When Dave Finck went
out to the Garretson City Park to check out the flow of Split Rock Creek upstream
through the palisades last week, he found the surface ice covered. It looked as though cruising on this
especially scenic waterway was over for the season.
The last few days
have seen a warm-up on the northern plains, so Dave and I arranged to meet at
the put-in for this section of Split Rock Creek this morning. It was 44 degrees when I arrived about 10:15
a.m., and the only ice we saw was on Devil’s Gulch, upstream into the shadows.
So, we launched our
kayaks and proceeded north upstream on a beautiful sunny and nearly windless
day. It was a magnificent morning
to be out on this slowly flowing body of water. The water depth is down a foot or two, but that has little
impact on kayaking. For most of
the trip upstream, the water was too deep to touch bottom, even with a
double-bladed paddle thrust down to the maximum.
The sun on the east
side of the creek cast the high quartzite formations in shadow across the
water. The landscape has become
monochromatic in shades of brown as the winter approaches. The only sounds were
birds up on the cliffs and in trees as well as a few squirrels rustling in the
blanket of leaves covering the ground.
We saw a flock of wild turkeys up on the northern end of this
waterway. They were up on the
floor of cliffs towering above us and then flew across the creek to land in the
high brown grass on the western side of the creek. The flock of perhaps 20 birds was visible both high on the
cliff and standing around in the grasses of the shoreline. We also saw one deer
dashing about on the eastern shore.
We continued
upstream through the spectacular cliffs and rock formations until we reached
the course of the creek coming down through the state park.
Our return trip
downstream was slow, offering an opportunity to appreciate this unusual
landscape of cliff faces and oddly shaped trees growing on ledges. Even with the trees and grasses going
into dormancy for the next several months, the play of light and shadow across
the water was fascinating to observe.
As we returned to
the put-in, we ducked through the arched bridge to see how far we could proceed
up Devil’s Gulch through the ice.
We found that there
was a break in the ice along the northern shoreline, and we moved through this
channel of nearly open water. The
ice formed just a couple of feet offshore and was perhaps a quarter of an inch
thick at the edge, growing progressively thicker very quickly.
Dave was in front of
me on the way in, and his kayak served as an icebreaker of sorts. The ice was easily broken up for the
first few couple of feet offshore, but the paddles just banged on ice just
beyond that.
We continued on
until the ice blocked further passage.
By then, however, we were too far up to turn around. The ice-free channel was only a couple
of feet wide along the side of rock formations, and we had to back up 50 feet
or so before finding a spot wide enough to turn around without going up on
sheets of ice.
When we finished and
drove through Garretson, the temperature had risen to about 53 degrees. I don’t know if it will be possible to
take another cruise this year; but, even if that should be the case, it was
great to finish the season off with a great scenic cruise through the palisades
of Split Rock Creek and then to cap it off with moving through an ice
field.
For anyone interested in the full set of photographs describing this cruise, please access my Flick account at the following URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayheath/sets/72157632049648877/
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