Little River – Zebulon, NC

I had as a personal goal to run whitewater on three “Little Rivers” in central NC. This past winter I was able to hit two of those three, but the last one in the Zebulon area has been a hard one to catch with the right water level. Luckily, this July has been nice and wet and the right opportunity to run this with the right water level, or so I thought.

I parked at the bridge for Millers Mill State Natural Area and took the foot trail up to Zebulon Rd with my kayak. I had previously scouted this stretch on foot on hiking trips with my family and had an idea for where rapids might be interesting. For those that haven’t been here, it’s a weird river in general which is mostly just swampy pools with no clear linear path, but up in this half mile section the river drops over solid rock and a gradient of 33 feet in that distance.

I put in, paddled downstream and immediately realized that there was not enough water to float the actual rock slide rapids and I had to portage around several strainers. In retrospect, without steep banks to channel the water, it’s probably never likely runnable unless you had some serious flooding. It wasn’t all bad though. Right before the takeout is the main draw of this section, a 15 foot slide drop around a busted dam. This was first run by Aaron Vaughan about a year ago and despite some scraping, it did not disappoint.

Only partially satisfied with my unusual run through Mitchell’s Mill area, I loaded up and headed downstream. About 15 minutes away there is another busted dam. When I got there there was a guy in his truck shaking his head when he saw the kayak and me scouting the drop, but it looked clean and I gathered my gear to run it. Luckily, a fellow paddler was there fishing and he offered to set safety with my rope at the bottom. His name was Bryce, but I don’t remember his last name. I put in right by the USGS gage, hit a class II slide and then the drop. Since he set safety, I played in the hole at the bottom for a minute and then since the drop was easy and clean I ran it a second time with Bryce taking video.

Overall, it was a fun novelty, but I won’t likely be back to this river. Nice to check it off the list and move on though. Here’s a short video of some of the fun and frustration.