Rustic Drive to County Road H:
Branching out on some eastern Wisconsin water, this trip aimed to travel not just one, but two branches of the Milwaukee by way of the main stem. With a convenient bike shuttle along the Eisenbahn State Trail, this appealing endeavor had all the ingredients for an ambitious and adventurous day paddle.
By Denny Caneff
A Miles Paddled contributor
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: May 3, 2024
Skill Level: Intermediate
Class Difficulty: Riffles, deadfall and brushy obstacles.
Gradient:
2.5′ per mile for the first mile, then marshy flatwater
Correlative Gauge Recorded on this Trip:
Cedarburg: ht/ft: 6.0 | cfs: 138
Gauge note: There are (disappointingly) no US Geological Survey gauges on the upper reaches (i.e. branches) of the Milwaukee River. Reasonable proxy is the gauge for Cedar Creek in Cedarburg. On May 23, the Cedar Creek gauge read 100 cfs.
Recommended Levels:
The river was slightly elevated on this day, following some spring rainstorms. It was ideal, though normal flows should be sufficient for the West Branch.
Put-In:
Rustic Drive, Campbellsport, Wisconsin
GPS: 43.55372, -88.28302
Take-Out:
County Road H, Kewaskum, Wisconsin
GPS: 43.49775, -88.19486
Total Time: 3-4h
Miles Paddled: 9.75
Shuttle Information:
There’s an ideal bike shuttle for this section. From the take-out on County Highway H, travel west on H about a mile to where the Eisenbahn State Trail (a limestone-surfaced recreational trail) crosses the county highway. Simply head northwest on the Eisenbahn (is that German for “bike highway”?) to its intersection with Rustic Road. Head west on Rustic Road ¾ mile to the put-in.
If you’re driving the shuttle, travel west on County Road H to U.S. Highway 45 in Kewaskum. Go north on 45 to County Road V. Travel northeast on V to Rustic Road; turn left and go to the bridge.
Background:
What provoked me to look at this branch of the Milwaukee River (and another branch – read on) was not kayaking, but, rather, hiking on the Ice Age Trail. The Trail’s Milwaukee River segment starts very close to the confluence of the East Branch of the Milwaukee and the Milwaukee’s mainstem, in Washington County, just east of the village of Kewaskum. In perusing maps, I found that the West Branch of the Milwaukee is just a few paddle strokes away.
Hmm, I say to myself: could I paddle both branches – in other words, down the West Branch, connect to the East Branch via the mainstem, then go upstream and back on it – in one day? In other words, could I be a full-fledged “Branch Milwaukeean?”
Yes, I could. And yes, I did. I wouldn’t recommend it, however, unless you have the stamina and appetite for a fairly long day of paddling with a medium to high dose of deadfalls. I loved it, though. The two branches are distinctly different rivers that feed the mother Milwaukee (The East Branch is described here.)
This trip summary focuses strictly on my trip down the West Branch, though I did continue farther downstream on the mainstem of the Milwaukee, then headed up the East Branch for a brief round trip, before returning to the mainstem and jumping out.
With this stream’s level slightly (not crazily) elevated, I considered how high water can be the classic “frenemy” of the adventurous paddler:
Friend – high water gets you over obstacles that might otherwise stop you.
Enemy – water level is heightened to the extent you can’t easily push under overhanging brush you might otherwise slip through.
Friend – where the river might normally go slack, high water sustains a current.
Enemy – that extra push of high water gives you might just be the margin of defeat in navigating a cluttered snag, pushing you through tight spots and turns faster than you want to go.
It’s rare to find a paddling trip with a perfect bike shuttle, but this trip served it up which was another very attractive aspect to this adventure.
Overview:
I hit the ultimate paddling sweet spot: a warm and sunny May day when all the area’s rivers had been recharged with recent rains. The West Branch tantalized from the bridge on Rustic Road. The put-in is as ideal as the bike shuttle route that preceded it. There’s a path cut down to the river right along the bridge abutment (river right, downstream side).
It didn’t take long to hit my first little surprise: about a mile in, there’s a 2-foot high low-head concrete dam. With the water high, I easily skimmed over it; in lower water you’ll have to hoonch your way over it. There was no apparent dangerous backwash or backroller.
A few fun riffles and some brush follow, making for casual navigating. The river then splits into two. I took the channel to the right because it appeared to have more water. That didn’t mean it had sufficient water to help me plow through or over obstacles, and I had to make my first portage of the day to get over a relatively small log. Paddlers who keep wiser self-counsel might have portaged another obstacle or two in this stretch.
The two streams rejoin. Immediately after that point and around a bend appeared a huge downed swamp oak tree that let me sidle under its trunk at the right bank.
