Gutters of the Earth

No agenda but the bender

2011-09-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

"No agenda but the bender." I picked up this phrase from Kiwi kayaker Barny Young in reference to a debaucherous night out in Sacramento. I feel that this phrase is also apt to describe the devotion required to catch the California classics as the snow-melt races down the mountains.

After play-boating on the Main-stem American at the Auburn Fest, the choice was clear: We would head up the North Fork American to the Royal Gorge. This was the site of an epic within an epic told in the second part of the tragi-comedy "Flirting with Miss Adventure." This premiered at the OPP filmfest and is embedded at the bottom of this post.

I completed the Royal Gorge with a group comprised of Chris Zawacki, Scott Ligare, and the indefatigable Dan Menten, who went through Fantasy Falls and said there was plenty of water for a second trip. Having someone with the many rapids, portages, and gorges of the North Mokelumne so fresh in their mind presented an undeniable opportunity. A crack-team was assembled and we went in. High-lights included: lots of beta and blind-bombing, a terrifying but character-building surf in the middle of "Island Drop," and Katie Scott getting her mojo back by leading the charge off Fantasy Falls proper shortly after a freakish pin-to-swim in some boogie water.

After the Fantasy Falls, I caught the tail-end of Ben Wartburg's bachelor party on the South Silver. From what I gathered, the Coloma portion of the bachelor party had absolutely no agenda but the bender, in the conventional sense of the word. It was hella fun bombing down the creek at mountain bike speeds and walking back up to stage a photo with a kayaker in each of the teacups (partially successful).

Then I got a text from Chris Korbulic that the South Stanislaus above Pinecrest Lake was running. I knew that the run had been done once years ago and that one of the final falls was called "Cleopatra's Bath." I pictured a waterfall into a pool where there would be concubines bathing and singing as they combed each other's hair. A business-casual start on the run the following day saw our group of four scuttling the shuttle on river left and driving through road construction on river right. Soon enough we were hiking through meadows and forest until the view opened up to reveal a slide that looked like mini-Graceland (which was still pretty big). I believe it was around five in the afternoon when we left the put-in slide after repairing a piton-punctured boat. Cool and unique rapids, some marginally runnable, others runnably charge-able followed. As darkness caught us, we were at the top of Cleopatra's Bath. This 30-40 foot waterfall looked runnable except that once you run it, you would have to ascend out on a rope fixed to the two bolts placed in the granite by canyoneers. Portaging the un-runnable gorge in the dark was rather hilarious, portaging class 3 in the dark even more so. Paddling across the lake around 11pm was cool with the stars reflecting on the mirror calm surface like we were sky-aking.

The next obvious move was to Upper Cherry Creek, but I had a strange premonition that a tragedy would occur there, and I didn't want to be there when it did. Thomas Moore dispelled my pessimism and convinced me to go in to run the creek for the sixth year in a row for both of us. Highlights included: Gareth Tate getting me re-stoked on fishing, watching about 20 people fly off of Cherry Bomb Falls in as many minutes, and Thomas' paddle flushing out from underneath the only rock in Cherry Bomb gorge after a 30-minute vigil on a rock ledge. Thanks to Brent from Idaho (who I had not seen in too long) and his friend for hoisting my boat up to the ledge.

Note: A tragedy did indeed occur several days later, when Allen Satcher lost his life in the Waterfall Alley, the first death on Upper Cherry Creek. I did not know Allen, and I don't feel that the platitude, "he died doing what he loved," offers any solace to those who did know him. It is brutal loss: I wish the risk of the river were not so real, I hope his soul finds rest, and I hope his loved ones find peace.

While un-doing our Upper Cherry shuttle, we heard word that the new Devil's Postpile gauge was dropping close to 200cfs, a level I thought meant "go-time," based on last year's success with 170cfs. It did not look like I was going to be able to convince anyone besides Dan Menten to round out a group until Kiwis Daan and Shannon popped out of Upper Cherry "keen as," with Jess graciously offering to streamline the shuttle. We pre-emptively celebrated with a barbecue and good night's sleep at Kevin's house in Mammoth, and pulled out all the charm and Jedi mind-tricks to get our car through the gate at the National Monument where they try to get you to ride a shuttle bus. A cold feeling sank into my heart as the nice lady called her supervisor, but they put the "bro" in "bureaucracy" and let us pass.

