Georgia Natural Wonder #18 - Chattooga Wild and Scenic River Section IV. 973

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #18 -Section IV of the Chattooga River.

Lewis: The first explorers saw this country, saw it just like us.
Drew: I can imagine how they felt.
Bobby: [about the rapids] Yeah, we beat it, didn't we? Did we beat that?
Lewis: You don't beat it. You never beat the river chubby.

From “Deliverance”

If the river is raging, head upriver to the upper sections, if it is low, put in at Woodall for the main gorge at the bottom. The thing though that jumps out at me is that the river for only being class IVish, it quite dangerous. It’s the type of river you are nervous for the weaker members of your group, and the solid boaters begin to get bored. But for those who are class IV+ boaters I think this river offers a sweet spot of challenging rapids, consequences, and scenery that makes it a go to for folks in the region.



Above 2.0' Five Falls starts to bump up to class 5. It can certainly be run above 2.2', but only by experienced Section 4 paddlers. The Five Falls section gets much more difficult and dangerous at high water. The highest known run was August 17, 1994 at something between 9 and 10 feet from below Woodall to the Lake. According to USGS the river peaked at 17,500 cfs.

Putin and Shuttle Description

The put-in for this section of the river is located where US 76 crosses the river about 8 miles east of Clayton, GA near Long Creek, SC and forms the Georgia-South Carolina state line. There are parking areas on both the Georgia and South Carolina side of the river. On the Georgia side you will find a small hikers' parking area ($2.00 fee), which holds about 5 cars. You can put in here with a short walk down to the river. The walk is a little shorter than the paved road to the beach below Bull Sluice or the trail to that rapids. However, if you put in here you miss Bull Sluice rapid.



There is a large USFS parking lot on the SC side of the river with changing rooms and bathrooms and with no parking fee. Follow the paved path about 250 yards to the beach below Bull Sluice or take the trail off to the right and put in right above Bull Sluice.

To get to the take-out:

From the put-in, head left out of the parking lot (east) for about 2.5 miles or so and turn right on Orchard Road. Follow Orchard Road until it dead-ends on Battle Creek Road (across from the Dixie Aluminum plant). Turn right on Battle Creek. Stay on Battle Creek; you will come to a sharp right turn in the road--stay on the paved road. You are now on Damascus Church Road. Just past the little white church on the left, bear right onto Bull Sluice Road. This is a dirt road and you will see a sign for the Tugaloo Boat Ramp. Follow this dirt road all the way to the end and park at the boat ramp. Round trip is about 45 minutes. There are other access points such as Tugaloo Dam, Possum Creek, and Camp Creek, but most of these are excessively strenuous. At the put-in don't forget to fill out the self-registration forms.

Shuttle service / boating shop / Lake Shuttle.

Chattooga Whitewater Outfitters has a boating store and offers shuttle service to just about any paddle able portion of the Chattooga. So if you are coming from a distance, you can pack 4 or 5 boats onto one car and not have to worry about bringing that second car. It is a very good idea to call them a day in advance 864-647-9083. If you get to the river and find that you've forgotten your pfd, helmet, spray skirt, or paddle, they also rent equipment. They have a web site. They are located 2.6 miles on the South Carolina side of the river, just past the turnoffs for Earl's Ford and Woodall. You could even plug their street address into a GPS

Surf Rapid (Class III, Mile 0.2)

Usually run on river right. Surf Rapid is one of the better playspots on the river, allowing both cartwheels and enders. There is a big recovery eddy on river right. During the summer the raft companies swim customers thru the rapid.


Enders at surf rapid

Screaming Left Turn (Class III, Mile 0.4)

There are multiple routes thru this rapid, the standard one being start river right, go over the first three foot ledge, then start working back to the left to avoid some rocks. The advanced move is to run the toaster slot. This is a slot move thru a three foot wide crack, under an overhanging rock. At flows above 5 feet this rapid develops a nearly riverwide hole that should be paddled around on the left. Around 2 feet on the gauge the left side grows a nice cartwheel hole


Screaming Left Turn Slot

Rock Jumble (Class III, Mile 0.9)

Rock Jumble is about a 10 foot high sloping ledge. It can be run just about anywhere, depending on the water level. The best place to scout is on the right. The hero lines are the two slot moves on river left. Somewhere above 4 feet rock jumble creats a beautiful surfing wave.



Woodall Shoals (Class III+, Mile 2.0) Woodall Shoals is a nice class 3+ rapid with a very dangerous, but not that impressive looking Class 5+ hole right in the top middle. If you are running the hole you don't need me to tell you how. The standard route for those not messing with the hole is to hug the river right bank. This will lead you to a slide that's about 10 feet tall. Bang down the slide and from there choose one of the many routes down the rest of the rapid. The slide dries up at levels below about 1.1. At levels over 3 feet the hole at the base of the slide starts to get really mean, but another route opens up.


