A Coping Mechanism for Drought: Whitewater River

With the way things have been going, we decided to get out and do some playing around at the Whitewater River. With plans for the Green on Sunday, we headed down to Dukes Creek in GA to check the buzz out on this short little hike and drop stretch. Suspicions were affirmed that yes, even Dukes Creek actually needs a good rain to be good. With that, we headed east towards the Whitewater. We wrestled with the idea of going and running the Chattooga, but as usual, chose the much less relaxing option. That is, to do a bunch of hiking for a few waterfalls.

We started at the Whitewater minigorge, which is actually quite easy to get to if you know the right roads. We floated 1/3 mile down to the gorge and began our silly games of trying to run the drops. The first one landed on a rock, and the second one landed under some rocks. Needless to say, we just ran the third and fourth drops, with the third one requiring a fun throw and go followed by getting in your boat while floating in a pothole. We then ran the 25 foot slide at the exit of the minigorge, which was fun.


Desparados at the Whitewater from Kirk Eddlemon on Vimeo.


Next we still had some time so we headed to the Lower Whitewater Falls, via Bad Creek access to Musterground Road. It is a half mile hike in, and takes NO water to be good. In fact, the flow was the highest it had been done, with the bottom slide being a little sketchy, what with the 200 footer that the tiny pool at the bottom was spilling right into. Jim Janney is a good probe. So good, that we let him be the only one to step up to the drop. Enjoy the video.