There’s a marshy stretch where the river widened and slowed and allowed me to relax. These wide spots show up on Google Maps like bulges in a blue vein of water. An encounter with a landowner planting swamp white oak saplings in marshy reed canary grass suggested that he took the name “swamp oak” too literally. (Those trees will drown.)
An hour and ten minutes into the trip, I came to County Road V. On the right bank, right at the bridge, there is a DNR-managed fishing access (therefore public) that could easily be a boating access, though there are no provisions for it, nor any evidence that people put in or take out here.
It doesn’t take long to realize that this fishing access is not a paddling access for heading downstream because of the massive cluster of deadfalls about 250 yards downstream of the county road bridge. Up to this point I’d seen little evidence that local river angels work to keep this stream open. This cluster confirmed that supposition. The portage around this jungle is on the right bank, and it’s not easy. Push through the brush a good 50 yards to get around what is two sets of knotted messes.
Just after the cluster, there was a very thin wire – not marked at all – strung across the river, at about neck height on me. It’s not clear what purpose it serves – ostensibly cattle control – but there were no signs along the bank that cows had been present in the past couple of years. There were 1-2 other wires downstream from the unmarked one, but at least they were well marked with plastic jugs. All of them were easy to get under or over – they don’t have a lot of tension and they are NOT electrified.
From County V to the East Branch’s confluence with the mainstem of the Milwaukee, I encountered 10-12 snags and deadfalls of varying degrees of difficulty, but I didn’t need to portage any of them.
As a sucker for confluences, one of the reasons I ran this branch of the Milwaukee was to encounter two confluences – where the West Branch meets the mainstem of the Milwaukee, above Kewaskum, and where the East Branch enters the Milwaukee mainstem, below Kewaskum.
I completely missed the West Branch-mainstem confluence! I must have been pretty engaged in navigating trees and brush at the confluence and totally missed the Milwaukee, which sort of sneaks in from the left and from behind. The blending of the two streams, plus the effect of the dam at Kewaksum, slowed the current down considerably and widened the river. It felt more like an elongated lake at this point, with the slack water and absent current typical of an impoundment. And I was now in the village of Kewaskum.
If you’re like me and want to spare yourself of an impoundment paddle, I’d suggest taking out at any number of spots within the impoundment: there are ball fields (therefore, public land) on the right bank; County Road S/Riverside Drive parallels the river on the left bank and affords some takeout opportunities. If you carry on to the dam, there’s River Hill Park at that spot which offers a fine place to end your trip on the West Bank/mainstem Milwaukee River. From Rustic Road to the dam at Kewaskum was a 2.5 hour paddle.
I had another objective this day – to continue downstream on the Milwaukee so I could go upstream on the next branch of the Milwaukee River, the East Branch – so I carried on. After the dam at Kewaskum I passed through a golf course which reeked heavily of herbicide. Despite the slightly elevated river level, the river was languid and obstacle-free. At the confluence with the East Branch, I turned upstream into it, planning to travel up as far as I could – but for no more than an hour which, I felt, would qualify this excursion for my “I did that river” list. But about 40 minutes in, I confronted the last brush pile I had patience for, and turned around.
I loved this end bit of the East Branch. Slow, sultry and possessing the dankness of a floodplain forest, it is dominated by massive silver maples, both upright and in the river.
I headed back downstream to rejoin the mainstem of the Milwaukee. Just a few hundred yards from the confluence of branch and mainstem, you’ll find the take-out, and it is excellent. (The take-out described in the 2015 entry on this site for the East Branch of the Milwaukee River, on Oak Drive, doesn’t appear to exist anymore.) The Ice Age Trail Alliance has a trailhead and parking lot on County Road H at the bridge over the Milwaukee, on the right bank, just downstream of the bridge. It’s a gently sloped 50-yard haul of your boat to the parking lot.
The whole trip – Rustic Road on the West Branch to the East Branch, upstream about ¾ mile and back, then to the takeout on H, took 4 hours.
What we liked:
This river has a lot of adventure to offer, largely because it is a watery “road less traveled.” You have to have an appetite, though, for encountering the unexpected; this stream has not been adopted, apparently, by local river angels.
What we didn’t like:
It would hardly be worth the trouble to do the two shorter segments I’ve described, so the truncated trip – Rustic Road to the dam at Kewaskum is the way to go. But then you have to slog through the impoundment, devoid of current and interesting scenery.
If we did this trip again:
I wouldn’t hesitate to do this run again. But a distilled version on the West Branch – say, from Rustic Road to County Road V, or from County V to the impoundment in Kewaskum (with Rustic to V the better of these two options) – would be equally enjoyable to, and probably more sensible, than the “Branch Milwaukeean” run that I did.
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Related Information:
Good People: Milwaukee Riverkeeper
Wikipedia: Milwaukee River
Photo Gallery:
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