For
the first time in my 7 year paddling life, I took a week long roadtrip for Sierra
Boating. Not that I had not done much Sierra paddling, but most of it was single
river destination paddling. This is just a quick recount of the trip. For
the first time in my 7 year paddling life, I took a week long roadtrip for Sierra
Boating. Not that I had not done much Sierra paddling, but most of it was single
river destination paddling. This is just a quick recount of the trip.
The week started with a standard Thurs Night drive up 99 and a late night into Caloma. While many people get their first taste of California Whitewater on the SF American - I had never paddled any forks of the American. So Friday Kris Soderman and I took a nice leisurely run down the Chili Bar section. At a rapid I believe was called "First Threat" we spent about 2.5 hours playing on one of the best river waves I've ever paddled in California. Then Friday night was the Teva Liquid Lifestyles party at ChiliBar complete with a screening of Wicked Liquid II, which has a really clever subtitle: "A thousand Cunning Stunts".
Saturday I hooked up with my buddy Tom Diegel who drove out from Salt Lake, and he Kris and Scott Mcquire, and I paddled down Giant gap which was a first for all of us. The flows were very good for a first time, about 1000CFS. The hike down was a litttle more pleasant than the Forks of the Kern hike, as it had more shade. At one point I let my kayak (a 7' Disco) tackle a couple switchbacks on its own before I worried about it careening off the side. The scenery of this run was unbeatable with a couple sections of river carving vertically walled "Gaps" in the canyon. The three of us returned to Caloma where we hooked up with Mike Hobbs who came up from Santa Monica for a couple days to join for paddling adventures.
We
heard about a run that had a couple excellent play spots called the Bear - when
we put on we soon found that the water was up and we actually ended up hitting
some pretty challenging small gorges in the middle of the run. Great rapids
really, but not what most were expecting. Tom, being the playboater extraordinaire,
started hitting his first 3 point cartwheels, while Scotty showed us all how
to Mystery move a Gliss. Scott and Kris returned to Santa Barbara, while Tom,
Mike, and I decided what to do next. It rained on us all night, and we were
contemplating doing Generation Gap, but in the end decided that it was something
left for better weather and we headed up to the SF Yuba.
Although
changing into gear in the rain was a new and not all that pleasant experience
for this socal boater (let me add that I changed in the rain and snow plenty
as a New England Scuba Diver!) once on the river the rain was actually pretty
pleasant. We did a section from the rt49 bridge to the small town of Bridgeport.
This section is the sight of an extreme race in the spring, so I knew the rapids
would not be tooo gnarly, and other than one portage, they were all super fun
and clean class V. The next day we were joined by good ole Rocky Contos (aka
Mumbly, aka Crocky Paunchos). Mike wanted a short run so he could get a good
start back and so we did the Edwards to Purdon Section, a very scenic class
III-IV run (again in some light rain) and then Rocky Tom and I continued on
with a pretty steep section from Purdon to the 49 bridge. This run was a notch
harder than the 49 to Bridgeport section, but still almost entirely runnable
(higher flows would have made it a bit more gnarly).
From there
we headed North to the region of Downieville and the NF Yuba and its creeks
Pauley and Lavazola. Pauley was a really beautiful creek, although Tom broke
his boat on the first real drop, but we were able to wedge enough foam in the
hole in the nose to get him down the rest of the way. A couple clean little
falls, micro gorges, and fun slide drops in dense forest make this a great run.
We thought the water was probably on the low side for Lavazola, and given the
condition of Toms boat we decided to skip it. The water was also pretty low
in the NF Yuba above the town, so we paddled several sections of the NF below
town - highlights of these sections were the tougher parts of Rososco canyon,
where Rocky once again found his magnetic attraction for undercuts and took
his first swim in a while, and a super fun rapid called Maytag (or Mixmaster
depending on the guidebook). With the weather now turning and the forecast and
flows (Thanks Keith) looking good, we turned back to the NF American to take
a stab at the Generation gap section.
We decided while setting shuttle we might as well add on the Chamberlain falls section. Since I took more pictures on this section, I have it written up Separately:
The trip was finished off with a pretty fun high level run down the forks where I got pretty good and pushed around in my little boat.
