Island Creek
2. Catoosa Bridge to Emory River
| Difficulty | III-IV+ |
| Length | 2 mi |
| Avg Gradient | n/a |
| Permit | |
| Reach Info Last Updated | July 11, 2024 |
River Description
Island Creek has been described as 'the Gem of the Cumberlands'. It is certainly one of the most scenic and continuous runs on the Cumberland Plateau.
Over the last few years, we have made a concerted effort to remove the many strainers that had made the river almost unboatable. We have done this in the most unobtrusive way leaving the river aesthetics intact. However, please use utmost caution!!! Due to pine beetle and ice damage, there are numerous trees both upstream of the put-in and along the run that are awaiting their turn to become a strainer. Therefore, be very alert just after high water. There are a few logs in the creek but they are not in bad spots and no portages are required. Over the last several years downed trees have been cut up near the end of the run where the last island is located down to the confluence with the Emory. The rapids in this lower part of the creek have historically accumulated wood. Please use caution to look for any cut-up wood or newly downed wood that might create a safety issue.
Access for the put-in on this lower reach of Island Creek is on Catoosa Road going southeast from the game check station. While the area is controlled by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), the 3/4 mile stretch of Catoosa Road to the low-water bridge put-in at Island Creek has traditionally been open to traffic during managed hunts. The regional TWRA manager for the area has said that the road would remain open to boaters accessing Island Creek during managed hunts. The area is closed during a deer hunt on December 4-7, 2015. The Non-quota Turkey Hunt Handout shows that Feb 1 thru March 27, 2015 is a wildlife rest period and access to the WMA is closed to all users and no vehicle access is allowed. April 10-12, 14-16, 18-19 (Young Sportsman Hunt), 21-23, 24-26, 28-30, and May 1-3, 2015 are turkey hunts. During hunting days, the Catoosa WMA access is restricted to all but hunters. There are u
...River Features
Put-In Gauge
Here's how to read the Put-In Gauge.
Take Out
Trip Reports
Log in to add a reportRan Island today at 0.4. I would say this is a reasonable minimum, or perhaps unreasonable if you aren't keen on ELF boating. Most rapids are runnable without excessive rock bashing BUT there's a log in the first steep drop of Compound Fracture. The log is diagonal across the channel, extending downstream from the rock to the right of the channel, and crossing the hole at the bottom. Completely invisible from above--very glad that we scouted. The other bad places at low water were the entrance to the Cave (stupid bony), and the last stretch toward the confluence with Clear where the flow splits around an island and then goes past the pilons (brushy).
Learning from locals about this run, what I've heard so far: 0.4 is minimum, 2.0 is max (largely because other things are running when it gets this high), big water chops are required from 1.0 to 2.0. First time runs usually done at under 1 foot. Lots of slides makes for lots of holes.
1.3/1.4ish
~1.3ft
Here's how to read the Island Creek Gauge at the Put-In.
The level today was 0.85 on the first lap and not much lower on the second lap less than an hour later. This felt like a good medium-low level where the run felt like a creek but was scrapey in only a few places. A sizable rain event came through four days earlier that dropped 1.6' at the Crab Orchard rain gage and got Daddy's creek up to 4500 cfs. Today, there was 0.8' at Crab Orchard and an even 1' at the Wartburg rain gage. The rain stopped around noon and our first lap was around 5:30pm. As we neared the put-in, we picked up some boaters that were hitch-hiking back up to their car at teh put-in. They said that the level was just under a foot on when they put on so I assume it was on its way down when we started our first lap.
Here's a link to a really cool headcam video of the first three-quarters of this run.
Compound Fracture starts at 7:40 and ends at about 8:00. The paddler takes the left line at the main drop of Compound Fracture which is a very runnable line and in my opinion the easier line. However, you'll need around 0.8ft or more of water on the bridge gauge. http://www.vimeo.com/11470518
We are thinking it was between 3.5 and 4 feet. Very high...
I finally got to experience Island with some real water in it (1.35'), today 3/25/09. All of my previous runs had been low (0.4'-0.6'). Two people put-on about an hour before we did and reported 1.7'. They saw 1.8' before they set shuttle.
Now for the correlation with the Crab Orchard rain gauge. It has been a pretty good spring in ETN. There had been several good soakings that got many plateau runs running, some at high levels. But there had been two weeks with little to no rain before we put on Island today. Three quarters of an inch had fallen throughout the day yesterday, and then another 3/4 of an inch fell between 4 and 8 am this morning. The 1.8' reading was roughly 4 pm and the we put on at about 6 pm.
The Crab Orchard Rain gauge: http://tinyurl.com/knkot7
We had a good canoe trip down Island Creek during ALF 2009
Fun Slide Leading Into The Rock House Cave