Walnut Creek

From Cherry Street Extension Walnut quickly enters into a narrow gorge, (except for the part you can see from Barnes and Noble and the Wendy's drive thru where the creek is much wider) but the whitewater remains tame for a while.  The first 2 miles are mostly Class I with a few downed trees that you have to portage and few Class II ledges interspersed.  I live close by this section and maintain it with a chainsaw, but new strainers are a pretty frequent.  At mile 2.1, a footbridge marks the beginning of the larger ledges which are sometimes too shallow to be interesting, but nonetheless, two Class III ledges abound after this point.  The two Class III's are 10 to 12 feet in height dropping over 30 yard stretches.  The first one is right beside the Kentucky Fried Chicken (The Colonel's Rotisserie.)  You can recognize it by a tall metal gate on the right side of the creek and extends part way into the water.  Here a small wide drop leads into a cascade that crashes into the right bank and pours into a round pool that has a nice wave train in it at some levels.  The round pool offers great eddy access to the wave train.  You can ride 'The Rotisserie' upstream to surf in the wave train.  Immediately downstream, a wide ledge (Barnes and Noble Ledge) leads into a small drop off.  The drop off hole is good for surfing at some levels, especially on the right side.  After one more small ledge beside the Wendy's (Dave Thomas's), you will pass under Peach Street and the creek once again becomes flat and flowing with a few riffles down to the Bridger Park take out (near the old Dollar Theater and Erie Institute of Technology.)

Use caution with water levels on the section!  There is a narrow window of acceptable levels due to some nasty strainers that come up quickly on blind bends.  Please read the gauge information carefully on this page.

This section is very narrow throughout most of the run and has a very small catch basin.  For this reason, the reach may be a

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