Fayette to Heron Road:
A truly exquisite experience, this section of the beguiling Volga River will be hard to catch with enough water to paddle, but oh so worth it when serendipity presents itself! Almost entirely enclosed within public land (a rarity in Iowa!), crystal clear to jade green water teeming with riffles and light rapids flush you past the unabashed bling of exposed limestone outcrops and lovely bluffs for miles on end.
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: April 21, 2024
Skill Level: Intermediate (on account of swift current with some obstacles to dodge)
Class Difficulty: Class I
Gradient:
≈9′ per mile
Gauge Recorded on this Trip:
Littleport: ht/ft: 5.5 | cfs: 380
Current Levels:
Littleport: ht/ft: 5.41 | cfs: 269
Recommended Levels:
We recommend this level. Below 5′ will invite scraping. Below 4.5′ would be a fool’s errand.
Put-In:
Klock’s Island Park, Fayette, Iowa
GPS: 42.84288, -91.81917
Take-Out:
Heron Road
GPS: 42.86453, -91.74071
Time: Put in at 2:00p. Out at 4:50p.
Total Time: 2h 50m
Miles Paddled: 11
Wildlife:
Smallmouth bass, trout, carp, tadpoles, bald eagles, king fishers, great blue herons, turkey vultures, turkey, beaver, muskrat, raccoon, and a ton of geese and ducks.
Shuttle Information:
Paved road: 7.75 miles going north and west on Ivy Road, then south on Highway 150 to Lafayette, then east on Highway 93. Unpaved road: 6 miles going south on Heron Road, then west on Hemlock Road into the town of Fayette. Bike option: 5-6 miles going rogue and off-road through the state recreation area, onto dirt-gravel Jade Road, and finally onto a dedicated bike path that leads directly to Klock’s Island Park.
Background:
I feel duty-bound to pay homage immediately to Nate Hoogeveen here and the opening salvo to his write-up on the upper Volga River in his indispensible book, Paddling Iowa:
“Iowa has a handful of small streams that, given good water levels, compel paddlers to call in sick to work or school, drop all responsibilities, and take to the water. The upper Volga is such a stretch of river.”
I mean, come on!
It is not an exaggeration to confide that I have had my eye on this trip for ten years now. That may well sound preposterous, but A) it is a three-hour drive away from where I live and B) it rarely has enough water to paddle – and when it does, it doesn’t for very long. The upper Volga in particular is a classic Goldilocks stream, where catching it at levels in between too low (most of the time) and too high (right after a couple inches of rain) is painstakingly complicated. (If I were more clever,* I’d offer a Demetri Martin-esque drawing here showing the inverse proportion of drought, deluge, and desirability, which… aw, shoot, indulge me a minute…
No, this not my attempt at a Piet Mondrian painting – it’s worse; it’s my attempt at a joke. (Also, now’s as good a time as any to point out the asterisk above and share with you that Microsoft Word urges me to change “more clever” to cleverer. Seriously? Cleverer? That will never catch on. Neverer.)
So, the gray represents too low. As a lapse Catholic, I’ll call that “ordinary time.” The black is when it’s dangerously high. Let’s call that Lent. The turquoise triangle is when it’s doable (First Communion?), and the blue sliver is when it’s ideal (aka Christmas morning). There you have it. What’s that? Don’t quit my day job? Ha, the joke’s on you; I’m unemployed these days. (Unlike two years ago, when all you needed was a pulse to get a job – and if you returned after the first day you’d already get a raise – now, you need a PhD to work the third shift at Kwik Trip, and I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree. Good times in Purgatory! Although it has allowed for a lot of paddling – and I don’t need to call in sick, so there’s that.)
I did actually make a genuine graph for Canoecopia this year to illustrate a point…
This is the Volga River USGS gauge at Littleport from February to December in 2022. (2023, alias “Drought Town” was an outlier year.) The x-axis is cubic feet per second (cfs), the y-axis the calendar year. The blue horizontal line is set at 400 cfs, which is a fabulous velocity to run the upper Volga at. The five green columns indicate the short windows of time when the river was at or above 400 cfs. There were a few days in March when water levels were excellent, a handful more in April and May, and a couple opportunities in June and July. There might have been one afternoon in August, and then the bottom fell out for the rest of the year. All tallied and told, that made the upper Volga comfortably runnable for roughly 10-20 days in all of 2022. And I doubt that even a plurality of those fell nicely on weekends. Otherwise it was shockingly high or woefully low. Timing truly is everything.
