August 25, 2022
| Reporter | Josh Vanselow |
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.