We had our makeup trip for the Elkhorn trip which was cancelled the week before because of high water. With the rain during the week which brought the Big Pine up to a crest of 2300 cfs early Friday Feb. 24. I moved the trip to the Big Pine Creek near Attica, IN.
We had 3 HCKC paddler meet at what the locals call the car wash put-in which is at the beginning of Rocky Ford rapid section. The water level was about 1000 CFS at 1:30 PM when we put on.
We meet and paddled with group 4 paddlers from Chasing Midwest Whitewater Facebook group 1 from Indiana (HCKC), 2 from Illinois and 1 from Wisconsin.
We paddled and played on all waves we could catch while shaking off any rust since our last time whitewater paddling. In Rocky Ford section there was one tree on river right near end of the rapid.
After regrouping at the bottom of Rocky Ford we headed down to S-Curve rapid. We stayed at S-Curve for a while playing since they're great play waves and eddy service. We had several flips/ rolls , roll with a skirt implosion and one swim.
After people were done playing, draining boats and stretching legs we head down stream. The beaver dam that had been reported earlier in the season was gone. We played at all typical surf ledges and two paddlers were working on stern squirts on two different strong deep eddy lines.
We did have a couple of more swims at All Day Wave rapid. We then paddled down and played only short time at Hawaii Five-0. Then took a speeder pace to get to the take out about 1/4 mile downstream from Twin Bridges. We had got permission from the local land owner before hand to takeout on their land.
For several of paddlers it was their first visit to the Big Pine and even one HCKC members had not paddled the lower section. The thermos of hot water I had was popular at the take out. Temps were in the mid 40's. We were on the water for little over 3 hours. Level at Twin Bridges painted gauge was little below 3 feet.
Jeff Stejskal
PS maybe next trip to the Big Pine will try Mud Pine creek if its running. Drove over Mud Pine while running shuttle. I have heard it pretty with a few surf waves.
