the last rapids (big bounder chutes down the right) marked with orange tape you can see from the top.

Surfed 'Trailer Park' wave in Todd Town at 3.8' and it's one of the best surf spot in the area. A glassy wave above a hole with steep shoulder. Loopable from 3.3 up. Even at 2.2 there is some fun play to be had at the ''Todd Town loop'' section from just upstream of the trailers to around the next bend where a jeep road brings you back up (with one right turn) to the car.

We timed a run from Todd Town to takeout at 62 minutes in long boats. That's the fastest I've done and the level was not high (1.6?).

I've been tracking the correlation between the Clifty Bridge (put-in) gauge and nearby online gauges. Here is the resulting spreadsheet that I will update every time I hear of a Clifty level or see it with my own eyes: bit.ly/w8kZej

Use the gauge with caution in the early fall. We found two significant caves in the river bed that combined took 2/3 of the water. After the long pool, we lost all of the water entirely. We had to hike out 4.5 miles, only to find great flow coming out of Bee creek. The gauge was reading 832 cfs at the time and the bridge gauge had debris on it. I can't wait to get on it at a better level, it is a beautiful run.