Upper Scarham Creek
12 November 1995
by: Murray Carroll
This trip started two years
ago when Charlie Stotts and I spent a cold, dreary afternoon riding around Sand
Mountain looking at creeks. Scarham was
too low to run that day, but after looking at the topo maps we decided that
with enough water the upper end of Scarham (Hwy. 75 to Double Bridges) would
make a good run. Since that time
several of the club's paddlers have been doing the lower Scarham trip from
Double Bridges, down Scarham and then intersecting with Short Creek; but no one
ever ran upper Scarham. Plenty of water
provided the resource for this trip; the Locust was at 5.0, Town Creek at 1300
cfs and Short Creek was at 1'5". A
Saturday night check with Sand Mountain regular Mark D’ confirmed that there
would probably be adequate water for Scarham.
A lot of calling provided a
list of volunteers to try the unknown.
I promised either a great time, a complete bust or more than likely,
something in between. This was to be
the first HCC trip on this creek, a real crap-shoot. We left Huntsville with a diverse group; Jeff Bowen, John Neil,
Bob Barnett, Dan Fairfax, Dave Fairfax, Ben Ferrill, and three of Jeff s
buddies; a pretty large group for a first trip down a narrow creek.
The creek was running an
ideal "bank-full". Upper
Scarham comes at you in a hurry, the first rapid is a technical Class 3 which
features a large bolder in mid-rapid which must be avoided. From there on down the Class 2 and 3 rapids
are interspersed with short recovery pools.
As a grand finale there is a 7' slide type waterfall with an angular
slot which is a lot of fun. The last
rapid has trees overhanging the main flow which can mess up a straight through
run. This is really an interesting
intermediate run if you like tight creeks and have good boat control. Don't take it too lightly though, there were
three swims on our trip with one swimmer caught briefly in a recirculating
hydraulic. Dan Fairfax compared this
run in stream character and topography with the Emory River Canyon on the
Plateau.
After the trip Bob and I
road scouted another put-in about a mile above Hwy. 75. This put-in probably would give a little
warm-up time before getting into the steep section shortly below the Hwy. 75
put-in. This is a trip I'll definitely
do again, I just hope that you can make the next one.