Beaver Creek

Ok, I finally got my first chance to run the upper section of this creek with two friends in flat water kayaks (and me in my solo whitewater canoe) just yesterday, Mother's Day, May 9, 2010 and it was an excellent overall day on the river! We put in just down stream of the one lane bridge and dam at Coward Mill Rd with the obnoxious barking dogs across the creek and took out just down stream of the Solway Rd bridge where the gauge is located and was still showing about 6.1 ft when we passed it. We did a lot of scraping at a guestimated pretty much minimal running level of 135 cfs. It was reading 141 cfs when I left the house after the 9AM reading on USGS Water Resources at SOLWAY, TN and it read 130 cfs when I got back home after a late lunch/early dinner at Hidalgo's Mexican Restaurant in Oak Ridge. I won't run it at any lower than this, for sure! Class II rapids were definitely more prevalent and more enjoyable on this upper run than they were on the lower run and strainers were not as frequent as I had expected. Although, there was one good sized tree limb lying across the majority of the creek flow right around the Hope Church area just upstream of the Pellissippi Pkway bridges where I had to portage in my open boat since I didn't want to risk going under it while one of my kayaker buddies got sucked into it sideways and swam with minimal to no injuries, thank goodness, and our third party kayaker went successfully under it. Then came the overall best class II rapid of the day just between Hope Church and Pellissippi Pkway which got the flat water kayaker without a spray skirt (the one who didn't swim) the wettest all day! We named it the 'Praise the Lord' rapid (because of it's locating near Hope Church). Next up for us is a full run of both upper and lower in a day trip after a solid rain and around 200 cfs of non-scraping rock flow!