Lake Sequoyah Overflow

[unicorn]

Has anyone ever ridden down these little falls? It looks doable in higher water.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Lake+Sequ ... 8&t=h&z=20

/just wondering.

[Fish]

It's been run a bunch. However, it may not be legal to do so. "No boating on the spillway." So says the keeper of the lake - and he's threatened to call the cops on us before. Talking with certain folks in city gov't, they said technically it's not an ordinance... But on Fayetteville city lakes, the lake caretakers seem to be the final word (perhaps since hardly any good folks waiting to replace them), so their interpretation of the rules can have some weight.

My last run there (about 10 years ago) went like this. Plain dressed old guy in a pickup truck pulls up and hops out smiling oddly at us. We're suiting up (it's 35 deg.) for kayaking and the water is running very high. He asks, "you guys aren't going to try to kayak over the spillway are you?" I'm thinking "um, no we just like to put on all this gear and sit in the car...", but I say "yes, we are". We all think he wants to watch us do something crazy, but he just calmly says "No you're not." I say, "who's going to stop us?" He says, "I am." I smile and ask, "and who are you?" He says, "the caretaker out here, and you can't boat past where the spillway starts. If you try, I'll call the police and have you arrested." I said, "Oh, ok, thanks for letting us know that." He's still smiling kinda weirdly, so I smile back. He says that he's serious, and I tell him I am too - I came to run the spillway, there are no signs or anything, so do what you have to do. We carry the kayaks down and he drives off in the truck. We get in one run, but decide to abort a second run and high tail it out of there just in case the old guy isn't crazy. We didn't see the cops, and I never got a call (he could have surely reported our plates), but I found out later that the guy is actually who he says he is and he means business - he hassled some other friends of mine and a friend on the city council verified that the guy has run folks off before...

So... my advice. If you just happen to be at the spillway on a high water day with your creek boat and gear, put in on the lake upstream and if anyone asks you, you're just paddling on the lake. If you lose control of the boat and "accidentially" go over the spillway, well, then you just need to practice your lake paddling skills better. Boy was that a scary experience! :-)

- Fish

[RandyJ]

Don't remember - did anyone ever post any pix here of the spillway at boatable levels? Or is this all just a "Fish" story??? ;-)

[Fish]

I used to have some photos of it. Only about a 12 foot drop (or so) I'd guess, and not very difficult to run. Even at high levels, it's not that great, and when it's really high, thar be dragons in the hills to the south of the lake... :-)

- Fish