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At spring flows and scheduled 'release' levels, the first quarter-mile of river below the Hatfield Dam is an impressive and scary sight, though it can be boated as a short "creek" section at low (normal summer) flows. The most serious action lies in the main (right) channel of the river. (At high water, a left channel from the base of the dam trips through tame rapids and waves before leaping into the main channel, as somewhat shown in the second and third photo down the right column below.)
Not far below the dam, this large exploding wave (above left) surged a good ten feet high. The flow is slightly squeezed through another couple of wave/holes, before pouring down a broken ledge into a huge, boiling pool (seen above right). |
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| The two photos above attempt to show how far out into the pool the water boils back toward the base of this falls (which would be just off-frame to the bottom-left of each photo). The water looked super-aerated, and appeared to afford little hope of escape if a boater were to run the falls at this level. |
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| A view looking upstream at the upper falls and boiling pool (above left) reveals the next drop in the foreground. Shown somewhat better above right, the flow splits around a hump of rock. More flow goes to river-right (frame-left), and is funneled down an irregular sloping drop into a gnarly looking hole. The river left channel drops first into a short boiling pool before being diverted back to the right to drop off another short ledge with another boiling hole. Extreme frame-right foreground, the river-left highwater channel (from the base of the dam) can be seen rejoining the main flow as it jumps off a jagged, broken ledge. |
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One of the main playable waves in this section is shown above left.
The photo above right is from an upper reach of the Black (between Neillsville and the Hatfield Reservoir). Unusually heavy spring rains, while the river was otherwise still frozen, created ice jams which flooded parts of Neillsville. When the ice jams broke, the ice moved downriver and piled up in huge walls 10-15' high on shore. |