Little River (Pee Dee) and Rocky Creek
| River: | Little |
| Skill: | Novice+ |
| Trip Date: | 12/11/2023 |
I finally got a chance to run a river that I read about in Paddling Eastern North Carolina, by Paul Ferguson and had spent countless hours studying on the satellite map. Paul Yow joined me to run the Little River in the Pee Dee River basin. We started at Robedo Rd on Rocky Creek which runs 2.7 miles before reaching Eure Reservoir. About 400 ft into the trip, we hit the only major rapid, which we’ll call Robedo Falls. It’s a small hole followed by a 3 ft ledge drop into a sloped drop and another ledge drop. I ran river left on the drops and Paul Yow ran the 4 ft slide river right in his canoe. We found a smaller drop, but similar difficulty about 50 yards downstream and then boogied on down, playing in a few spots. No significant rapids were found until passing under the next bridge at Pleasant Grove Church Rd, which is where I would recommend to put in to avoid the $10 launch fee at the boat ramp at the reservoir. One more class II rapid and some small shoaly rapids before the confluence with the river/reservoir. We had about a mile of fast moving flat water and then another mile of slow water from the backwater of the Eure dam. We then portaged and put in at the class II+ almost reaching III for the next half mile before it mellowed out to class II boogie all the way to Thickety Creek Rd to take out. We stopped to play in a few spots and I flipped once, but rolled up. Good day on an under paddled river. Level was at 5.2 ft and I’d say it’d still be good with about a foot and a half less, but not much less than that.