Mile 598.0 - Exit: LBD 598

Exit: LBD 598

When the river rises above 37HG an incredibly beautiful and wild-feeling secret back channel opens up behind Smith Point and is well worth entering and following down its two mile course behind the giant plateau of sand at the top of Smith Point Sandbar. It takes some expert paddling and orientation to find the narrow opening, but once you're in anyone could follow it as it flows along lazily and happily behind the view of towboats and river traffic this secret channel full of turtles, birds and river-loving mammals like coyote and deer. This area is a favorite haunt of the notorious feral pig, the wild boar. Look for signs of it in grassy places that have been unprooted.

If the river's above 37 HG the secret channel will be open. Here's how to find the entrance: As you paddle past Smith Point Light RBD 601.5 roll around the big eddy below and then curve further inwards and than hard paddle all the way back to shore LBD and stay with the edge of the thick wall of willows as it rounds southward downstream. The opening is approximately one mile below Smith Point Light. Eventually you will find a break in this willow forest, an inlet below a boiling place. The boils are being caused by Dike#1 which is now overtopped by 20 feet of water. Paddle over the boils and follow the water into the inlet as deep as you can go, to the East. You will notice the river water is now flowing into a thin line of willows that block this channel at lower water levels. At first the channel is only 30 feet wide. If the water's flowing in, that's your sign, the secret channel is open. If there's no flow its not open. Watching carefully for snags or driftwood strainers that sometimes pile up at the entrance. Use your best paddling technique and cut through the narrow opening and through the willows and then go with the flow as the water rounds a series of dunes and big hummocks of forested mud. After a few turns the channel opens up maybe doubling or tripling in width, and then turns southward along some broad beaches behind some lines of tall standing cottonwoods. Below the beaches it closes up again and gets broken by contours of the landscape, but then regains its shape around a few more bends and makes its way again southward along the last giant ridge of sand descending downstream towards the exit back into the main channel of the Mississippi. Towards its bottom end the channel opens up wider and wider, becoming shallower as it does and spreading out over the sandy desert of Smith Point Sandbar. Oftentimes I have happened upon herds of deer as well as flocks of geese, red-winged blackbirds, and various ducks. During the spring songbird migration this area is a birder's paradise.