Little Platte

This stretch of river is an iconic beginner whitewater run if you go to UW-Platteville. The little Platte at low flows offers a nice scrappy paddle through beautiful landscapes that are best experienced from the river. There is so much beautiful land in the driftless area of Wisconsin that is privately owned as the area really lacks public land in the way that other regions of the state have. The laws in Wisconsin allow for anyone to go through the smallest rivers as long as it's navigable. That means rivers like this allow you to traverse this beautiful area and really experience places you wouldn't be able to otherwise access. I first ran this river at 70 cfs and scraped the whole time in a 17' canoe with 3 other drunk college kids. If you run it under 100 cfs, prepare to scrape, use kayaks or lightly loaded canoes. If it's above 100 cfs, this run will have some fun rapids that start to form. Once it has a few hundred cfs there will be some good waves for real whitewater play. We have ran this river with the gauge over 1000 cfs before, and it becomes very fast and pushy and shouldn't be underestimated. At this flow the waves are big and some rapids will begin to wash out. I'd highly recommend getting on this river at any level however, but especially after a good rainfall (fall storms can bring crazy flows sometimes).  Be careful of strainers and the barbed wire fence across the river (if its still there).This stretch on this page has the best rapids but there are further rapids downstream, and the downtream stretches can be just as scenic. I live out West now with access to world class kayaking, butI still miss getting out on this river as it's really what introduced me to whitewater kayaking, and drinking a Hamms while bashing rapids in a 17' Grumman canoe on this river with all my OAC friends will always be a core memory for me.

If you are interested in paddling in the area with rapids, also checkout the Grant River, the Blue River, and the Platte River (big Platte). The Outdoor Adventure club at UWP is a good place to find more info, and so is the Milespaddled website.

I would recommend using the stage gauge on the main Platte instead of the of the cfs gauge on the Grant. Anything 4.5 feet and rising or better on the Platte should be enough to get down it. I've run it once at 8.5 feet and steady and it was super fun. Tons of catch-on-the-fly play.

Im not sure which guage to refer to so Ill use both. I ran the Little Platte today (9/5/2010) and the guage said 120csf and 4.34ft. It was very low and i spent a lot of time scraping the bottom. There are a few nice ledges that could become almost Class II if the water was a lot higher. From County Road B to the take out is the better half of the run as far as size of rappids go. The barbed whire is still accross the river. This is a pretty run but if you're looking for a thrill this is NOT the place unless the flow atleast doubled. At this level I would be pushing it to say that it is a Class I. Hope to run it again at spring flow levels.

Paddled this May 16, 2010. Gauge on Platte was 4.50. Very fun little section, Some of the rapids involved a bit of scraping. Nothing serious and never had to get out/drag. Smooth paddling from start to finish. There were a few trees blocking part of the stream, but nothing that had to be portaged around. The barbed wire across the stream is still there. Other downside is that the water was pretty cloudy, probably due to recent rains and quite a bit of ag runoff in the area. Oh and that I did not bring my camera, some sections are quite pretty.

A group of us ran the Little Platte twice, 8/27 and 8/29/2007. Both times the gauge on the Platte River was around 4.6 Ft. There are numerous ripple rapids due to the rock bottom of the river bed, several nice curves against a limestone bank and a few drops which would be interesting at higher water. There is still a two strand barbed wire fence across the river about a mile and a half from the put-in on Old Lancaster Road.