Kevin McInturff and I began our trip just below the 20-foot Dicks Creek Falls on 3-3-2012. It had rained 2 1/3 inches on the Chestatee gauge since late the previous night and three inches in the past three days. In my exploration trip 12/11/83 we had put in 2 miles upstream, but the USFS had the road along Dicks Creek above the Falls gated this day. See http://www.gapaddle.com/ media/ The_Eddy_Line-Archives/ el198402.pdf for my 12/11/1983 exploration trip report on page 3 of that document. The Falls are about 40 yards downstream of the Waters Creek confluence. We were met at the put-in by a young kayaker, Mr. Taylor. Here is my photo of him running the double drop of the left side of the falls.
He ran the first 4 big ledges on Dicks Creek with Kevin and me and then ran them again over and over as we paddled the 4 miles to Turner’s Corner. When we got back to our put-in at Dicks Creek Falls two and a half hours later, he was still running this quarter mile of the creek again and again. After the first half mile the action slows down a good deal till we pass under the bridge at Mt. Pisgah Church Road. Soon afterwards we encountered this 14′ sliding drop at the site of the old Waters Creek Park:
Kevin ran the left side (river right) launching pad well in his Prelude OC-1 just after I took this picture, but spray on my lens spoiled my photo. That’s an enormous log pinned in the left center of the falls.
After another mile of continuous class II and awesome scenery we reached the confluence of Frogtown Creek, where the Chestatee begins. The scenic highlight of the day was 40-foot Cannon Falls, about 40 yards upstream on Frogtown:
There was a group of kayakers running Frogtown and Dicks Creek just behind us, but we missed their run of Cannon Falls. American Whitewater magazine a year or two ago had a Dave Cohen picture of Matt Wallace running this falls, which is almost verticle and has a deep landing pool.
After we took in the beauty of Cannon Falls, we paddled the first mile of the Chestatee River to Turner’s Corner, the junction of US Hwys.19 and 129, 13 miles north northeast of Dahlonega, GA. It was very scenic and had a lot of action. We had a great trip. Roger Nott, GCA Exploration Chairman
