Santeetlah, North Carolina, US

3. Forest Service road 81 to Santeetlah Lake (Lower)

Usual Difficulty	II-IV (for normal flows)
Length	5 Miles

River Description

This is a nice pleasant intro to creeking. The stream is situated in a beautiful section of the Joyce Kilmer Forest. The first two miles are class 2/3. When you go under NC-1127 bridge the river bends to the left and the gradient starts to pick up. Most of the rapids are clean and boat scoutable. There is a dam about 1.5 miles past the NC-1127 bridge that should probably be looked at. Take out at the pullout at the lakes headwaters.

There are two put in options. You can either put in at the campground on NC-1127, or put in a little further upstream at the USFS RD 81 bridge.

Santeetlah can usually be run pretty quickly, I recommend heading over to Snowbird Creek and trying to catch it too.