A fantastic first day on my favorite section on Earth brought us to our camp at the divide between the San Joaquin River and Fish Creek, where we preyed upon trout and tip-toed around the biggest rattlesnake I have ever seen (13 segments in its rattle, at least five feet long is my recollection). The next day, I was loathe to leave the beautiful place, but was eventually convinced by the rest of the group in their gear that it was time to head downstream.

Fish Creek added a reasonable amount of water, and we went on our merry way. At one scout I was describing the line to the others when I saw two more kayakers coming downstream. This was perplexing since we knew that a group of 3 had been planning to put on. Turns out that the trio had turned into a gruesome twosome when a boat was harmlessly but inextricably pinned in "the maze." Our number increased to six, but our American to Kiwi ratio remained 1:1.

Great kayaking continued, especially after the North San Joaquin added much more water than I had previously seen in it. The so-called "class four" that followed was extra-awesome, but I started to wonder whether we were floating on the high-side of screwed when a previous portage ledge was a half-foot under water. In some boily flat-water on the way out of that gorge, the river belched and mystery-moved me to my arm-pits. I looked over my shoulder at Dan and asked, "did you see that?" My countenance must have been one of terror.

After making a few mistakes with our portaging and the day getting long, we chose to camp at a huge beach with a spectacular view of Balloon Dome. We feasted on trout, polished off the tequila and had a pseudo-serious team meeting, speaking in corporate parlance as Daan and Shannon had brought collared shirts and neck-ties to wear in camp.

At some point Nick Murphy brought up something that had been weighing on him, something he needed to talk about. He had been present at Allen's drowning, had in fact thrown a rope into the pot-hole where Allen struggled. We spoke of mortality and risk, how our facing up to forces more powerful than ourselves makes us live more fully and intentionally while we are here, living and breathing.

The full moon did not help me sleep either as I thought about The Crucible that awaited a short ways downstream. The smell of algae drew me down to the water's edge to check the level throughout the night as the river ebbed and flowed. I tip-toed around the sleeping first-timers as my fear of the known haunted me more strongly than their fear of the unknown. As I watched the full moon trace its path across the sky between fits of sleep, I saw that it would pass behind Balloon Dome, being eclipsed by it and emanating a corona of moonbeams. If I have the luxury of dying comfortably, I am sure that it will be one of the memories I will look back on.

The next morning, I deviated from character and was the first to gear up. We got our last looks at Balloon Dome before we entered the gorge formed at its feet. We portaged "weapons of mass destruction," and walked high up a moraine to scout "sieve-il war," "broken arrow" and see the un-scoutable horizon line that is The Crucible proper.

Soon enough we were in the still pool above, and I ferried back and forth trying to peek over my shoulder to see if the middle line that Kevin and I had scouted from below the year before was still an option. Nick Murphy uttered an axiom as wise as his crew's other catch-phrases such as "where there's a hole there's a goal," and "when charging in the wrong direction, continue to charge." "Go with what you know," he said, and paddled off down the traditional right line, whooping at the top of his lungs once he had made it. A minute later we were all in the next pool, having avoided the sieve that makes the Crucible a must-make move. The lip of the final pothole of the gorge was covered with water almost all the way across to the sieve, leading me to believe that our trip had been the highest flow descent.

Many more rapids and portages continue down to the confluence with the South San Joaquin, usually just trickling due to its impoundment by Florence Reservoir, but doubling the flow on our trip thanks to the bumper snow year. From there, many more rapids and portages continue down to Mammoth Pool Reservoir. But there is something both tangible and symbolic about clearing the Crucible that brings a sense of elation without premature celebration.

Soon enough, we were eating trout at the boat-ramp, pizza in North Fork, and ingloriously driving into the wee hours back to Coloma so I could make a rock-star turnaround to go see rock and roll music with my wonderful girlfriend at Outside Lands the next day. After three days of rocking out to the likes of Black Keys, the Shins, and Arcade Fire, it was another late-night drive to Coloma and immediate 3am departure to run the Middle Kings with the same stellar team with whom I had finished the Royal Gorge. Thanks for waiting for me. Middle Kings is a story I have told before in writing, and which I will tell this time through video.

