The above view shows an area not that far from the crime scene. The view is looking west so the south side is to the left and north to the right. Here we can see one searcher on a sand bar where it isn't so deep. We also see 6 searchers in the water not too far from that searcher. The water is rather deep. We don't know how tall those searches are but it is a good bet they are taller than the girls.
In the best case possible the creek is about 65 feet wide. There is at least 30 feet (and probably a bit wider) of water of a that kind of depth. And it would have been deeper 24 hours earlier on the 13th.
Regardless of the sand bars that exist in the creek - all of which were underwater on the 14th and more so on the 13th - it is simply not possible to have crossed that creek without going through water of similar depth for half the distance. There is no magical walkway through it. That is what it is. And that is in the very best case. Also, keep in mind that you will also see in the helicopter video that there are trees under the water as you can see where they stick out or there is a small amount of whitewater flowing around where a part of the tree barely protrudes. That means that they would also have to get over or around any debris so an optimal straight-line path on the shortest crossing point may not have been the easiest path.
None of this precludes crossing the creek. There was nothing stopping anyone from crossing the creek if they wanted to do so. But there are realities to doing so.
It does a great disservice to people if we have people believing that there is some ankle deep walkway across it on the 13th by emphasizing only the images of searchers on the sand bars or shallow water on the 14th and/or showing what the creek looked like a month later. Even on the 16th there are images and videos that show sand bars well above water and the tree debris that was underwater to give you an idea of just how fast the Deer Creek drainage area empties.
The water gage that provided the data is located not far upstream at all from the crime scene - if you follow the post I linked a few posts back. The volume of water can be seen in the graphs. When you get to the stretch of the creek where the crime scene is located the creek is narrower than the stretch of creek East of it. This means that for the same volume of water that was flowing through a wider part of the creek to pass through a much narrower part of the creek the water must rise to do so since all of that water has to go somewhere and there are phyiscal barriers (the banks on either side) that prevent it from simply widening out. This is simple physics and the behaviors of a fluid like water.
