American Whitewater

Here's a Trip Report from -2' I posted on Boatertalk:
Having Gotten a late start today, I decided that it would be a good day to check out the Upper Section of Stekoa Creek from 441 to Rickman Airfield Road in Clayton, GA. The only beta I have heard until recently was that it was all flatwater with big portages. Recently I noticed that Logan James had been in there and posted some pictures of it at very low water on American Whitewater, and I decided that it'd be worth checking out.

When we put on at 3pm this afternoon, the gage was reading approximately -2'. Based on our day, I'd call this a Low level, and I wouldn't personally run it lower. I'd like to see it with a few more inches to pad out some of the shoals and shallow slides between the rapids. Most of the drops channelize well though. I definitely wouldn't recommend going in there with high water unless very familiar with the run, as most of the scouting is at river level and exiting the gorge would be tough with steep Rhodo infested banks. At this level we ran everything except for the Big drop at the beginning, which just looks nasty, and the top drop of 20-20, which lands on rock. We portaged around one Log Jam, which we later found was passable at the far right.

All I can say is that this run is much higher quality than I was expecting! Good drops, easy shuttle. I can't even count the number of times I have driven right by when it was probbably running. Today the Chattooga only spiked from 1.6-1.8, so it doesn't seem that it'd take a lot of rain to get it going. The water quality is bad, but bearable.

Photos from our trip are on the third page of photos for this reach.

I'd really like to get back in there with ~3-6' of water or so on the Gage.

Also, just as a heads up, I think that with the water we had today, most of the major drops are IV+ or easy V. In my Opinion, The AW page ratings currently are a little off due to being based on a lower water level. I'd compare the difficulty to that of Overflow Creek for those that are interested in trying it out.
-Tim C