Another summer of bendering around river bends complete. Other agenda now command my attention. But I only straighten out so that I can bend again, recouping energy like the High Sierra accumulates its snow-pack, waiting to be set free and sent on its way.

Untitled from Taylor Cavin on Vimeo.

"Flirting with Miss Adventure"

Untitled from Taylor Cavin on Vimeo.

"Evaporating (Devil's Postpile)"

"Living Like Kings"

On a tear

2011-06-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

Over the past month, I have been on enough of a tear that I want to jot down my new runs before they are too many to recount. To say that I have been kayaking my ass off is not inaccurate given how my backband has been rubbing me raw. I want to use guttersoftheearth now as a journal of my own river-running, whether documented with photos or not. When I get photos from these trips, I will add them in.

Secret Canyon into the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the American. Hiking into this run, we ended up camping in the most marginal camp site I have ever known. Crawling out of the gully, we began a very wild canyoneering kayak trip that saw us portaging a few unrunnable falls with giant roostertail reconnects and running one sweet sliding thirty foot falls as we descended our way to the North Fork of the Middle Fork American.

North Fork Middle Fork American. I was very impressed by the challenging rapids on this section, several of which we portaged on sight in order to escape the canyon by nightfall (which we did just barely). The one-of-a-kind Devil's Slide is a spectacularly locked in river-wide slide kicking with such force as to make a blasted-out, super-soft landing where the water can not be bothered to recirculate upstream. The mist of the rapid feeds lush ferns and over-hanging vines, giving the gorge a tropical sense of place.

North Fork Kaweah- Hiked up to Burnt Point Creek confluence with Rok Sribar and the Slow-venians and paddled down through Cherry Falls. I used my paddle as a machete to slash through old-growth poison oak that had tree limbs dangling down to face level. Aggro graffiti tagged at the lip of Cherry Falls was the unheeded writing-on-the-wall of the cockpit-rim-to-ribcage rough treatment it would give me.

South Kaweah extreme architecture tour. After Rok had clarified that the flow report of another group retreating from put-in was too high for you, we had to put on. Even though it was screaming around corners and grabbing onto branches high. Some people have decks hanging out on i-beams above bedrock rapids. Tragically, in order to afford them, they are rarely home to enjoy them.

South Fork Middle Fork Tule. While I stashed beer in the river at take-out, the Austrians assumed I had gotten in the Slovenians car and vice-versa, leaving me to hitch-hike to put-in. Hopping into my samaritan's car, I met a flea-bitten Inca Hairless bitch who had just had pups and sidled into my lap, saggy teats and all. When we got to the twenty-footer I had seen from the road, Rok tried to dissuade me from running it, claiming that the exit rapid was committed and not good. Too late Rok, I already scouted from the road! I was blown away by the over-hanging punch-bowls and many waterfalls of this run.

Lower Tuolomne at 11,000 cfs. My first run of the lower T was enhanced by several factors: Getting paid to safety kayak it, clear, big water, sponging raft company food which would later provision the first descent of Reed Creek into the Clavey.

Reed Creek into the Clavey first descent. I attempted this run in 2008 with a group of four. We put on at the bridge and hiked out after portage-festing the second mile which drops over 600 feet. It was the campsite that we found after this fail which would make the lower put-in for the successful run by Jake Greenbaum and myself. We made one portage, ran 3 large bedrock rapids and found that the best section was the final mile into the Clavey- the "Reed-and-run" section as we called it. Kind of like a miniature Clavey or an alternate put-on to the Clavey.

Lower Clavey. This paddle out of Reed Creek was a sinus-injecting, hole-punching hee-haw. Awaking at the bridge that marks the start to find the flow had risen a full foot overnight made it extra attention-getting. Paddling out on the Tuolomne made for a trip where we went from 200 cfs on Reed to 1000 cfs on Clavey to 10,000 cfs on Tuolomne.

