If you live in Warne, you already know the sign. It hangs at West Outpost on Old Highway 64, and it tells you tubing runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week, from May until the business closes down for winter. What the sign does not tell you is whether the creek underneath those hours is actually deep enough to float on. That gap between the posted schedule and the water itself is the thing worth understanding before you load a cooler and call it a plan.
A farm boy, a lace mill, and a creek
West Tubing Company exists because of a specific childhood. Dave West grew up on his family's farm in Warne with Brasstown Creek running through the backyard, spending hours there with his brothers before he left for Western Carolina University to study engineering and later built a career at Milliken Industries. He came home to western North Carolina after retiring, and in 2018 he bought the old Tellico Lace plant site along the creek, not entirely sure what he'd do with it. The answer showed up on its own one afternoon when he heard kids laughing outside and looked over to see three girls and a boy floating down the creek on their own. Commercial tubing launched from that property in spring 2021, built around a put-in point called West Preserve and a take-out at West Outpost.
That backstory matters because it explains the shape of the business. This isn't a franchise operation bolted onto a river. It's one property owner's creek, turned into a float trip that starts a few miles upstream and ends at a covered deck where he grills burgers.
What a trip actually looks like
The mechanics are simple. You park at West Outpost, sign a waiver, and pay before a shuttle van carries you to the put-in at West Preserve. From there you float roughly 1.5 hours down Brasstown Creek back to the outpost, where a covered deck overlooks the water and the grill turns out burgers, hot dogs, and bratwurst sourced from Brasstown Beef and Bitter Creek Deli. There's a gift shop for water shoes, sunscreen, and the kind of souvenir T-shirt every creek town seems to sell.
Here's what that costs, as of the current season:
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Location | 6175 Old Hwy 64 W, Warne, NC |
| Season | Reopens each May, closes for the winter |
| Tubing hours | 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, last float departs at 5 p.m. |
| Tube rental | $20 per person, adult or child |
| Kayak rental | $40 for children, $50 for adults |
| Group discount | $5 off per person for parties of 20 or more |
| Year-round | Camping and The Lace Factory Antiques stay open |
Water shoes are required on every float, and children 12 and under get life jackets at no extra charge. None of that changes week to week. The creek does.
The word that keeps showing up
Pull the reviews for West Tubing Company and one word surfaces again and again in the ones written after a July visit: low. A visitor who tubed in July 2026 described the water as consistently shallow, more walking over rocks than actual floating. A couple who went in August 2024 had a rougher version of the same problem: what should have been a relaxed float stretched past three hours because there wasn't enough water to carry the tubes, and some in their group had to climb out and walk the creek bank back toward the road.
Neither review describes a business doing anything wrong on paper. The hours were what the sign said. The tubes were inflated. The staff showed up. What changed was the creek itself, and nothing on the posted schedule warned anyone that a Tuesday in July might mean more portaging than paddling.
Same creek, different season
Compare that to a review from October 2024, which praised cool, clean water and called the whole outing peaceful and fun. Same business, same put-in and take-out, same $20 tube rental. What was different was the creek's flow on that particular day.
This is not a knock on West Tubing Company. Brasstown Creek is a natural, rain-fed stream, an 8.5-mile tributary of the Hiwassee River with headwaters starting on Brasstown Bald. Streams like this rise and fall with rainfall, and mid-to-late summer in this part of the mountains often brings stretches of dry weather that drop creek levels well before the calendar says summer is over. A May or June float, closer to spring runoff, tends to have more water behind it than a float squeezed in during a dry August week. That's simply how a creek this size behaves, and it's exactly why the posted hours and the actual conditions can tell two different stories on the same afternoon.
Read the water before you load the cooler
If you're planning a Brasstown Creek trip for out-of-town guests or your own family, there's a way to hedge against a July-style disappointment. The U.S. Geological Survey operates an active streamgage on Brasstown Creek near Warne, part of its national water data network, and it's a free, public way to check current conditions before you drive over. It won't tell you whether the float will be fun, but a quick look at recent flow can flag whether you're heading into a good water day or a rocky one.
Beyond that, a phone call to the outpost before you go costs nothing and tends to get you a straight answer, since the people running the shuttle vans know that morning's creek better than any website update. Early-season trips in May and June carry more built-in margin than a trip squeezed into a dry stretch of July or August. And if you've had rain in the days before your visit, that's usually a better sign than a stretch of clear, dry weather.
None of this means West Tubing Company is a bad way to spend an afternoon. Most reviews describe exactly what the business promises: a relaxed float, a burger afterward, kids safe in life jackets, a covered deck over the water. It just means the smart move, if you live here and plan to do this more than once, is to treat the water level as the real variable and the posted hours as the constant that tells you nothing about it.
Warne doesn't have much in the way of a downtown or a crowded calendar of events. What it has is a creek that's been part of the community since before anyone thought to charge for a float on it, and a local business built by someone who grew up on its banks. Understanding when that creek actually delivers on its promise is the kind of small, specific knowledge that makes living here feel like living here, rather than just passing through.
If you're already thinking about what a home along Brasstown Creek or elsewhere in Clay County might be worth, or you're weighing whether Warne's quiet pace fits what you're looking for next, Melissa Jenkins Stillwell has spent more than a decade working these exact mountain communities and is happy to talk through what you're seeing on the ground here.