This is where that South Carolina girl got stuck in the rapids for several months. I think a SC Senator had to get involved for them to do something to ease up the water flow so they could retrieve her body.

At levels above 3 feet the slide on river left at Woodall starts to open up. This is a great ride!! At levels below two feet this channel is totally dry. The channel is to the left of the center rock shelf most people scout Woodall from. On river left at Woodall is a trail to a Forest Service parking lot.



The playspot above 7 foot (Class III+, Mile 2.2)

Below Woodall are a couple of class 2-3 rapids that start getting bigger and bigger as the banks start to close in. The final one is a nice riverwide ledge hole with eddies on both sides. This is one of the better playspots on the river!

7 Foot Falls (Class IV, Mile 2.3)

Run the right side of the fold in the current. Stay out of the mildly undercut river left wall. If you run the left tongue you may find alligator rock....a known boat breaker.



A few nice rapids make the tightening of the walls obvious. As the river bends sharp left you see an obvious horizon line and know you are at 7 Foot Falls. Scout right. The line is to drive center moving right and grind the left side of the rock around the hole. Landing pointing right to stay off the undercut left bank.


TRD tackles 7 foot falls in a water damaged photo. Right in front baby.

Beaver Skull (Class II+, Mile 2.8)

A small rapid with some nice waves and a big boulder in the middle. The right notch is undercut, but good practice for tight creek moves. The left side has a nice wave up against a minor undercut. You'll be able to see Stekoa Creek coming in below this rapid on the right.



Stekoa Creek Rapid (Class III+, Mile 3.0)

A long shoal type rapid with multiple routes. Most people start by running down river right over a small slide, then heading back toward river left. There are some good surf waves toward the bottom of the rapid



Long Creek Falls Rapid and Playspot (Class III, Mile 3.5)

Just below long creek falls on river right is a nice playhole.



Always a good pull over and lunch / snack / hike to Long Creek Falls on SC side.

Deliverance Rock (Class III+, Mile 3.6)

Most people start from the top right, then eddy hop down. The river will eventually go around the left side of a house sized rock. The left side of the rock is mildly undercut. This rapid was seen several times in the film Deliverance. Every time the river goes over 6 feet a new tree gets deposited on top (20 feet up) of the rock. At flows above 4 feet one of the strongest holes on the river is found here.



A fun rapid with a bunch of off angle waves pushing you away from a large set of rocks in the middle of the river. Unless you want to catch the large eddy between the two, just stay left. Be mindfull the bottom rock is a bit undercut.



Turtle Head Rock (Class II+, Mile 3.8)

Another playspot. This one is best above 1.7



Ravens Chute (Class III+, Mile 4.0)

Start about 3 feet off the left bank and go around the outside of the curler taking a hard right turn. Bang down the slide and eddy out at the bottom. There is a dangerous undercut in the middle of the ledge. A swimmer drowned in the undercut near the center boof line.



Tunnel of Love (Class II+, Mile 4.1)

Two boulders laying against each other that you can paddle under. There is a class 3 minus rapid just below this.



The rapid after Raven Chute (Class III, Mile 4.2)

Nice wave on the right, a boof in the middle, and a boof on the left. The left boof has been known to pin and eat boats.


Training for job of raft guide.

Little Woodall (Class III+, Mile 4.5)

Slot move on the left, a slide on right and a really sticky hole in the middle. The hole doesn't look like much until you are trying to claw your way out of it. There is a great eddy line below the hole, its deep enough for slalom kayaks to do vertical stern squirts.



Camp Creek

If things are going bad there is an access point on river right where Camp Creek comes in. The trail to the parking area is similar in steepness to the trail at Woodall. Below Camp Creek is a moderate sized wave train before the river goes around a right hand bend leading into Five Falls.


Last chance for goofing off.

Five Falls

Five Falls includes the rapids of Entrance, Corkscrew, Crack in the Rock, Jawbone and Sock-em-Dog. Coming around the corner from Camp Creek the gradient is going to pick up to close to 100 fpm for the next half mile. At flows above 2 feet the pools between these drops start getting small. Entrance and Corkscrew start to become one drop, same thing with Jawbone and the Dog. All the midstream rocks are undercut, in particular those in Crack, Jawbone and the Dog. Being out of control is a bad idea, being out of your boat is worse. Just remember that most of the large rocks in Five Falls are undercut. So be careful.


You enter a cliff lined gorge.