Middle Mokelumne first descent. This run was known to drop lots of gradient in its plunge to meet the South Mokelumne. The South Mokelumne was known to be a portage-fest. Good thing then that only Cody Howard and I put on because most other souls would have acquiesced to common-sense and hiked out when the run turned out to be an extreme-low-flow portage-fest only occasionaly interspersed with sweet read-and-run slide sections. The final portage down to the South Mokelumne was a spectacular set of waterfalls.

South Mokelumne. Just when we though the portaging was over, we were encountered by a double over-hung gnar-gorge that mandated a heinous portage. The next portage required a thrilling chimney down-climb through a crevice. Enough good rapids to make me want to put on up top at the bridge one day...

North Mokelumne, confluence with South Mokelumne to Electra run. Thrilling big water fun at 3,000 cfs. This was the first time I have hitched a shuttle from the river itself when I chatted-up a motorist who was driving alongside the river watching us kayak. Turns out he was a sit-on-top kayaker with the love and understanding to help us out.

North Fork Stanislaus, Big Trees run. I was Shanghai-ed into this run by raft-company van-pool and experienced the highest flows in years on this great section. Afterwards, we found our way into a Willie Nelson concert in Murphys. I still have many more sections yet to run on this beautiful river.

Lower Rubicon River. This classic has only flowed every fifth year on average over the past 15 years due to its impairment by Hell Hole Reservoir. I had to get it while the getting was good. I logged 3 trips totaling 7 days on the Rubicon, taking a longer kayak on each successive trip to match the classic factor of the river. Flow-ey continuous sections, good rapids spaced throughout the entire 20-mile length, and several step-up drops thrown in makes for a true classic with a put-in just one hour from the white-water siphon of Coloma, California.

After this tear, its time to take care of biz-ness, life-style, and get some wave time at the China Bar rapid today in anticipation of the Auburn River Festival which kicks off tonight! This year the event benefits Access-for-All and the Jason Craig Recovery Fund.

Alright, OK, children of the digital age, here's some media for ya, re-posted from huckinhuge.com

Middle Mokelumne Yee Haw, Shoot Damn! from Huckin Huge on Vimeo.

Keeping on

2011-05-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the incomparable Darin Mcquoid of the newly incorporated darinmcquoid.com for this photo from Long Canyon.

Has it been six months already since the latest, cutting-edge, up-to-the minute tweet on guttersoftheearth? Yes.

Maybe it's because of the discourse surrounding the BanksMag (thebanksmag.com) article, "We came, we saw, we facebooked the shit." This commentary on the self-aggrandizing nature of publishing "exploits" made bloggers out to be exploiters. If an RSS feed fires across the internet, and no one's there to read it, does anybody care?

Maybe it's been a long, trying winter that has shaken my motivations for running rivers... The "why kayak?" question can be answered easily when the costs are shelling out for gas, spending time crammed into a car, and wearing cold wet gear. But when kayaking entails spending time away from loved ones and passing up on life's other offerings, motivation is tested to the core.

Maybe it's been a long wet winter that is still going on even in mid-May. Rivers that rarely run, either due to being de-watered by dams or having low, rain-fed watersheds, have been going off for months. The Upper Middle Cosumnes has been running too high for comfort since February. Sequoia National Park recorded their highest snow-fall since 1891.

It's probably because through it all, I've been kayaking.

New rivers to me for 2011:

Lower North Fork Cosumnes. One of the last days of December 2010 come to think of it... Will Pruitt, Darin Mcquoid and I made the first descent putting on below the Buck's Bar Gorge (alternatively called the Buck Gnar Gorge). We ran the "good-to-go gorge" and the thrilling "mini-crucible gorge."

Deer Creek into Lake Wildwood. It goes to show how loaded Cali is... Like how crazy it is that Upper Cherry sat unexplored for so long above the commonly run Cherry Creek section on the Tuolomne... And for years after that, Middle Cherry went un-completed... Anywhozles, the take-out for this run is just a few miles from the classic Bridgeport take-out on the South Yuba, the run I paddle most often. Deer Creek had been run before, but gone largely ignored for such an interesting creek.

