Location: Fall Creek – 79th Street to 56th Street
Distance: +/-8.5
Date: 9-23-07
Gauge: 2.1 (Millersville)
Paddle Time: +/-4 hours
Weather: 90 degrees

This was our monthly trip for September. Part of this run was included in the Indianapolis Adventure Race earlier in the month and James thought it would be a good one for us to do since we had not yet run any sections of Fall Creek except for a short foray upstream from Geist about a year ago. This was a really nice paddle with a lot of shade, great for a hot day.

The water level was pretty low in a few places, but we only had to carry around two trees. One would have been interesting if the water had been about six inches higher because the tree was on river left, while there were a bunch of broken pieces of concrete in the middle of the stream that we walked on. If the water had been a bit higher to hide those we would have either dragged on them, or had to walk on them and they probably would have been slippery.

There were a few challenging places with trees down, but also several fun riffles on the way. A couple of places looked like kids may have been putting rocks across the stream. One interesting spot was an old weir or dam that we had to go around because the water level was too low to go through the notch in the middle. That might make for a challenging ride at a higher water level with having to either line up with the notch or go around the end with more water trying to push you into the wall.

We saw an owl, four deer and several herons, so there is the possibility of wildlife activity along the way.

The most fun was right at the 465 & Shadeland bridges, shown in the photo with Austin coming through on the SOT. There is a drop of about three feet that goes down through a rock chute about 15 or so feet long. This looks like it would be a lot of fun if the water were a foot or so higher, and it’s in a location where you could carry your boat back up and run it again.

Access at both ends is good, with room for several vehicles at 79th Street and basically unlimited parking at the downstream end.