~13 miles ABOVE Short Bend

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We recently put in at the slab on CR 4280 which is 2 miles upstream from the confluence of Hutchins Creek and ended at Short Bend.  A guy with a smart watch measured it at 13 miles or a tad more.  We were dropped off at the slab as it didn't look like a good place to leave a car.  The Cook Station gauge was at around 300cfs.

The trip was scenic but nothing spectacular as many parts were rather pastoral, especially the first 7 miles or so..  Many minor springs pour in along the route which are pleasant.  The first two miles was pretty low and scrapy.  Parts are barely wide enough for a kayak.  It is true creek at this point.  At 2 miles in, Hutchins Creek tripled the flow or more and it became A LOT easier.  I plan to scope slabs at CR 4270 and CR 4280 on that one which one looks like easy access off Hwy MM from the maps and maybe try that again next time as it looked more floatable at the confluence.

Another slab at the end of Hwy W 4 miles into the trip must be portaged.  This would make for a good access to avoid the upper slow parts with little water.  Also, the scenery and sportiness of the river increase after getting 7 miles into the trip and just gets better until the end.  You get many technical turns and such during the last 4-5 miles of this trip.  Bluffs also increase in size and become more impressive.  A steep sporty drop exists just before the Short Bend Bridge.  You have time to react and decide to run or portage this bridge after the drop.  The right bay was mostly open so I ran it without trouble.  The others decided to portage.

Hwy 19 and the public access come shortly after this.  Overall it was a worthwhile trip but wouldn't be in a huge hurry to go back considering the logistics of being dropped off and such.  I would definitely either try Hutchins Creek down or likely cut off the top and put in 4 miles down at the slab near Hwy W.  You can get better scenery and similar or better sportiness from Short Bend to Wesco.

Log jams were also pretty much a non-issue.  There were snags to avoid but nothing crazy.  The section below Short Bend has more logs all the way across than this part.  I was concerned this section might be worse but it wasn't.

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[Conor]

Also, we didn't fish but it looks like any part of this below Hutchins Creek would be good fishing with some nice holes and pools.

For trash, it wasn't terrible but unfortunately most of what we saw were large trash items like tires and the white plastic wraps from round bales.  These wraps are large and become a nightmare to remove with any water or sediment trapped in them.  We picked up a few bottles, beer cans, airplane bottles, etc. but that type of trash wasn't terrible.  It was just some of the bigger stuff and we didn't try to get that with this trip being a complete unknown.

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