Cali warm up

This spring I had 2 weeks off from school in late april so I headed out to cali to open up the season right, Nick abrams joined me for the trip and we meet up with a few friends along the way. We started off on a little creek called shirtail creek, it was a super fun tight steep creek and a great way to kick off the trip.

Boofing the first rapid, photo: Nick Abrams

Nick in pretty poor lighting

After a late night on shirtail we were lucky enough to stay at our friend Tera's house in Auburn and decided to do a two day run on deer creek, it was a great trip but was cold and rainy so I left the camera in the car which I regretted when it got warm and sunny the second day. Overall upper deer creek is a great run with only one portage at our flows (1200 cfs) but if you want to do the just keep going through the lower the shuttle for the upper took 6 hours.
After deer creek we headed into chico to see the sights and to drink some tasty beer, the next day we did butte creek which is an awesome little run with my good friend and bad ass chica lizzy english.
From there Nick and I decided on a 3 day mill creek run that drops over 4000 feet in just under 50 miles, this run was the highlight of the trip. Nick and I were able to hire a shuttle driver for pretty cheep and spent 3 incredible days out in the bush. The lower 30 miles was were the best whitewater was found and amazing scenery that looked like something out of hawaii. It is the best class 4+multiday I have ever done, check out: A wet state for a great write up

Nick on a typical drop on the upper
Nick cooking up some of our 1.5pounds of carne asada on night one of mill creek
Nick running the last rapid on the upper
Nick soaking in the scenery on the lower
Nick running typical class 4 gorgy lower mill creek whitewater

This trip was an awesome beginning to the season, I got on a new run all of the days out there except one (49 to bridgeport which is mandatory if you like worldclass class 4-5 boulder gardens. Check out the helmet cam video below for some more media from the trip.