Royal Gorge

Royal Gorge on NF of the American from Rolf Kelly on Vimeo.

Cali Roadtrip: Part 1

Almost directly from the Embudo race I began driving in search of the granite wonderland known as California. The back-breaking fifteen hour drive was rewarded with the ever rising South Merced. While camped at Yosemite a bear had broken into my truck and eaten all of my food, so I armed myselfwith a healthy supply of gas station peanuts headed to the multi day classic.

Getting my game-face on

Christian Cook in an early rapid

Louis in Super Slide

Tom Janney charging the high water.

From the South Merced I headed up to the South Yuba where less than agree able weather, and less than agree able dam keepers made for some desperate days of paddling. Nonetheless I got out to paddle in some miserable snowstorms as pictured above on the summit run (Will Pruett photo).

Fleeing from the weather I headed up to the South Branch of the Feather for some Disneyland waterfalls. Here's Tom Janney enjoying some airtime

Rolf Kelly wishing he was inner-tubing

The next several days remain undocumented because my camera was out of batteries but several high water cali-classics were enjoyed before the flows stopped cooperating. Three days later while hanging out in a bar Nevada City Drew Duvall mentioned that the erratic Chawanikee Gorge of the the San Joaquin was hanging on the high side of good at around 850 cfs. By two in the morning we were at the take out and after a few hours of sleep we set out to find the put in. I have never seen a flow graph as erratic as the Chawanikee. While we were in it the water spiked from about 900 to near 1500 and back down making for exciting but very enjoyable boating.

The Chawanikee Put in

Jason Hale fighting some savage boils to get where he needs to be.

Anyway, that's all that I have time to put up now but check back for some shots of Kaweah, Kimshew, and more. Nate

Hard Drive clean up = Middle Fork of the Kings video

While going through a old hard drive, I ran across my Middle Fork of the Kings footage. Previously Ben has posted a video here and Darin had his usual great photos here of the same trip.

Middle Fork of the Kings from tim_kelton on Vimeo.

The non-planned Cali adventure

First off, the Los Alamos Mountaineers have asked me to give a talk on multi-day expedition kayaking. For those of you in New Mexico these will be on:

Santa Fe @ REI Wednesday Oct 14 @ 6PM

Los Alamos @ Fuller Lodge Thursday Oct 21 @ 8PM

Taos: TBD

We are planning to show photos from California runs including Cherry Creek, Devils Postpile of the San Joaquin, and Middle Fork of the Kings. Will also talk about food, gear, and logistics of multi-day expedition whitewater kayaking.

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I was fortunate enough to go out to California twice last season to paddle. Once was a fairly well planned out, several week trip. And the second, well it seemed like a good idea at the time and ended up being one of my favorite memories of the year.

Summary of the phone call late one Tuesday night between Rolf Kelly (the real R. Kelly) and myself:

-Looking at the past 10 days weather and the next ten days forecast when matrixed against current flows and cross referenced against the Stanley/Holbek guide book = we still are just rolling the dice and golf would be easier....but less fun

-Analysis of how accurate Google Maps driving time estimation to California might be and were we can "make up" time

-Stories of past trips (for me, my only previous Cali run was Middle Fork of the Kings....not a recommended first California run)

-Surly we could drive all night out to Cali and then drive all night back home over a quick 4-day weekend .....right? Its only 12 hours and we have 4 guys, so that's only 3-hours each, so we can do that easy!

The decision was made to "Go for it" and leave after work on Wednesday, drive all night, be in Kernville Thursday AM for 4 days of great kayaking. Then the brilliance of the plan kicks in. We drive all night back in time for work on Monday a 8 am.

Getting into Kernville around 10 am after doing rotating shifts for the 12 hour drive we drove up the Kern drainage for what was supposed to be awesome runs of Brush and Dry Meadow creeks. While we could have broken a boat and made it down on 20 cfs, this was not what we just drove 12 hours for. Looking for close alternatives that we could do that day, we notice the Tule was still showing decent flows so what's a few more hours driving right?






Finally, onto some fun whitewater!
Everyone sleep better that night already knowing we didn't drive all that way for nothing.

Next day driving back down out of the mountains to check gauges and look at what other options we got discouraged immediately. Everything we drove out for did not rise as much as we were hoping, and all other options such as Dinky and the Kaweah were double the recommended max levels. We didn't have a lot of options but to drive north. Having only one vehicle, we were hoping maybe the Chawankee Gorge might be flowing, but the dam operators would not tell us the current release levels and so we put on the Horseshoe Bend section of the San Joaquin which was around 7,000-10,000 cfs. While not an amazing run, it was still good to be in our boats and ended up being fun, but still cold day.



