Kelly Creek, Alabama, US
|
|
Hwy 78 to Winnataska Drive
| Usual Difficulty |
III-IV (for normal flows) |
| Length |
1.2 Miles |
Gauge Information
River Description
Cliff White first clued me in to this run. Kelly Creek is short, small, fun, and very close to
Birmingham. The good part begins in Kerr Gap just off I20 exit 147, east of Birmingham not far from
Moody. It is somewhat similar to Chitwood, but runs longer due to an upstream swamp. The swamp acts
like a sponge, making flow peaks less severe. I agonized over whether to list this as a III or a
IV. The vast majority of the run consists of class III's, but there are a couple rapids that are at
least III+'s and may be solid IV's at some levels.
There is a short warmup after the Hwy 78 bridge, then the class II and III begins. You pass under a
railroad bridge, and the drops get gradually bigger. There are a couple easily avoided undercuts.
The rapids are all drop/pool. Two of the rapids towards the end are fairly large and might be IV or
IV-. It's hard to characterize the boundary between III and IV on micro creeks. Do yourself a favor
and don't go downstream of the first Winnataska Dr. bridge. Below there lies only Gum trees and
flatwater as far as we could tell.
Kelly Creek sports a USGS gage many miles and tributaries downstream. It seems that about 1500 cfs
on the gage is a good low/med level. We ran it with about a 2' air gap under the put-in bridge
river left piling horizontal cross member.
If you follow Winnataska Dr. to the next bridge downstream, you encounter Camp Winnataska. Next to
the camp is a big 30-35 foot two part slide falls. To run it, you would have to do a 4 mile bridge
to bridge (Winnataska Dr. to War Eagle or CR27) run because the folks at the camp are not going to
let you take out on their land. I think this stretch will be quite flat except for the falls. There
is something called Dukes Mill at War Eagle Rd, so perhaps there is another feature there to be
investigated. We felt that 1500-2500 cfs would be a good level to run the falls.
All from Alabama Whitewater.
StreamTeam Status: Not Verified
Last Updated: 2009-08-12 17:12:07
No photos found. 
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