Cedar Creek (Adams Co.)

This is a great whitewater run that is VERY uncharacteristic of this part of Illinois. The pics do not do this creek justice.

While you can run a 4 mile section if you want, we generally choose to get our kicks by hitting the last mile (as listed here) starting below the 5th street bridge near the entrance to Parker Heights park. You can access the creek from the south side of the bridge by cutting through the woods from the railroad tracks.

This is a smooth rock bottom creek with some sediment in the pools, but the rock bottom makes for some great ledge drops and surfable features and holes. At low water this is a great learning run with forgivable features. No undercuts or really sharp rocks, the ledge drops are forgiving with recovery pools and a few (very few) eddies. The best surfable features have no eddy service, which is a drawback, but still a great creeking run.

The best way to tell what to expect is to drive into the park and stop at the only large clearing in the trees at the side of the creek. The opening is just west of an overpass that spans over the park and you can see a diagonal concrete ledge that joins with an irregular rock surface on river right. That drop is called 'Pecker's Knob.'

If the ledge is mostly still visible and there is still somewhat of a drop, it's pretty low and I'd rate it about a class II+.

If the diagonal ledge can't been seen except for the concrete abutment on river left, then thats your class III+ with anywhere in between being a class III.

The class IV comes into effect when the diagonal ledge is all but gone and the water is flowing over the abutment on river left. this creates a nice hole at the bottom and another one on the last ledge.

From this first diagonal ledge, it drops down to a long slider and another ledge with a hole and pool at the bottom which curves left next to a cliff face on the right. There is an eddy on river right before the cliff face if you need to rest.

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