Turner River

[Dave Briggs]

Hi,

My friends and I are planning to paddle from Turner River canoe launch down to Flamingo in the beginning of Dec. Can anyone give me any advice as to the condition of the river. I know there are some tunnels that are pretty tight, we will be in 2 Discovery 169's,loaded up for 10 days. Our planned first night will be Sunday Bay. I have checked out water level websites but unless you know how the figures relate to actual conditions its hard to judge. I am from Cape Cod MA and not easy for me to zip down and check it out !!!

Thanks   Dave

[yakmaster]

Right now, water's up pretty high. So going under the 1st bridge is probably your biggest challenge. But by December, the water should be low enough to provide good passage...and high enough to provide good passage.

 

That's assuming it stops raining! We've had 4 straight days of frog drowners! Though I hear the west side has been dryer.

 

When you come down, bring some pickle buckets ;-)

[Amazon Bill]

Try reposting your question around thanksgiving maybe you can get some realtime info from some paddlers from the holiday groups. Or call the outpost outfitters in Everglades city or Chockoloski.

[Juan Estevez]

Dave,

 

You may want to give the park a call and ask them about the status of Crooked Creek chickee which is replacing Sunday Bay. Vivian mentioned in a previous post that the park is removing Sunday Bay chickee, not sure if it happened already.

[Esther Luft]

Sunday Bay Chikee is still there.  Should be there for a while yet.  Does anyone have any info regarding other new Chikees in the park?  I swear I saw a new Wilderness Planner on the ENP site with new chikees and the next time I looked it was no longer up.  Yes, I bookmarked the page and the link is dead.  Should have saved it, huh?

[vivian]

Esther they are building one near Crooked Creek that will eventually replace Sunday Bay.

[Bob Bonnen]

Tunnels are not too tight for a 17' boat. I went through last year in a 20' kayak with no problem.

[Robert Sobczak]

This may be of interest:

 

http://www.fgcu.edu/bcw/swamp/journal/Swamp_Turner.gif

 

Or

 

http://www.gohydrology.org/p/big-cypress-swamp.html

[Kim Gass]

The first one could be construed as insulting but I don't think you intended it to be. My first reaction was maybe I should stay home in March when I am real tired of being in eight feet of snow and shoveling up into twenty foot high piles. I can ergo keep my money here too. My second reaction was self are you nuts? 

 

The second one to me is a neat link.

[Swamp Hunter]

I agree neat link Robert.

[Dave Briggs]

Thanks for the info everyone. Seems like if we can get under the bridge at the beginning we will be all set.

Robert, refering back to your charts, very interesting and yep, we are those pesky northerners !!!!!

Hitting the water in 12 days.....can't wait.

Dave

 

[Rob Stevens]

Hope you have a good trip. Must be something in the NE drinking water. We'll be leaving Gloucester, MA two weeks later and following you including starting at Turner River. Two Augusts ago we did some bushwacking down the Turner River in an empty 16' canoe.

[Dave Briggs]

Hey Rob, we leave to drive down on saturday and on the water on weds. I will be back home around 11th or 12th so will let you know on conditions here.

40 deg here today, can't wait to drive south !!!

Dave