Lower Silver Creek into the South Fork American. Thanks to Hilde for relaying the flow info! This creek was in the guidebook, but no one I knew had run it due to the massively thirsty Union Valley reservoir upstream. Classic like Credence Clearwater Revival cassette tapes.

Love's Falls of the North Yuba (bottom half at high water). I landed the namesake falls on my stern, dump-truck style. The rest was gripping. Thanks to Ben Coleman for letting me follow his wake.

Forbestown section of the South Fork Feather. Same gnarly rock as Little Grass Valley section upstream (site of GnarlFest, the world championships of kayaking). Same cool waterfalls.

Lower Jesus Maria Creek (likely first descent of this tributary of the Calaveras River). Driving around in this obscure drainage, on a day the locals claimed had brought the highest water they could remember, yielded a run on this steep but mostly class IV creek along with Alex Wolfgram and Ryan MacPhearson. Highlight was blind-bombing the ten-foot waterfall due to complacency.

Long Canyon into the Rubicon. Just when it seemed that the road-blocks of snow had dashed our hopes of running a multi-day, a frantic map session yielded a re-route into this tiny but classic stream. Just over the divide from our planned run on Screw Auger Canyon, we luckily found a perfect flow and a just-right level of challenge for the early season. We also fortuitously chose to camp on a granite ledge that would later prove to be the only real camp spot through the entire 10 mile length of the canyon.

I got to surf the Gay Wave on the North Fork American on all 3 days that it ran, one of which was a soulful after-work session with a hike-out in a hail-storm.

End of the World section of the Middle Fork American. Cool but not as cool as I was expecting based on the final stack-up that can be seen from the road. I should know by now... expectations management...

Dry Creek Falls. Watching Will Pruitt stick the upper falls was the gnarliest thing I've seen run in person. Evacuating the injured Jason Craig from the lower falls was epic but possible due to Jason's teeth-gritting fortitude through the ordeal and the many talents of the members of the team.

Send him your positive thoughts, prayers, well-wishes, and your money, as you are able.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Craig-Recovery-Fund/202672366427897

The length of season we've already had, combined with the water content piled high and deep in the mountains, will make this summer a true marathon. There will be opportunities to run rivers that are typically hard to catch or do not run at all. Here's to health, staying motivated, and keeping on.

Thanks to the true people who are there watching your back, making you laugh, and there to affirm that this is really happening.

Hurry Down the Chimney!

2010-12-14T10:53:00.000-08:00

There's still time to order Darin McQuoid's 2011 Whitewater Calendar and get maximum use out of it. Some people on your gift list might prefer a calendar of lighthouses or horsies, but get them Darin's excellent whitewater calender instead. Starting January 1st 2011, calendar recipients will continually be reminded to plan their lives around kayaking, instead of the other way around.

These beauties really turned out nicely from the printer.

View Slideshow of Calendar Images

Postpile, lifestyle.

2010-11-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

As the 2010 snow melt played out and I eyed the Roger's Crossing gauge on the Kings, a new gauge caught my eye, a realtime reading on the San Joaquin at the Devil's Postpile. I daydreamed about the rapids, I re-counted the portages. I remembered the stillness of clear pools impounded between boulder piles in deep gorges. I thought about the remoteness of the river, crossed by footbridges but never paralleled by a trail, the canyon walls rising straight out of the water much of the way. My consciousness was caught up with the river. When the plan came together, I was in. We would sleep on real couches in Mammoth before and after the trip at Kevin's house. We would be dropped off and picked up by adventure chasers. Upon completing the run we would eat pizza at the take-out and then get Mexican food once back to civilization. The details dialed in, we set off.

I don't know what those plants are called, but they are worse than manzanita. Kevin Smith visualizes himself on the other side of the thicket.

David Maurier conducting first hand research as part of his San Joaquin conservation efforts.

Kevin Smith appears on the paid advertisement informing viewers about an amazing product: boof-a-matic!

Thomas Moore, selected at random from the audience, can not believe how great and easy to use boof-a-matic really is!

If Balloon Dome (granite batholith in background) were a thought bubble, it would say, "What is going to happen to us in the Crucible?"

Caveman Ikea at "Snake Camp."

