Brushy Fork

Brushy Fork Road to Stonelick Creek

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DifficultyII-III(IV)
Length2 mi
Avg Gradient68 fpm
Reach Info Last UpdatedJanuary 28, 2020

River Description

Brushy Fork is a tributary of Stonelick Creek. The pioneering first descent was made on May 8, 1998 by Bruce Jackson, James Nutter and Sarah and Fred Coleman. This is a little creek, about 30 foot wide. The run is about 2 miles long and it has the biggest easy drop in this watershed. A 6-7 foot ledge that at lower levels you have to run on the right side and boof over a big flat rock just inches under water at the base of the ledge. There's a couple pretty dynamic surfs on the run; a couple 360 holes and a rodeo hole that is nasty, sticky and shallow at lower flows but gets bigger, deeper and better at high water. When that happens, three more similar but much bigger and stickier holes appear just downstream. When the hole washes out, two of the holes below are eye-bulging keepers. Go right. The big ledge is just below the three holes. Scout on river right. Respect the landowners here. This ledge can be run either off the bigger boof on river right, or at real high flows, on river left off the launch point. But never down the middle.

Below the ledge things crank downhill in Class II boogie water, but it's flyin'. It mellows for a short bit but soon things pick right back up. First there's a nasty, hard to see diagonal hole, right above another ledge. The ledge drops into a dynamic surf/360 hole. Just stay in the middle here, but remember that the eddies are always on the left. Immediately below there's another sizeable sliding ledge drop with a big wave behind it at high flows, some runout boogie water, and then you get a break with some flatwater in a valley. After passing a tributary (Rocky Run) on river right that adds some flow, the next section of rapids is pushier and has a couple of nice broken ledge type rapids and another nice hole/wave twisting flume rapid that is a lot of fun. At high water it all becomes one rapid consisting of a big diagonal wave/hole followed by 2 BIG holes . They can be skirted on river left. They can be really mean and they

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River Features

Put In

Distance: 0 mi

Take Out

Distance: 2 mi
Take Out

MB
Mark Branch

Jan 1, 1900


Magic water glows in the air and on the landing zone on Brushy Fork.

creek's level needs to be higher for this hole to be at an optimum level