Now, I think we’re all of a mind that too high is universally regarded as prohibitively verboten, yes? Admittedly, I’m a neophyte outsider from Madison, but I feel even-keeled to assert that 800 cfs is when the river gets too rough and rowdy (to borrow from the Bard). The river is only 40′ wide in some spots. Moreover, there are several stretches where you are magnificently boxed in by limestone-lined banks and steep bluffs; you do not want to be caught in a flash flood here. Besides, when the river gets too high, all the riffles and rapids will wash out, to say nothing of the insanely translucent water color turning turbid.
There’s more subjective variability when it comes to low levels. I prefer to save my bump and grind for clubbing on Saturday nights, but that’s just me. (Just kidding. Besides, it’s Thursday nights.) Personally, taking my boat for a walk because the river is low is a staggered parade of disgrace, especially if I drove several hours and burned dozens of gallons of fossil fuel to do so. But some paddlers think nothing of scraping and pulling their boats with rope like an obstinate dog on a leash. For them, paddling this trip at 200 cfs would be normal (although it would take hours longer to do, involve fewer miles, and not be the same qualitative experience, IMHO).
So much of the upper Volga’s soul is the cumulative effect of swift current, gorgeous water clarity, and beautiful scenery. The scenery’s always beautiful, but the current will be none too swift if you keep bottoming out, butt-scooting or walking your boat, and the clarity will be none too clear if the river is swollen with high water. You just have to be lucky enough (or unemployed) to catch the river at the right level. Otherwise, it would be like spending the time and money to go to Paris only to learn that there’s a flour and grape shortage, such that there are no croissants, baguettes, or bottles of wine to indulge.
Let’s move on, shall we?
The Volga River – obviously, not the Russian one – lies in the heart of beautiful northeastern Iowa, where no glaciers bulldozed the exposed bedrock in the last Ice Age. It’s at least 80 miles long, but the first quarter of that is little more than a dinky ditch. Just west of Fayette, it’s fed by north and south branches that do add considerable volume. Still though, it will run shallow. The terrain does not become terribly compelling until M Avenue, four miles upstream from this trip’s start. It’s not for nothing that Hoogeveen’s trip begins at M (more on that in a moment). The glory and the grandeur that is the upper Volga begins, for all intents and purposes, here at M and subsides at the outskirts of the state recreation area. From there it flows through rough terrain to Wadena – the poor little river is littered with debris from an abandoned railroad line, not to mention an obstacle course of nasty strainers. It flattens out some through ag country to the small town of Volga, but then picks up interest and prettiness on its way to Osborne. This mid-section comprises about 28 miles. Hoogeveen’s second trip skips the midsection altogether and resumes in Osborne. From there, the Volga cruises on down all the way to the confluence at the Turkey River outside of Elkport, a distance of 20 miles (a long but doable day trip, or more sensibly split in two by using the convenient access in Littleport).
With this in mind, the Volga can be divvied into thirds: upper, middle, and lower. This trip is the upper, and it’s incredible. The middle may be skipped, frankly, unless you’re dedicated, curious, or local. The lower is quite lovely in its own right, but also a measurably different river by that point: it’s considerably wider, and the water clarity cloudier. Counter-intuitively, because the river is much wider in the final 20 miles (averaging 100′) and the gradient is still reputable (5ish feet per mile), water levels will continue to be tricky and fickle on the lower Volga. Hoogeveen advises to look for 125 cfs “for reasonable passage through riffles.” Respectfully, I’ve done it at 300 cfs and found it surprisingly shallow – but totally doable. As for the turbidity, well, there’s a whole lot of farmland and eroded banks between Fayette and Osborne. It’s still better than a lot of rivers, but a night and day difference from the upper portion.
A couple more wonky bits and then we’ll take off. Feel free to skip ahead, if you’re champing at the bit to get on with it already.
I first ogled at the upper Volga on Labor Day weekend, 2023. Impossibly, impassably low – you could walk across it without wetting your shins – all I could do was cast my imagination downstream and wait for another time. That and scout. The access at Heron Road is pretty good and lies right at the edge of the public land corridor. It’s preceded by two accesses only two miles upriver, both along Hill Road via the Albany Campground. The first of these, just past a cool iron truss bridge, is a smidge ambiguous. The second is at a dedicated picnic area and much better.