Photos Taylor Cavin and David Maurier

Goddard Canyon 1D

2010-09-01T19:34:00.001-07:00

In the Spring my Minnesota friends Jason and Tommy asked my advice about when to pick a week of vacation to come out to Cali. I recommended that they pick a week dead in the middle of the projected summer run-off, guaranteeing that they would run something good, though there was no way of knowing what it might be. As it turned out, their vacation fell in the weird in-between time after Dinkey and Fantasy, but before Upper Cherry. There was much deliberation in the situation room at the We Three Bakery as to where to go.

I had been entertaining the idea of running Goddard Canyon and Evolution Creek, the headwaters of the South San Joaquin, since the surprise success on Paiute Creek of the South San Joaquin in 2009. I am not the type to keep a river journal and record water levels and such like that, so I racked my brain trying to figure a correlation for Goddard Canyon and Evolution Creek based on last year's dumb luck on Paiute. I remembered that I went there right after my birthday, so I looked up the hydrograph for the Kings on that date. The backside of Goddard Canyon is called Goddard Creek, which is a high tributary of the Middle Kings.

I checked the Kings gauge and proclaimed that the level would be good. I enticed my friends with hidebound speculation of bedrock waterfalls and promises of glory. I rhapsodized about the spirit of adventure and the thrill of the unknown. The hook was baited.

We could not afford these horses, and they looked happy to be free anyway.

They took the bait. We drove to Florence Lake, rigged up pack systems and set out to paddle across 4 miles of reservoir and hike up 12 miles of trail to basecamp at the confluence of Evolution Creek and Goddard Canyon.

Photo: Tommy Norton

Most of the backpackers we met on the way up had come down Evolution Creek and confirmed that there were "hella waterfalls." Hiking up the valley, we were eventually treated to a view of a spectacularly steep creek with a granite high-rise like Tenaya Creek. "Good thing we're not trying to paddle that!" I laughed. And then I realized that we were in fact looking at Evolution Creek. We set up camp and went up for a scout. We found a band of granite with teacups that looked like they were full of piping hot Chinese Gunpowder.

There was probably 2x too much water for what would be a fringe descent with ideal levels. In my mind I saw the life-size foam boaters withstanding the beatings and bouncing off the rocks, but the human kayakers were sorely punished in my hypothetical runs of Evolution Creek at high water.

Devil at the crossroads.

No matter, the other branch of the wish-bone, Goddard Canyon looked more feasible on the map anyway and we re-directed our attention. We tended the fire into the night happy to be under starry skies, our backs starting to return to their original shape from before the hike.

The next morning, a localized cell of buzzkill shrouded the sun and threatened rain. We carried our empty boats up the trail, scouting as we went. Surveying the rapids slowed us down, but a few beauties mixed in motivated us to keep going. About 3 miles up from the confluence we got to a large and marginal looking falls and set our boats down. We walked up to the next large marginal looking falls to satisfy ourselves that we weren't missing anything upstream. Somewhere in there was a sweet thirty footer which had a tricky entrance with badly placed wood in it. We stared at it for a while, but decided to let it go and backtracked to our boats where we tried to move the cold wet clouds with mind powers before gearing up.

Photo: Jason Stingl
Pretty soon it got good.

Photo:Jason Stingl
More good.

Photo: Jason Stingl
This run sure has its moments. Tommy Norton in the moment.

The rock was crumbly on the banks and harsh on the kayak, but it did make some waterfalls. The river would go straight as an arrow and then take a 90 bend, then another one to straighten back out. Probably the straightest river I've seen. The gorges reminded me of the trenches on the death star that Luke Skywalker had to fly through to blast the core reactor.

As it got late in the day, I recognized that we were at a drop I had already scouted. Tommy scouted and decided to portage. Once he was around the drop, I went ahead and ran it. I thought I knew where I was going, but I got tea-bagged like some English Breakfast! Luckily, I was upside down when Jason landed off the drop, clearing the hole. I swam. I ran down the bank for a frantic minute until I remembered that there was a log jam at our camp that would conveniently catch my boat. Jason and Tommy paddled down, completing the run.

