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Altamaha River Trip
March 24 - 25, 2007
On Saturday the outfitter shuttled the six of us and our three rental canoes to the boat ramp 20 miles upstream from Darien, Georgia. We were on the main channel of the Altamaha River around 9 am that Saturday, giving us ample time to get to our campsite. The river is wide, brown and surprisingly swift, and we paddled along with the current around each broad bend between alluvial forest and clear blue skies.
In a couple of hours we came to a long railroad trestle. We pulled the canoes out onto a sandy beach, visited the bait shop there and toured the tight assorted cluster of fish camp trailers on the way to the public restrooms (it’s a bit of a challenge to pee from a canoe). Then we were on the river again, hugging the right shore looking for the abrupt turn leading into the “C” shaped lake called (I don’t know why, but isn’t it a wonderful name?) Alligator Congress.
From there, we rejoined the main channel again briefly before turning left into the narrow channel of Hornsby Creek and the long slender Hornsby Lakes. By this point, we could detect the tidal influence of the Atlantic, and luckily the tide was still going out, so we were pulled along at a decent rate. But it was obvious the tide was nearly all the way out – muddy banks were showing, covered with scuttling fiddler crabs.
From the Hornsbys we took a twisting channel that merged into the much larger Lewis Creek. And it was there that the tide changed, and rather suddenly it became more of an effort to make forward progress, but it was not far to Lewis Island, our campground for the night.
Right before we got there, we were fortunate enough to spot a six-foot alligator swimming across the river. We rested a while observing him, slowly paddling closer for a better look until he gradually submerged into the dark water.
We arrived at Lewis Island late in the afternoon and set up camp. Lewis Island is a large ancient sand dune rising up maybe thirty feet above the river, now covered with scruffy oak trees. It was well known to the local Indians, as evidenced by the piles of oyster shells from centuries of seafood feasts. A few of us stripped down and rinsed off the day's sweat at the steep beach in spite of how chilly the water was. And it was there that I noticed two rainbow snakes, a large 4 foot one and smaller 1 foot one, freshly emerged from hibernation. I know they had just emerged because they had yet to shed their winter skin, and their eyes were so gray that they must have been blind. Snakes are not usually social, so I believe that the smaller snake was a male hanging around this long drink of water until she warmed up enough to get in the mood. Rainbow snakes are rarely encountered, so it was quite a treat to see two.
That evening we had a leisurely dinner and then chatted around a pleasant campfire. The drawback to a later trip became evident – there were mosquitoes and no-seeums, but not too many, and a little repellent did a fine job of dissuading them from biting. We retired to our tents relatively early – we had paddled 15 miles today, and were tired.
The next morning we woke up not too long after sunrise, ate our breakfast and drank our coffee, packed our canoes, and were on the river around 9. And again, the tide was going out, so we paddled and guided our canoes down the ever-widening creek, never seeing anyone else, before it merged into the main channel of the Altamaha. At this point the river is truly as wide as a lake.
We paddled across a wide bend towards a notch in the shore – the Rifleshot Canal. This canal is called the Rifleshot because it cuts absolutely straight through abandoned antebellum rice fields, between two muddy dikes. The Rifleshot Canal had been dug by slaves to regulate the water in the fields. There were still great slabs of ancient cypress board visible below a few of the notches in the dike where water gates had been.
The tide was nearly out and we encountered a barrier: a tree had fallen across the canal, with only a small portion of one side slightly submerged. No one else was around, so I stripped, got out in the waist-deep water, tugged each canoe over the log, and then we were on the way. Shortly after that we were in the saltmarshes and, after we crossed under the noisy interstate bridge, there were only a few more bends before we were paddling past docked shrimp boats and then pulling the canoes out at the Darien boat ramp.
Doug Calkins,
WNG Member and Trip Leader
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