Mile 761.5 - RBD 761.5-757 Back Channel of Dean Island
RBD 761.5-757 Back Channel of Dean Island
Note: If you intend on camping on Dean Island, stay Main Channel where the best campsites are located. If you are continuing on downstream, take the beautiful back channel, one of the most scenic found on the Lower Miss.
Dean Island Back Channel is lined with deep forests of tall trees and good flow at all but the lowest of water levels. If there is water going in there is water going out. The 2011 flood greatly enlarged this back channel, as it did many others down the Lower Mississippi. This is one of the distinct advantages of such an extreme high waterhigh water: the cleaning out of clogged channels.
Enter Dean Island Channel with a wide eddy out of the main channel of the river past the Island 35 Light RBD 762.2. An enormous eddy forms here in a hollow-out of the river bank. Ride the fast waters around the turbulent edge and drive in when you see the water direction begin flowing inwards towards the big opening above Dean Island. You can relax as soon as you have gained perch with the inflowing current. If you have the time stop paddling and enjoy the sensation of floating amongst the gentle currents under the tall trees, buoyed to and fro by gentle boils and resulting mini-whirlpools.
The back channel of Island 35 enters from the right as Dean Island Channel turns southward and slightly westward a mile with a slight bend to the east, and then a responding turn to the west. Four miles total. When you see the main channel again begin steeling yourself for traffic and more rigorous river activity!
The only view you will get canoeing or kayaking the river of the 3rd Chickasaw Bluff is coming around Island 35 before the top of Dean Island, and looking downstream over the face of the river, and then over the furthest bank, and then back to the furthest line of trees. That last line of hazy blue trees in the distance is the top of the Third Chickasaw Bluff, and yes, that’s the only view you’ll get of it! Years ago the Mighty Mississippi River ran closer in, and surely exposed it much as it is presently doing at the base of the upper bluffs one and two. But now it has moved away. The river runs two or three miles away from its base. No worries, however. Everything is always in flux here. Probably in another 1,000 years the river will return and be clawing away again at the muddy heights of the 3rd Chickasaw Bluff (and will possibly have moved far from the 1st and 2nd).
After coming around Dean Island canoeists, kayakers and surfers (stand-up-paddleboarders) have three choices for route of travel below the 3rd Chickasaw Bluff when the river is medium high or above: 1) stay main channel, 2) go LBD and paddle behind Densford Bar Archipelago, AKA the Hen and the Chicks, or 3) stay RBD and dive into the Back Channel of Brandywine Island. In times of low water, however, all travel will have to remain within the main channel.
Main channel brings you quickly down around Densford Bar (possible camping, but very exposed) and then along the forested lowlands and bottomland hardwood forests that extend towards the river below the Meeman Shelby Forest State Park (which straddles the tippy-top of the Third Chickasaw Bluff). Many historians argue that this is the site of Rene-Robert Cavelier de la Salle’s Fort Prudhomme, named for one his men who got lost for nine days before eventually wandering back to camp here in 1682 (no doubt confused by the convoluted landscape of the bluffs with steep ravines and zigzag ridge lines that follow no compass). La Salle and his men paddled the Mississippi in giant voyageur style canoes made of birch bark from the Great Lakes looking for the mouth of the Mississippi.