Next was scoping where to start. Klock’s Island Park is fantastic, easy, and scenic. Plus it’s in town and makes logistics neat and tidy. Then I checked out M Avenue. No sooner than I’d arrived, I wondered what I was missing. Hoogeveen advises to launch upstream of the bridge, river-right. Let me tell you, that’s a no-go for all practical purposes. It’s steep and unsteady, weedy, tick-laden, and there’s simply no discernible place to launch. BUT there’s a clear path to the river on the downstream side, river-right. It took me a minute to notice it, FYI, but it’s there alright. It’s quite possible that it too becomes impenetrable by summertime. Regardless, right at where you would launch a boat with perfect aplomb at the end of this path lied a dead deer* in April 2024 I mean right there, as though intentionally staged. Maybe the next flood will wash it out, but… All the same, you could very feasibly launch directly beneath the bridge, river-right, via the path that is at least clear in springtime. From M to Klock’s is four miles, and Hoogeveen sings its praises. The topo map corroborates that. But starting here just wasn’t in my cards; I’d already driven three hours just to get to Fayette, was set up to paddle 11 miles in the mid-afternoon, knew I’d face a rigorous bike shuttle (see below), and still had to set up camp before dusk. Hence, it was Klock’s Island Park to Heron Road for me. And, good lord, was it awesome!
* Stranger still, at the next bridge upstream from M Avenue, which is – surprise! – N Avenue, there was a cow carcass lying precisely where one might reasonably launch a boat. Io-what-the…?!? For giggles and kicks, I went one more bridge upstream from N – nope, it’s not O, but rather Highway W25 (aka Neon Road) – where there’s a public park called Twin Bridges, at the confluence of the Volga and Little Volga. Maybe the park doesn’t open up til May, but both of its two gates were locked. Weird signs.
Overview:
Klock’s Island Park is excellent. The park is small, but it does have bathrooms, water, a playground, and even campsites. An island it is not, however. There is a sandy, beach-like spot at the river from which to launch, across a grassy area, with signage about regulations and logistics. Before you even step inside your boat, the aesthetics are impressive: the water is either crystal clear or cast in a hue of jade green in the deeper pools, the current is riffly and coursing over a substrate of rocky gravel, and a modest bluff looms on the opposite bank with exposed limestone outcrops. Hello, Volga! Bring on the next 11 miles!
It’s an astonishing spectacle to behold such clear water while knowing that the actual bottom is feet below your boat. In other words, the river ain’t clear just because it’s super shallow. Translucence always has its own draw, but this kind of clarity inspires tremendous respect on account of its depth. To be blunt, it’s the color of what rivers ought to look like – and did look like, before spade and blade both broke the back of the land til it bled eroded brown. Here at least, the river is like an avatar of its pre-settled past, running in spirited leaps along small limestone walls and woods in the first half-mile. Its floor positively radiates like a mosaic of dinner plate-sized rocks, a cast of thousands. There are even larger rocks beneath the water, too, the size of treasure chests, as well as popcorn-esque pebbles. And there will be continuous shifts in the substrate, from rocks to shimmering sand, back and forth, from beginning to end.
From Klock’s, the Volga comes out of the gate all hammer and tongs. Riffles and limestone walls lead to the tall bridge at Highway 150, past which things simmer for a minute. A quiet interlude follows to the next bridge, at Main Street, where a couple islands braid the main channel into frenzied riffles. Watch out for snags and strainers here. Fayette, Iowa is the home of Upper Iowa University – the actual brick and mortar(board) campus – but the town itself has a population of 1200, only one-third of the student body. (Fun fact about Fayette: it’s the only town in America that has a college but no high school.) There’s not a whole lot here in the way of “downtown,” and after Main Street you really won’t see the town again. But a small slice of suburbia follows, by way of a handful of backyards. Fortunately, spirited riffles command your attention (although one property has a retaining wall set atop a natural limestone outcrop, which I found amusing – how much retention does one need?). Another limestone wall will run along the left bank, and the river soon drops down a modest series of ledges – super fun, but nothing technical or tricky or even higher than Class I. Indeed, at least at these water levels, nothing on this trip in general ranks higher than Class I rapids. It’s probably for this reason why I kept playing Radiohead’s “Anyone Can Play Guitar” in my head – a song I hadn’t actually heard in two decades at least (yet there it was all the same – hello! – in my head, just like that, thanks Oliver Sacks). Anyone can paddle the Volga; it’s just a matter if there’s enough water to paddle it.
