Hare Snipe Creek “First Descent” – Knut Radloff
| River: | Other |
| Skill: | All |
| Trip Date: | 08/23/2004 |
Paddlers: Knut Radloff and Craig McKinnon
37 ft/mile gradient, steep slopes, rocky cliffs, mature hardwood growth, rhododendron. Sounds like a Nantahalaesque mountain stream? This Raleigh whitewater jewel feels like it with lots of class II ledges, pretty scenery and few signs of urban development.
Craig MacKinnon and I ran the 1.6 mile long "Section 1" from Millbrook Road to Glenwood Avenue. This stretch has about 60 ft gradient, or 37 ft/mile. Nothing steep creeking dreams are made of but not bad for a run that is five minutes from my house. I boldly call our run a first descent until proven otherwise. I did check with Russ Condrey, local whitewater legend, and he had never heard of this stream.
It was Monday, the Triangle area and beyond had just received a fair amount of rain with the second of what would be a long series of tropical depressions passing by. The Flat River in Durham was going straight up and so was Hare Snipe Creek, which I had looked at in the morning on my way to work. Craig and I met in the afternoon at the office center near the confluence of Hare Snipe Creek and Crabtree Creek in Crabtree Valley. This area is better known for its shopping mall than its whitewater and Craig was questioning my judgment. After all I had proposed to run what looked like a drainage ditch instead of going directly to the Flat.
 We leave a vehicle at the takeout, which is downstream of the Glenwood Avenue culvert, and park the other at a soccer park at the intersection of Millbrook Road and Leesville Road. After hopping over the guardrail, Craig boofs off of the low water culvert at Millbrook Rd. I follow suit, fail to boof and pencil into the sandy bottom. After paddling about a third of a mile in mellow class I water we get to a river wide strainer that I choose to portage on the left. Craig somehow drags his lazy rear and his creek boat over the strainer and we continue on. Shortly after the strainer the pace picks up with a few ledges and an excellent spinning spot. The highlight on this run is a play spot we name "Culvert Wave". This wave is in the Rembert Drive culvert about halfway through the run. In addition to a spinning hole, the culvert has a nice surfing wave at the top that you can catch on the fly and another wave at the bottom, slightly downstream of the culvert itself. |
The most scenic section starts below Rembert Drive and after you've ducked under a not-so-scenic sewer pipe. This lower section has a small rock slide with rock outcroppings on the right followed by class II waves and ledges. At some point you will see houses on the left and hear the traffic on Glenwood Avenue. The culvert under this 7-lane road is big enough to allow passage even at high water. Don't miss the takeout immediately after the culvert on the right since there are more sewer pipes above the confluence with Crabtree Creek.
A look on TopoZone (http://tinyurl.com/4kkne) and Mapquest (http://tinyurl.com/4t9zl) reveals the "headwaters" of Hare Snipe Creek to be just south of Strickland Road, in the Sawyer Drive area. You could paddle from Lake Lynn on down but you would have to portage Millbrook Road and there is very little gradient on that segment. Just above Millbrook Road there are also two unnamed stream feeding into Hare Snipe, which add some volume. Look for at least 2" of rain in North Raleigh for Hare Snipe Creek to be running. You can get a good visual estimate on the downstream side of the Rembert Drive culvert. The culvert has a concrete walkway on either side that steps down into the water. We ran it with the step down just barely covered. You could run it a little lower but not much. When the concrete walk is completely covered you would probably have a very good water level. Much higher than this and you might have to portage the sewer pipe on the lower section.
Many thanks to Craig for getting out of his boat frequently and taking photos. We did run the Flat later that day and had some epic surfs at 7.2.