Lick Fork

Below is an account of what the writer believed was a first descent of the Lick Fork Gorge in 2003, but according to www.steepcreeks.com 'Mason Basten and friends first ran Lick Fork in 2002.' There is also video of this run at: http://www.theblurr.com/news.php?numshow=8&limit=16

'About six years ago Bryan Kirk and I were both students at Virginia Tech and during a day off from class we went over to the Bottom Creek area with some saws for cutting trees and to check out the Lick Fork gorge. Long story short, Bryan and I got to cut out some of the logs in the drops in the Lick Fork gorge but we also had a small encounter with a landowner and his buddy while they were deer hunting. The encounter went over better than expected for a situation where they had guns and Bryan and I had nothing. Lick Fork is in the heart of private farms and nature conservancy land and anyone interested in boating in that area must take that into consideration. All I can say is that when paddling Lick Fork, be careful not to disturb the landowners.

Lick Fork is a creek located in the mountains just south of Roanoke near Floyd, VA. This river's gorge/watershed is just to the river left of Bottoms Creek, and both rivers drop into the Roanoke River. The Lick Fork gorge is a short but very steep gorge that climaxes with a very large drop. The gorge has five major rapids before the large waterfall at the end. The large drop at the end is called Lick Fork Falls and the nature conservancy calls the area Twin Falls. It is called Twin Falls because there is actually another creek that comes in at the bottom of Lick Fork Falls that has a waterfall at the confluence that is well over 200 feet high. Lick Fork Falls is probably a little over a 100 feet.

This (personal) first descent took p

...