Guest Creek

This is Guest with a T, not to be confused with other similarly named runs. Guest and Lively come together to form (Long?) Island Creek way up near Bryant, AL on Sand Mountain. I first glanced at it as we sped by in 2001 on our initial high water Lively run. I dismissed it for many years because we knew it would take a big level on Lively to get down Guest, which has a smaller watershed than Lively. But in April 2011 we got lucky with the level and weather and gave it a shot.

Guest will never be a commonly made run because those that would truly appreciate its many III+ rapids will be sorely tested on Lively at high water. It can perhaps be looked at as an alternate put in for Lively at good levels. It is pretty mellow II-III for a good while and then the current spreads out into a few channels. You then run a rapid where most of the water goes into a sink at very low levels. Just below here the action picks up with some longer rapids and one pretty sweet righty boof. The rapids go on until you hit Lively. The water quality is good for Sand Mountain and the run is nice and sunny cool day.

On Lively, be heads up for the start of the biggies not far downstream. There are 3-4 nice drops and then a serious class V is usually portaged along with its bigger brother. Below here it is game on III, IV, and IV+ for about a mile. Hope for less logs than we had.

Alf Van Hoose and I walked Guest on November 21, 2010 and it was almost free of wood. By April 5, 2011 it had about 6 logs, mostly pines, across the creek. Fortunately the logs were not bad enough to spoil the fun and they did not block the better rapids. Lively used to be almost log-free 10 years ago but now it has a ton of them. They've been cutting logs on river right, big ones at that. It forced some walks a couple sketchy moves.

If you drive to the end of CR 431, you’ll see the dirt road we used to put in. We asked for permission from the landowner in the last house, but the road is not theirs. Act accordingly. The shuttle is 20 minutes each way. Be conscious of the landowners at the takeout, use the state lands and look for the signs outside the private gate.