Next up comes a long line of solar panels and then a pedestrian bridge that’s either part of a recreation trail and/or the golf course. (Yes, there’s a golf course, but the visual effect is fleeting.) Indeed, the river will dogleg-right, to the south, in a long and atypical straightaway that is itself away from the links and to the next access, at Langeman’s Ford, off Hemlock Road, on river-right. After this point you enter the Volga River State Recreation Area, a bounty of rugged and lovely public land, all the way to the take-out. It’s not like you step through a portal here, no event horizon after which the landscape changes on a dime to become dramatic. No. In fact, the landscape is gentle and more subtle than a lot of Iowa’s unglaciated areas, where cliffs, bluffs, and escarpments can be worthy of a Hollywood backdrop. What’s perhaps most notable here and for the next eight miles is what’s not present – and that’s development. Other than one random house next to the golf course that’s set above and way beyond the left bank (that may not even be visible once the trees fluff out) and then the backside of the clubhouse a couple miles later, there are no buildings and no machines, just a recovering landscape that occasionally has the look and feel of abandonment (in a cool, Gothic way). A wilderness this is not – it’s Iowa, after all, 49th in the nation for public land. And there is a patchwork of farm fields woven within the recreation area. Again, it’s Iowa. But it is eight blissful miles of swift, translucent water meandering around one rock outcrop or bluff after another on a stream only 50′ wide. In Iowa, that’s damn near Disneyland.
Anecdotally, the original vision for the state recreation area was an enormous lake (and not simply the modest one at Frog Hollow). But geologists put the kibosh on that (thank heavens!), due to the fractious bedrock. Instead, there’s a ton of trails for hiking, biking, horsing around, and skiing in wintertime.
The river flows north now in large horseshoe-shaped loops with occasional straightaways. Only a bookkeeper could account for the exact amount of boulders found at the base of bluffs and rock walls along the banks. Let’s just say “lots.” And they range in size from VW bug to SUV. Another salient feature through the recreation area are the coniferous trees, cedar and yew especially. Set against the chalk-white limestone, the verdant greens pop with loud cheer. The terrain becomes steeper, too, increasingly thick with wooded enclosures. All in all, I encountered three natural springs just in the state recreation area, each one enveloped in suede-like supple grass and percolating out of the porous rock. There’s something about a natural spring – especially one that gushes and not just seeps – that alights my heart with a kindling of something truly wild, and northeastern Iowa has these in abundance.
Between the large loops and lack of development for miles on end, paddlers can become lulled in a veritable reverie for a good five miles. But one abrupt right-hand bend will bring to sharp focus an old truss bridge, closed to vehicles. With a tall bluff to its left lined by sheer rock outcrops, the setting is genuinely iconic. Just past the bridge on river-left is an access point, where the grass toes to the water. It’s not exactly obvious where to get out, but I don’t recommend ending your trip here anyway; there’s another, better access a mile downstream, and lots of splashy dashes in between. The river is deflected to the left by a stout ridge on the right. On your left is a cool stretch of squishy wetlands. (Beyond it and up the bluff on the left is a sprawling carpet of natural spring verdure.) You might hear the collective din of the campground on your left, but you won’t be able to see it from the river. The riffles quiet down and then the next access comes into view, also on your left, where there’s a picnic area. It’s a much easier access than the previous one or even the next one downriver, at Heron Road.
The landscape does actually change before your eyes in the final mile. While the riffles still run, the foreground flattens out…at least at first. Unsurprisingly, there are some crops here along the right. But you’ll see some surprisingly steep eroded sand-clay banks on your left, and soon enough bluffs as well. A word of caution here: the river does get a little unruly leading to the Heron Road access. There’s a lot of meandering, it’s rather narrow, the first of many more former railroad vestiges – slabs of concrete – lie like tombstones strewn hither and yon, there are some nasty strainers to watch out for, and the current is particularly peppy. The good news is twofold: you can portage around any of the worrisome stuff, or just skip this last clip altogether by taking out at the picnic area mentioned above. I got through just fine in my 14.5 solo canoe, although there’s one dicey spot where the river gets pinched in a tight right-hand bend and the swift current wants to sweep you straight into the maw of two huge trees forever embedded in the left bank. You can even see this on the satellite map. Getting through gracefully is a little like slipping thread through a needle. Or you can just walk around it thanks to the flat sandy bank on the right.
A couple small islands, a steep ridge, and several more riffles lead to the takeout. First you’ll see the original but now abandoned truss bridge followed immediately by the modern concrete bridge on Heron Road. The not-terribly-conspicuous access here is on the downstream side of the bridge, river-left. It’s a little weedy and lumpy, but a dedicated landing all the same.
