Muddy Creek (Slippery Rock trib), Pennsylvania, US

to Slippery Rock Creek

Usual Difficulty	V (for normal flows)
Length	0.35 Miles
Avg. Gradient	180 fpm

Gauge Information

Name	Range	Difficulty	Updated	Level
Muddy Creek near Portersville, PA
usgs-03106300	100 - 400 cfs	V	03h13m	58 cfs (rc= -0.1 )

River Description

This is one steep set of three waterfalls. The first one hasn't been run, to this writer's knowledge. Something about a shallow landing zone, I believe. This stream has been run only rarely for a variety of reasons, not least because I'm not certain there's any public access to the putin.

The takeout is, of course, on Slippery Rock Creek.

Boris Glick took a few pics in December, 2001, when ol' Muddy was running. Check'em out right here.

Here are one man's words of wisdom after running Muddy:
The second-from-the-bottom drop: At low water, dropping into the left chute was a really fun line - but the top of the drop is guarded by a sinkhole on the left, which may start taking in a lot of water on higher flows, and can become extremely dangerous. In addition, the left wall is undercut - you got to point right; that should allow you to avoid both the sinkhole and smashing into the left wall, landing under the center overhang.

The bottom drop: There are two lines, one far left, another far right. Both seemed dicey. The river-left one had a small log jam. Without the logs it could be preferable. The river-right one is a slide along an undercut, lots of scraping and possible pinning hazard. Easy portage on the left.

Private property: When you scout the second from the bottom drop, the windows of the house are in plain view. We remained within the gorge and kept quiet, using hand signals. There were mixed reports about the property owner - some say he doesn't mind people running the creek, some say he does. There are plenty of "No Trespassing" signs on the shores of Slippery Rock (we avoided private land by paddling up the Slip). I didn't see any signs in the Muddy Creek gorge.

See also the picture and description in the PA DCNR site.