Location: Zionsville, Indiana
Stream: Eagle Creek – Turkey Foot Park to Lafayette Road
Distance +/-9
Date: 4-27-07
Gauge: 2.3
Paddle Time: +/-3 hours
Weather: Sunny & 70
This post will be out of order with some trip reports, but it will complete the Eagle Creek reports from Turkey Foot Park to Lafayette Road. We haven't gotten around to exploring upstream of Turkey Foot Park yet, but would like to this summer.
We set a goal in January of wanting to paddle every month this year, and this was to be our April trip, and we had also talked about trying to get in an evening trip that finished up in the dark so we packed our headlights and didn’t start until about 6:45 PM. The first two legs of the trip were uneventful since there was plenty of daylight and we had all run them several times before.
Tucker dragged his boat through the strainer that tipped us last November but made it through the one that sent him swimming on our March trip without any problems. He was pretty happy about that.
We all agreed that this water level was about as low as we would want to go. There were a lot of rocks visible that had not been on the last trip, or that were just underwater before. James was a bit left of the good line at on one drop and dragged bottom pretty hard.
I was glad we had left Tucker’s SOT at home, I don’t know if the patch would have held up the whole way.
Below the Ford Road bridge the creek doesn’t change much. On the map it’s about a 4-mile leg from there to the takeout. About half way down we decided it was a good time to get the headlights out as it was starting to get dim. There weren’t a lot of drops or riffles to deal with, really similar to upstream.
Just before it got dark James took a swim when the current didn’t take him away from a down tree as expected and he ran up on it. Fortunately his headlight was not lost and his GPS is waterproof.
After it got full dark we ran a couple of riffles without hitting anything major, then after 86th Street we came upon a large tree blocking the way. Fortunately there was a sandbar river left to use to portage around, but just below that the current made a hard break to river left upstream of another tree, and it looked like it would be difficult to avoid a strainer just downstream of that. We scouted for a way around, but there was no way back onto the creek for a long way downstream. After deciding we could launch from the downstream end of the sandbar and paddle hard right to fight the current James took off as the guinea pig. Just after passing the end of the tree he was grabbed by an eddy and swung to the right away from the sweeper…piece of cake. Tucker and I went through after that with the same results and we continued on downstream.
The stream below that is basically flat water as it is coming into the reservoir. There were no additional obstacles and we reached the takeout at river right about 9:45. It is an easy drag over an embankment and about 100 yards through grass to the parking area along Lafayette Road just north of the bridge, much easier than trying to negotiate the steep banks right at the bridge.
Unfortunately we forgot the camera. We could have had some pretty cool photos of us the time near sunset and of us paddling in the dark.
Stream: Eagle Creek – Turkey Foot Park to Lafayette Road
Distance +/-9
Date: 4-27-07
Gauge: 2.3
Paddle Time: +/-3 hours
Weather: Sunny & 70
This post will be out of order with some trip reports, but it will complete the Eagle Creek reports from Turkey Foot Park to Lafayette Road. We haven't gotten around to exploring upstream of Turkey Foot Park yet, but would like to this summer.
We set a goal in January of wanting to paddle every month this year, and this was to be our April trip, and we had also talked about trying to get in an evening trip that finished up in the dark so we packed our headlights and didn’t start until about 6:45 PM. The first two legs of the trip were uneventful since there was plenty of daylight and we had all run them several times before.
Tucker dragged his boat through the strainer that tipped us last November but made it through the one that sent him swimming on our March trip without any problems. He was pretty happy about that.
We all agreed that this water level was about as low as we would want to go. There were a lot of rocks visible that had not been on the last trip, or that were just underwater before. James was a bit left of the good line at on one drop and dragged bottom pretty hard.
I was glad we had left Tucker’s SOT at home, I don’t know if the patch would have held up the whole way.
Below the Ford Road bridge the creek doesn’t change much. On the map it’s about a 4-mile leg from there to the takeout. About half way down we decided it was a good time to get the headlights out as it was starting to get dim. There weren’t a lot of drops or riffles to deal with, really similar to upstream.
Just before it got dark James took a swim when the current didn’t take him away from a down tree as expected and he ran up on it. Fortunately his headlight was not lost and his GPS is waterproof.
After it got full dark we ran a couple of riffles without hitting anything major, then after 86th Street we came upon a large tree blocking the way. Fortunately there was a sandbar river left to use to portage around, but just below that the current made a hard break to river left upstream of another tree, and it looked like it would be difficult to avoid a strainer just downstream of that. We scouted for a way around, but there was no way back onto the creek for a long way downstream. After deciding we could launch from the downstream end of the sandbar and paddle hard right to fight the current James took off as the guinea pig. Just after passing the end of the tree he was grabbed by an eddy and swung to the right away from the sweeper…piece of cake. Tucker and I went through after that with the same results and we continued on downstream.
The stream below that is basically flat water as it is coming into the reservoir. There were no additional obstacles and we reached the takeout at river right about 9:45. It is an easy drag over an embankment and about 100 yards through grass to the parking area along Lafayette Road just north of the bridge, much easier than trying to negotiate the steep banks right at the bridge.
Unfortunately we forgot the camera. We could have had some pretty cool photos of us the time near sunset and of us paddling in the dark.
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