Clarion River
 

Clarion River-Cooks Forest State Park to Gravel Lick

Trip Leader-Dustin Noel

When-Sunday August 23rd

Where-Cook Forest Canoe Launch - T309, Clarington, PA 15828 (T309 is also called river rd)

This isn't the launch by the ranger station in Cooksburg- It is 4 Miles east (or Up Stream) of Cooksburg

GPS
41.327915, -79.175571

Time-11AM

Aug. 23rd Cook Forest state park to gravel lick. Two stops planned. One for jumping off the swimming rock and one to see the old sawmill stone dam. Shuttle required shuttle within family units or wear masks in cars. Meet at Put in at 11 am to shuttle
Put in
https://goo.gl/maps/xYgVn9ki2baChFuv9

Take out
https://goo.gl/maps/PahULFnjcdKMuEnm9

Swimming rock
https://goo.gl/maps/wfySwcqLRLoPsbF58

Sawmill dam
https://goo.gl/maps/61MBmWFQ4Cv3546VA

Dustin

Jessica and I will be at the paddle.
We are going up Saturday night and got a hotel room in clarion. No open campsite anywhere in the area we could find :frown:

mike

Clarion River Paddle
 

Hello all!

Doing a little scouting online for this weekends trip. Should the launch site read Cook Forest Canoe Launch instead of Clarion Forest Canoe Launch? For the ladies, there does appear to be restroom facilities at the put in and take out. YEAH!

Watching the gauges too. Cooksburg is running below the recommended 2.3 cfs. A 51% chance of rain on Saturday hopefully will help with that.

Also, according to the Clarion River Fun Guide there is a spot around Gravel Lick that is denoted as a drowning hazard because of a deep water ledge. I'm not sure what that is, just wanted to pass along the info.

Looking forward to an awesome day on the Clarion River! Hope to see you all there!

Darla

Today the Clarion is reading around 2.15 at Cooksburg. We were up there in 2018 and with the gauge around 2.4 we were working to find enough water to float. Some of the Clarion / Cook Forest pages on FB are saying the river is currently as low as folks have ever seen it. If anybody jumps from a rope swing, they may not make a splash. I hate to be a Debbie Downer on this one, but I think we may need a "plan B" ... maybe Mill Creek launch down to Toby Launch, possibly taking advantage of slack water behind the dam, not truly sure how much better it would be, but I would expect a lil more water on down that way ... or maybe switch to the Allegheny - Franklin or Fishermans Cove on down to Kennerdell? Just throwing it out there for consideration. Those are a couple other options in relatively the same area. PS: I've read that Redbank Creek is at a trickle as well.

Cook forest launch
My bad

Trip Review
 

It was a beautiful summer day up on the clarion. We had a nice turn out of TCT members and a couple of friends of Dustin's.
We had a total of 19 paddlers in 16 boats (13 kayaks & 3 Canoe's) for our 8 mile paddle.

Water Level was low 2.0 Ft Cooksburg's Gauge. We launched from Cooks Forest Launch and the first 4 miles we had no trouble with water level, just had to read the water for the channels.
In the first 4 miles we stopped and jumped off a rock into a swimming hole. Ron & myself seal launched his kayak off the rock (tons of fun)
Then just a little bit down river we stopped for Ice Cream. That is correct Ice Cream on a paddle!!!.

After cooksburg is were we found out 2ft of the gauge is to low from cooksburg to gravel lick.
Before all the portages we got to stop at an old dam with a awesome little water fall with a nice pool to swim in. That water was REALLY COLD compared to the clarion.
Several spots were we had to get out and walk. There was one spot everyone had to get out and walk, I got to be Ron's mule for about a football field length. It was really rocky so I pulled his boat threw the roughest part.
Thank also goes to Garret for also helping out.
We all made it through and enjoyed each others company.
Big thanks goes to Mark & Jodi Vallecorsa for doing the shuttle for the paddle.
Thank you Dustin for leading your second trip in a month.
Mike