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Put In - The Little Creek access is
off of 751at the first bridge crossing coming from the north. It is on
south/west side of the bridge, look for a gravel area. A trail leads
down to a nice sandy beach.
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Distance/Time - 12.4 miles/6 hours/2 MPH Avg
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Difficulty - Above average based on the portage to the Put In and various
beaver dam jumping that has to be done to head up/down the creeks.
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Trip Directions - I headed straight north to the far northern part of New Hope
Creek, this time hugging the west side of the lake. My previous trip
here was not to successful and I only hiked an old railroad bed. This
time I took the other side of the railroad bed and found a nice trail up to
the Hope Valley Experimental Forest. Ran into some horse riders and
their dog. This whole peninsula has many secrets. Then attempted
to find New Hope Creek, but I really did not try to hard. I had lunch
at an old trail head and as I was heading up the trail I ran into Jim and Jo
Ann. They were dragging their kayaks down to the water. I
mentioned I had not really made it to far up the creek and Jim said why not
follow, I will show you Little Creek and New Hope Creek. It was a
great paddle as Jim knew the area backwards and forwards. He had spent
many an hour planting cypress trees in the area trying to recover the tree
cover that had died when the area was flooded by Jordan Dam. It turns
out you can head up Little Creek and then on the way back down, take New
Hope Creek till it hits the lake. The reason I missed this the first
and second time was because the creek comes out right at the old railroad
crossing on the east side. If I would have looked at my GPS closer I
would have seen this.
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Scenery -
Very scenic area for birds. Many egrets or herons, hawks, and eagles.
Various ducks also forging. You can call this area the egret capital of
Jordan Lake. The carp are jumping this time of year also. The
lake is slightly above full pool(217.1 Feet), so that helped.
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Hazards -
Beaver dams on Little Creek.