The next day we paddled out on the South San Joaquin above Florence Lake with great flow. The last 5 miles of river into the lake has some great sections with a very continuous nature. Above: Jason finishes this section, good to the last drop.

Getting Beat Down

2010-08-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

The last photo ever taken of this particular Habitat.
Photo: Chad Daugherty.

We are all in between swims. This adage holds true of all paddlers save an elite few: The ones who are, at that moment, swimming.

"I've never seen that happen before."

"Have you ever seen that happen before?"

"No, me niether, I have never seen that happen."

From the scout I had decided that the last part of a 4-part rapid on Chawanakee Gorge of the San Joaquin looked exactly like "locals go deep" on the South Yuba. I meant to run it the same way: plugging into the seem. I found out the plug had been overzealous when I momentarily pinned on the bottom and then had my deck implode from the surrounding water. The swim was low-stress into a calm pool where I made it to the bank with my paddle.

My cart-wheeling boat had racked up a huge rodeo score, but the 45 second siren had sounded and it refused to give up the hole. Then it made its dramatic exit: a terminal mystery move.

Standing in the water downstream, where I was waiting to wrangle the boat when it flushed, my dumbfoundment grew as the disappearing act went on. I surmised that it went extra deep on one of its retendo moves and pinned on the bottom. It was not going to show itself until the water level changed and upset the balance holding it there. With the gauge spiking like Bart Simpson's haircut in response to fluctuating electrical demand, it seemed like this could happen within an hour or two, but that was time we could not spare. My trusty dry bag ripped free from its carabiner and resurfaced like a soggy hat bubbling up from a sunken ship. This came as official notice: my boat was gone. Gone to Davey Jones' Locker.

The Monkey Court convened an emergency session on the cliff above, where the preceding lines of dialogue were spoken. Its members shook their heads as they deliberated and conveyed their best guesses to me through hand and body signals.

Deep in Chawanakee Gorge, with its steep, slick walls rising on both sides it looked pretty bleak. Climbing out of the gorge was a non-option. The clean faced sides had no gullies and few cracks systems. It would have been death-defying for a seasoned climber, which I am not. Swimming the pools and walking the rapids was out because we had already encountered an unportage-able section and could only assume more of the same lay downstream. Good thing there was a metal stair-case bolted into the granite at that one particular spot, going up several pitches to a road blasted into the bedrock. If it weren't for that thing, I'd have been in it for sure.

I'd been pardoned on a technicality. I got a steep littering fine since it will take a while to collect 50 lbs. of garbage from other rivers to outweigh my boat. I was also issued a sobering reminder that the unportage-able (no, really) is out there where even tip-toeing, creativity and rope-work can not bail you out. Sometimes commitment is more than a vague concept: it means absolute exposure.

Off the Couch

2010-04-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

The Couch. "I don't know man, he's off the couch... Maybe we should go to a more couch-friendly river." It may be spoken of with a stigma, but the reality is that we are all in-between couches. Like alcoholics off the proverbial wagon, at some point in the season we reach apogee and commence the slow downward descent into atrophy, landing squarely on the couch.

Sinking deep into the cushions, I begin my off-season cross-training regimen. I update the Netflix queue. I toss fake mice for the cat until he looks at me with disdain. I darkly refer to ski-resort passes as "country-club memberships," as my friends head off to the mountains, embracing the changing seasons like well-adjusted people.

I check online gauges as though they will tell a different story than the clear sky streaming through the windows. As though a localized micro-cell has parked over Nevada County, unleashing hell from the heavens. In case seismic activity has re-routed a great aquifer into a riverbed somewhere. In the off-chance that Lake Spaulding is getting drawn-down for maintenance, filling the South Yuba with the rumbling roar that sends the Ninja Turtles scampering out of the sewers. And then, I find myself poring over other kayak blogs, as though it would bring me comfort to know that somewhere, somewhere far away, stouts are being slayed (or whatever the young people are calling it these days). Soon my best friend catches me in this compulsive behavior and redirects me to some useful task.

Thank heavens, the South Yuba actually ran quite a bit this winter. Even so, when I got to the steeper and wilder Upper Middle Cosumnes, I felt as though I was off-the-futon at best.