What we liked:
I always feel a little uncomfortable in this section, especially for a trip like this (Editor’s note: You better get comfortable, kid!) It feels a little gross and grandiose to go on and on about how beautiful and fun such-and-such was. I don’t want to sound arrogant. (Besides, all I did was paddle; I didn’t create this river. Moreover, it’s not like a section of gnarly Class V rapids that I totally crushed, bro. Please. I sipped beer, smoked a cigarette, took photos, and scribbled notes. The only thing “sick” that I did was the stupid bike shuttle.)
And then there’s the issue of confirmation bias – I wanted to like this trip, set myself up to like it. I’d waited for ten years to do this! To be fair, so does everybody who ever paddles it. But am I being strictly objective about it? That’s hard to say. I’m just a bloke in between jobs who’s part of a paddling blog, where nobody go funds us or even buys us a cup of coffee (except for one anonymous donor back in 2016, whose name I’ll never know, but whose grace and generosity I’ll never forget, and the great peeps at Rutabaga, who’ve done me right many times).
Modesty aside, this really was one of the best paddling trips in my life. I’m sorry if that comes off as highfalutin, but it’s just the unwavering, immutable truth. The thing is, it’s not the prettiest river I’ve ever paddled, or the most intimate, or the most engaging. But it is uniquely pretty, intimate, and engaging in such a cumulative matter as to set it apart from most other river trips that possess one or even two of those attributes in spades. I think that’s what makes this segment of the Volga River so bewitching. It’s just so lovely, over and over. And its loveliness is primitive and basic, but essential. Even in Iowa, the Volga expresses an atavistic serenity of simplicity. There’s no whitewater Yawp, but there is a Walt Whitman poetry in the river’s abounding beauty.
What we didn’t like:
Paddling-wise, there’s nothing substantial to dislike about this trip. Do I want to see the backyards of houses or a golf course after driving three hours to a premier river? Of course not. But they’re worth the price of admission, and they’ll burn off like so much fat, leaving only the memory of one of the sweetest and most savory paddling experiences you’ll ever have.
That said, the bike shuttle was ludicrous, but that was a calculated gambit of my own. I have a gravel bike, but the full mile of trail riding through the recreation area was absurd. It’s earthen tracks, not even dirt-gravel, all uphill, and in my case, upwind. (Up yours, was more like it.) Finally, you get to the park perimeter, where there is a metal gate and fence with zero squeeze-through space; you must hoist your bike over the gate and fence. Real cute. Then it’s loose gravel on Jade Road outside of the park perimeter. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that there’s a paved bike/pedestrian trail not even half a mile down the road. If you’re like me – tired after three hours of driving, three hours of paddling, and panting already on this rogue bike shuttle while feeling pissy about the wind – then you’ll miss this, courtesy of A) there being zero signage and B) having not studied my own maps better since this trip was a last-minute throw together only the night before. Missing this only means you’re subjected to the loose (re: not hard packed) gravel on Jade Road for longer than necessary. And again, you’re going uphill (and probably upwind, too). But eventually the road and path come together, at which point, despite the nonexistent signage, you’ll feel most merciful. Plus the path will lead smack dab to Klock’s Island Park…eventually.
But take all of that with a grain of salt, since I was alone and had no option but to bike shuttle. I could/should have just as soon gone down Heron Road to Hemlock Road into Fayette, which is more direct although unpaved. Or I could havge taken the indirect but butter-smooth Ivy Road. I chose to do something different and then coined the following in my head in the headwind: #Friendsdon’tletfriendsbikeshuttleinIowa
If we did this trip again:
Paddling the upper Volga is a gift! But next time I’d start at the bridge upstream from this trip, at M Avenue, to add four more scenic miles. And I’d take out at the picnic area landing off Hill Road, instead of Heron Road, making for a fantastic 13-mile trip. Don’t have the time or inclination for that? Then treat yourself and launch from Langeman’s Ford instead, off of Hemlock Road, and paddle exclusively through the state recreation area, aka the crème de la crème. Thanks to its meandering orientation, if you started at Hemlock and took out at Heron, you’d paddle 8 miles but have only a 3-mile shuttle. That’s pretty slick, especially in Iowa.
Regardless, I’d want to paddle this with another person next time; it’s too wonderful to do alone. Plus I’d just as soon skip bike-shuttling on Iowa’s sh*tty roads, thank you very much.
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Related Information:
Camp + Map: Volga River State Recreation Area
Outfitter: Turkey River Rentals*
Wikipedia: Volga River
* Fayette is a way’s away from Elkader, where the outfitter is located, and possibly-probably outside of their jurisdiction. Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re already a dedicated paddler with your own boat(s). But if you’re in a bind, you can always reach out to the outfitter; the worst that can happen is they say no.
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