Driving back to Oakhurst and realizing we were making our return trip home longer and longer as we moved north, we went in to look at flows, made phone calls, and tried to figure out what was next on our 4-day weekend. Eating dinner in Oakhurst, we notice how cold it was today and supposed to get colder tonight and actually snow up high. Hmm, this should bring the flows down, what might come in? Looking we saw that maybe, just maybe the South Fork of the Merced might drop into range. I've wanted to do this run for years and never had a chance. Having a new gauge it was hard to say what we were looking for, but we made a group decision to drive up and camp there, then see if the flows dropped.

Getting to the put in at around midnight, using our highly accurate night vision camping headlamps looking at the river we estimated 1200 cfs at the put in for the South Fork of the Merced. Way above the flow we were looking for since every side creek would be pumping, and most likely doubling the flow. Waking up several times that night freezing my butt off, we knew flows would drop. Having all our drytrop frozen so stiff, they could not be put on, we knew the temps were way down in the teens or low 20's. Hmm. The flows did look lower, so we ran the truck heaters on all our gear for 30 minutes to make it pliable enough to put our paddling gear on.


Amos, Cameron, and Tim post truck-paddling gear de-frosting


Amos on a random, but great drop


Rolf just above camp

Cameron and Tim...."pretty sure it flushes"

TK


Lack of a stove = meatloaf pie tins and Instant Potatoes and Oatmeal in the AM

Drying out gear and probably creating a few holes in the process

More great rapids


In the end, I have to agree with the late, great, Lars Holbek when he said:

"The South Merced is one of the best multi-day, super high quality and difficult runnable class V runs in the world...
It's like doing Cherry Creek back to back four times in a row without having seen it before only every time it's different and harder."
- Lars Holbek

Getting off around 6pm we now how a 15+ hour drive before work the next day, but what a great trip with some really amazing buddies!

West Cherry Creek

Before we could jump on Upper Cherry Creek, we had to wait a few days for it to come in. So the next best thing to Upper Cherry Creek is West Cherry creek.







Drop after quality drop.....




West and upper Cherry confluence



And of course we need to thank the 1950-1995 UCSD fraternity brothers from cooking us lobster bisque, pizza, and fresh brownies....thanks for hiking that in guys! Sadly they were not there when we came back for UCC





Don't be fooled by all the hype around Upper Cherry Creek. West Cherry is an amazing run in its own wright, and from the confluence down to the lake its very fun pushy whitewater!

Routt County River Enforcement does So. Cal.

Routt County River Enforcement does So. Cal.
By: Dan Piano

Sometimes the best thing to do after a long winter in Northwest Colorado is get out of town before the runoff picks up; and head to Cali. This was my fourth spring trip to Cali and I would have to say it was the best. We had perfect weather and almost ideal flows everywhere we went. We started the trip off in Kernville California with a few laps down Brush, and Dry Meadow Creek. The weather was perfect but for some strange reason the flows would not come up on Brush. Rumors were circulating that an illegal agricultural operation was pulling a bunch of water from the creek up stream.

Spencer from L.A. checks out the view on Dry Meadow. Photo: Kevin Fisher

Next stop Hospital Rock on the Kaweah River. I have been wanting to paddle this section of river for years. Clean mank-free granite boating…awesome!

Dan on one of the many excellent drops.Photo: Kevin Fisher

Kevin Fisher on Little Niagara. Photo: Dan Piano

The next stop was Clover Creek located high up in Sequoia National Park.

Giant sequoia vs. Kevin Fisher. Photo: Dan Piano

Adam and Dan hiking into Clover. Photo: Kevin Fisher

Kevin and Dan hiking up. Photo: Adam Mayo

Dan on one of the top slides. Photo Kevin Fisher

Dan looks on as Adam stomps out the first run of the day. Photo Kevin Fisher

Dan dropping in. Photo Kevin Fisher

Best line of the day ..Kevin Fisher. Video: Adam Mayo

Mayo slide. Photo: Kevin Fisher

After a great day in Sequoia we decided to head for the Middle Tule. This run is loaded with super fun granite slides and waterfalls…highly recommended!

Hot. Photo: Kevin Fisher

Typical Middle Tule. Photo: Adam Mayo

Dan droppin’ in. Photo: Adam Mayo

Scott Baker firing “Norte Calipas”. Photo: Adam Mayo

Duckyman stickin’ it! Photo: Adam Mayo

Dan boofing into another sweet rapid. Photo: Adam Mayo

Rick Franken bombing! Photo: Adam Mayo




RCRE signing off.