This is the Southeastern Classic! More legends exist about Five Falls of the Chattooga than almost any other set of rapids. Taken individually any of the 5 rapids of Five Falls would be significant named drops on any typical Southeastern river. They are far from the hair found on steep creeks and the legendary danger associated with these rapids arises in part from the long history of boating the Chattooga (40+ years). That said, approach these rapids with caution as they have killed and injured plenty of boaters.



Entrance (Class IV, Mile 5.1)

The first of the Five Falls. The standard route is start in the eddy at the top on river left, then work down a bumpy shoal to an eddy on river right above a 10 foot wide slot. From there peel out and run the slot angled to the right to stay out of minor undercut, and punch the hole at the bottom. Corkscrew is about 25 yards below.


This is one of about 4 different ways to run this rapid. There are also a left line and two middle lines.


This is not a good line to run the Five Falls.

Corkscrew (Class IV+, Mile 5.1)

At moderate flows enter from the center of the river, as things get higher there is a sneak entrance slot on river left. After that go around the holes on the left. The bottom hole likes to play with decked boats in the 1.2 to 1.9 range. After that try not to get plastered on the river left wall. Get swimmers to shore quickly due to Crack being just downstream. Any swim out of Corkscrew should be taken seriously.


Strangly enough, Corkscrew gets a little easier as it gets higher. Its most ornry about 1.7.



This rapid although only moderately difficult is inconsequential due to what is downstream. The rapid is run center moving left normally, just down drop down center moving right as there is a good sized hole there waiting for you. The currents can be tricky and a few in our group spun out and or flipped navigating them. Set Safety here and get swimmers to shore ASAP. As just downstream is…


TRD runs the Corkscrew. The color was lost in the scan. You went in one way, then half way you have to paddle the other way. Don’t skimp on buying these photos. A fellow in a kayak goes down stream with you, taking great pain to get these photos. They will hang on your office wall or man cave and be real conversation pieces.

Crack in the Rock (Class IV, Mile 5.1)

An Important note about Crack in the Rock rapid. Crack is one of the few rapids that changes on a regular basis because logs and rocks shift around in the sieve that forms this rapid and can massively change the height of the pool. All of the existing guidebooks in print still recommend right crack as the prefered route. This is no longer the case. A flood back around 1998 blew the original log out of the crack. Since then right crack has become an undercut boulder sieve. Boats and boaters have washed under the logs and rocks in right crack.


Far right run.

Right crack can still be run but look at the drop before a blind run. Left crack has killed numerous swimmers, right crack has had many close calls and one fatality. On November 9, 2003 it was the site of a fatality. Left Crack has been the site of numerous fatalities and Right Crack is possibly more dangerous. If you swim, get to the bank quickly and do not swim into Crack in the Rock. Do nothing that involves hysteria--just swim to the bank.


One of my signature photos. TRD runs the Right Crack. Right up front. Look at the fear on our guides face.

Most boaters run Crack below 2 feet through Middle Crack. Use your good judgement here. Running Left Crack when it has water flowing over the top is an easy move but do not get flipped at the top or you could get hurt or pinned. Middle Crack sometimes has debris. Far Right Crack is a blind rapid at high water and can accumulate debris. There is even a route over the right side of Right Crack if you are really careful.



Crack changes more than any other rapid on the river. Debris in the underwater sieve can change the pool height upstream of the drop and change the nature of the rapid. Center Crack changed recently (2005) and is now about a 2-foot-tall pour over that can back ender kayaks between the two boulders.



If a boater is ever stuck in left crack you need to push their shoulders/arms back into the drop until the water catches their torso. They will then wash under the pinning rock and free from the rapid. I've worked a recovery here and you cannot pull someone against the force of the water. There is lots of room under the pin rock (5-6 ft), which is why kayaks pin there so bad. Also a canoe or raft can be broached across the top of the drop significantly reducing the amount of water going through the drop.



A wall of rocks that form several sieved out channels, do not swim into the far left nor far right channels. Don’t swim into at all… but seriously those are no-gos. Apparently at higher flows some people run them. Most just run the middle channel which is just 1.5 boat widths wide and offers a completely boxed in hole. Keep it straight and don’t plug!



The good news is that the rapid can be portaged on both banks.


You can forget about hiking out from here though.

Jawbone (Class IV+, Mile 5.1)

At flows below 1.8 start river right and punch into the eddy on river left. At flows above 1.8 you have a back door entrance down river left into the eddy. Peel out of the big river left eddy, go around the curler, stay out of decap (the first undercut on the right) and either eddy out above Hydroelectric Rock (also undercut) or continue on around it, punching a pretty solid hole. Jawbone is kinda scary with all the undercuts. Keep in mind that if you eddy out above Hydroelectric Rock you need to aggressively cross the eddy line before running the left side drop of Hydro. Blowing this move can lead to being sucked in to Hydro.



