Day 3 Canoe Camping the Alapaha River | Where Florida's Most Dangerous River Ends

In short: This is the last day of our three-day Alapaha trip, and we went looking for the reason the books call it the most dangerous river in Florida. It isn't the rapids. Twenty miles below our takeout, the whole river runs into a hole in the ground and disappears. We woke at the shoals at Jennings Defeat, broke camp, ran the last of the shoals, then turned up the Alapahoochee an eighth of a mile against the current to a waterfall most people never see. We took out at Sasser Landing and drove overland to the Dead River Sink, where the Alapaha runs down between the banks and vanishes into the earth, roaring loud enough to hear from a hundred yards away. Part 1 is where we ran it.

Morning at the shoals

We woke up on the last morning right at the shoals below Jennings Defeat, the same rapids we'd run and camped beside the evening before. There's a rhythm to the last morning of a trip, coffee first, then you start pulling the camp apart while the river keeps moving past you. We took our time at the water and let the shoals wake us up, because once the boat's loaded the day belongs to the current again.

Breaking camp and the last of the shoals

Breaking camp on a river you'll never sleep on again makes you slow down and look at it once more. We got the hammocks and tarps down, loaded the canoe, and pushed off into the last stretch of the upper Alapaha, the last of the shoals before the river changes character for good. If you've followed the trip, this is the water that earned every bit of the "most dangerous" name up top, limestone under the hull and the river dropping through the rock.

Turket Creek Falls, up the Alapahoochee

A little way down we turned off the main river and worked up the Alapahoochee, a tributary, about an eighth of a mile against the current to reach Turket Creek Falls. It's a real waterfall, the kind most paddlers never see because you have to leave the line you're on, fight the current up a side creek, and go looking for it. That's usually where the best of a river hides, off the obvious path. We sat with it a minute, then dropped back down to the Alapaha and made for the takeout.

Sasser Landing, and looking for the sink

We took the canoe out at Sasser Landing, on the Florida side of the line, and that's where the paddling part of this river ends. But the river itself keeps going a little further, and where it goes is the whole reason we came. So we loaded up and drove overland to the Jennings Bluff tract to find the Dead River Sink, the place the Alapaha ends. Below Jennings the river gets smaller and smaller, and then it doesn't flow downstream anymore, it flows down.

The Dead River Sink, where the water goes

You hear it before you see it. The Alapaha runs down between the banks and pours straight into a hole in the ground, roaring loud enough to hear from a hundred yards off, and then it's gone. Not a bend, not a delta out to the sea, it just drops into the earth and runs the rest of the way underground. The Alapaha is one of the only rivers in the eastern United States that never reaches the ocean. It sinks into the Floridan Aquifer through the karst limestone south of the state line and travels on as a subterranean river.

Here's the part that got me: researchers once dropped dye into the Dead River Sink, and days later it came up on the Suwannee River about twenty miles to the south, rising back to the surface through the Alapaha Rise and Holton Creek Rise. That's documented by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Suwannee River Water Management District, and the USGS. Same water we'd been paddling for three days, going underground and coming back up a county away. That's what makes the Alapaha a genuinely different river than any other blackwater run in the Southeast.

Questions about the Alapaha River Sink

Can you paddle to the Dead River Sink?

Not to the sink itself, no. On our three-day trip we paddled the shoals below Jennings Defeat, ran the last of them on the final morning, then took the canoe out at Sasser Landing on the Florida side of the line. That is where the paddling ends, but the river keeps going a little further, so we loaded up and drove overland to the Jennings Bluff tract to find where it finishes. Below Jennings the Alapaha gets smaller and smaller until it stops flowing downstream and starts flowing straight down. You hear it before you ever see it, a roar loud enough to carry a hundred yards, and then you are standing at the edge watching the river pour into a hole in the ground and disappear. It is not a bend and it is not a delta running out to the sea, it just drops into the earth and keeps going underground through the karst limestone toward the Floridan Aquifer.

What is the waterfall on the Alapahoochee?

A little way down from the shoals we turned off the main river and worked our way up the Alapahoochee, a tributary, about an eighth of a mile against the current. That is where Turket Creek Falls sits, a real waterfall, and it is the kind most paddlers never see because you have to leave the line you are on and fight the current up a side creek just to find it. Most people running the Alapaha stay on the main channel and never know it is there. We sat with it for a minute before dropping back down to the Alapaha and making for the takeout at Sasser Landing. That is usually where the best of a river hides, off the obvious path, tucked up a tributary nobody bothers to check. It is a small drop, but finding it took the same kind of attention we gave the rest of this stretch, reading the river instead of just running it.