Yellow Creek

2ft on the gauge

2ft on the gauge

2ft visual, ~1800cfs peak on Cheoah gauge

2ft on the visual gauge. Cheoah ~1800cfs

Entry to tongue & Groove

This is the last rapid on yellow creek. Which is a major celebration point for most as they flow with the water, as it feeds into the Cheoah River which is an additional 5 miles of solid IV-V whitewater.

Tongue and groove is a two stage slide the first slide is about 35 ft which leads into another 20-25 ft slide. once out of tongue and groove you will be entering last step.

We were out there today and it was around 1.8-2.0 feet on the colvert and it was juicy I would venture to say close to the high side of good. Just watch out there is lots of wood out there.

Jerry We ran it on feb 1st 08 level was 1.5 felt like a good low medium level

a decent low level

We checked the new culvert gauge on May 5 and it was a foot. Hiked up, looked awfully bony. What is a good level on this gauge?

Hey this is steven I just wanted to comment that me and my buddy daniel young ran yellow earlier this month at a very low flow VERY LOW. Like paddling on rocks the whole time. It was a blast! anyway. I just wanted to add that it looked like there was some new wood on a couple rapids I don't know there names though. So keep an eye out for that.
-Peace-

Ran Yellow Creek today at 9 inches or should I say I scooted it. All drops were runable just too low. Cheoah was at 134cfs.

There was plenty of water to run the 20 footer. It'd be a great park-n-huck falls even at low water. It's gotta be the easiest 20 footer I've ran. It has a nice pool at the top to simply float off the lip, just run it center to right of center. The left side could hurt.

Obie, Daniel, & myself did this run on 12-07-2004. Beware of a few nasty strainers on the river-left shore at the 2nd to last boulder drop before the tunnel. The sieve also had a huge log jammed in it. Duck under 2 trees on 2nd of the triple slides. Belive it's called Limbo. AWESOME run! Ran at about 350-400 cfs then ran Cheaoh at well over 3,600 cfs.

On 8/7/04 I put a gage up on Yellow Creek. Its located at the take-out on Hwy 129 at the Yellow Creek & Cheoah confluence. It is a spray painted gage, upstream on river left of the culvert -- best seen from upstream river right. 0' is the base of the culvert. It was running 5' when I painted it, so the gage actually starts at 6' and caps out at 5ft. The marks are in 2' incraments. I would assume a minimum run would have to be somewhere over 1ft. Please, start reporting levels so we can dial in a low, med and high for this one.

The gage is located at the take-out on Hwy 129 at the confluence with the Cheoah. Its on the upstream river left side of the culvert. Best seen from river right. The gage marks are in 2' incraments.

We ran it Saturday 2/7/04. Cheoah was around 120 CFS. Seemed to be about the same level the pictures were taken at. Seemed like a Good level, maybe a little low. 4 peoplein our group ran most of the stuff and 2 of us walked most of it...I was in the latter. But still fun. We ended up walking from below the falls all the way to below the sieve. We weren't real sure about where it was. Seems like you could run some of the other stuff below the falls but before the Sieve. The Portage 'trail' was marked with orange ribbons which made the portage a little easier...but not much easier. Someone should paint a gauge on one of the bridges so we could start to figure out what it takes to run...

I first ran Yellow Creek with Daniel from the Nantahala Gorge on March 30th, 2002. Anyone out there know of an earlier descent?

There are currently ongoing negotiations to protect Yellow Creek from development and other water quality impacts through Dam relicensing. The dam owner on the Cheaoh owns all of the Yellow Creek Gorge. It appears likely that a significant buffer will be established that protects the creek and our right to access it. AW is working to protect this creek, along with the Cheoah River. The run above the falls features a number of slides. The nature of the creek changes after the 2 or 3 slides below the falls into a more boulder drop style of creekin. The second boulder rapid after the falls has a nasty sieve in it and should be portaged. This requires also portaging the first boulder rapid.

This photo was taken on the second descent that I know about.

a group of us ran yellow creek on sunday, 17 may 2009. drizzling/raining off and on through the day, and after running cheoah at 5.3 on the bridge gauge took a look at yellow and saw it was at 1ft on the bridge. put on a 4pm, took off about 8pm, gauge had dropped to .5ft.

the top part was pretty tight, with a big creek-wide log across the bed in the big slide. opened up a little just before the 20-footer. even though it was low, was a lot of fun. would definitely do it again.