This was probably my favorite rapid as it had multiple moves to get down. We started off far right and ran the entrance moving back far left. There was an eddy at the lip of the bottom that you had to fight through a curler to achieve (if you didn’t just straighten out and run it!).



Below we ferried back to the middle and ran down the center down a nice ramp and through a hole at the bottom. There were also some nice challenge eddies to catch for those wanting to spice it up further.



Sock em Dog (Class IV+, Mile 5.2)

About a 7 or 8 foot boof over a chunky hole. Pretty forgiving between about 1.2 and 1.5, pretty unforgiving above 1.8. Its been said that many modern rodeo moves were unintentionally invented in the hole at soc-em-dog. Above 1.5 the left side Puppy chute opens up. In the mid 2 foot range the large undercut rock in the middle gets covered with water. Supposedly the hole washes out around 5.5 feet.



Scout right or left. There was a sneak on the far left. One in our group tried to boat scout into it and found themselves pitoning on the left and getting rejected into the meat of the hole. Only by the grace of god did they escape without a swim. The main line is down the middle boofing the peak of the rock just barely deflecting water up in the middle. This sends you over a rather large hole. Set safety here though below is a large recovery pool.



Shoulderbone (Class IV, Mile 5.3)

After the pool at sock-em-dog work back to river left. Shoulderbone rock will be be blocking the right side of the pool. Standard route is on the left side of the rock from left to right. The hole halfway down is pretty stiff above 1.6.



Running the slot on the right side of shoulderbone rock has been done but its a bad idea. The slot is undercut and usually full of wood. There are potholes or sieves in the base of the drop that have swallowed boats and boaters for uncomfortably long periods of time.



Quaalude (Class III, Mile 5.6)

The last playspot before the lake.



Lake Tugaloo

2 miles of flatwater. The colder the air temp, the harder the head wind. Be aware that the lake has been known to ice over in the winter. If this is the case, turn around and hike out at shoulderbone.


Go with a commercial outfitter on this stretch of river, if for no other reason than to get a group boat tow across this several mile trip across Lake Tugaloo.

TRD and HOTD disclaimer

This is truly one of the most beautiful, unspoiled, natural areas left in the country. Every Georgian should experience this, at his or her own risk. As of 2013, the U.S. Forest Service says that the number of fatalities on the Chattooga River is now over 41 since they started keeping records in 1970.



Bull Sluice: Eight people have died here. A pothole just above the ledge hole trapped the leg of one swimmer who was trying to stand. He drowned. Lethal entrapments have occurred in the ledge hole at very low water levels. If you swim there, ball up and allow the current to flush you around Decapitation Rock. Decked boats side-surfing the ledge hole will wash around Decap. It’s safer to stay in your boat, even upside down, than to swim. Another low water entrapment hazard exists in the main drop, just right of Decap. The bottom hole is dangerous at levels over 2.8 feet.

Woodall Shoals: Five paddlers have died here. The innocuous looking initial drop on the left terminates in a keeper hydraulic. Quite powerful at low levels, it becomes more so with increasing flow. Carry on the left, or run the chute on the far right, by the Georgia shore. The hole at the bottom of this chute is very sticky at levels over 3 feet.

Left Crack has trapped and killed 4 swimmers at moderate water levels. The lethal crevice, below the surface of the lower pool, is totally hidden by the water pouring over the drop. No one has ever been rescued. Stay away.

Right Crack has had a log trapped vertically in a hole for decades. There was a pinning hazard, and at least one near death. The log is gone, but  there still may be serious danger of body or boat entrapment here. The hydraulic below is very sticky and dangerous at levels above 1.8 feet.
                                                                                                                                               
Jawbone: Hydroelectric Rock, at the bottom of the drop, is actually two rocks with a usually submerged passage in between. Swimmers have been washed through here, and many rafts have been pinned and upended on Hydro. Don’t hit Hydro. Swimmers on the right side should swim hard toward the eddy on the right, above Sock-em-Dog. They must not allow themselves to be pushed against the flat topped rock just to the left of the main current entering Sock-em-Dog. It is badly undercut, and has killed one swimmer.



But the reality is that far more people die each year in from lightning strikes than in commercially outfitted whitewater rafting trips. The old adage, "you'd be more likely to get hit by lightning," is indeed true here. In a typical year, professional whitewater rafting guides see about as many deaths as occur in amusement park accidents—a fairly small handful. And for most of us, a whitewater raft trip is a lot more fun than a rickety roller coaster.


A whole raft of GNW Gals today.

Go you hairy dogs.

Not sure which Natural Wonder will be next. What a state!