The hike-in sweats out some couch toxins, the welcome sight of the put-in slide sends a flush of nerves to my extremities. I do a roll in a pot-hole and peel-out, so far so good. Then, starting the Phony Hawk portage, I slip and fall off a boulder, racking up one shore-injury for the team inside the first quarter-mile. The tip of my left index finger is flapping like the head of a PEZ dispenser. This may be a slight exaggeration, but it bleeds so much that I don't see how tape will stick to skin. Thankfully, Kevin is there and has seen far grizzlier things in his time as a paramedic, and sits through my histrionics to coach me through some decent first aid.

Rivers help me forget my earthly troubles, and soon I am re-focused by splashes from such greats as "battered beaver," "brace for your face," and "Lars' Falls. Relieved yet stoked to be through them, I boat-scout the line at the last rapid in the first section, "A Little Maurier Left." As I make the screaming left-hand turn, my paddle-blade snags on a rock. To stay upright, I let go of my paddle with one hand; it releases and I recover. Hanging onto my paddle with one hand and doggy-paddling with the other, I shoot through the nozzle and onto the slide. I manage to get the band back together before the hole at the bottom.

We floated on a great flow through the in-between section to one of the best stack-ups in El Dorado County, "blue angels," "mini-blue angels, and "cheese-grater." When Thomas pulled over to dump out his boat in the pool below, he happened upon the skeleton of a 6-point buck. This proud beast either fell off the cliff or drowned in the rapids, ending up on the bank with grass poking up between his ribs. Thomas traversed the cliff to place the skull on a fitting spot over-looking the set. Cold water enlivening the mind, communicating without words amidst the roar of rapids, random stuff happening- this is the world beyond the couch.

I'm gonna scrape myself off the couch like the spare change and snack scraps collected in the cushions. I'm gonna get back in that boat and be thankful that this kayaking thing even exists. This time, things are gonna be different. I have goals, I have a plan, and most importantly, I have a support network. This time, I'm gonna stay off the couch.

(Sorry for no pictures, but I'm in between cameras as well.)

Deep in the Trenches

2009-08-10T10:15:00.001-07:00

Alex Wolfgram captains his ship in a bottle-neck.

The mountains that form the Middle San Joaquin loomed above me as I first sized them up. We were driving out of the South San Joaquin canyon, and I could see where the South met the Middle. Scanning back and forth from the depth of the canyon to the height of the Middle fork headwaters in the Postpile Minarets, I could plainly see the precipitous drop the river had to make. It did this in a stupefyingly short distance. The awe that struck me then was of a scale one feels when first taking in the Yosemite Valley, its sky-scraping granite, its dizzying falls.

At one point, my intention to run the river was in seeking the geographic sense of completion of "getting them done." The river is sometimes rumored more of a trial than a good run. The fact that the Devil himself is implicated in the river's origin may be disconcerting to some.

As I processed the power of landscape that gave rise to the San Joaquin, all of this propaganda was pushed aside. My desire to run the river became an aesthetic imperative.

The San Joaquin takes all the rivers of the Southern Sierra under its name, capturing them one by one as it flows north to the Sacramento, forming the Central Valley. Rightly so- it is the mightiest river and has characters of them all. Ominous and distinct gorges like Fantasy. Domes lining the banks of absurd slides like Upper Cherry. The magnitude and beat-down factor of the Kings. Portages like the Merced. The scrubby desert beauty of the Kaweah.

Charlie Center heads up the dawn patrol to ditch the tree fuzz.

Wolf.

Ha, ha, ha, ha!

Yes, those waterfalls are dumping into the middle of the rapid.

"It's... so... beautiful!" When I asked Alex what this rapid looked like from the scout, that's all he said. I debated whether to get out and take a moment to behold it, or run it blind so the scare-factor would etch it more indelibly into my mind's eye. I opted for the latter.

Portage while you still can. Mwahaha!

The MF San Joaquin provides lots of practice at seal-launching.

As ready as we'll ever be.

Caveman racquetball.

The Postpile gave me clarity and focus, tested what I'd learned, and made me feel supremely alive. Big thanks to Alex Wolfgram for having the drive, Shane for driving shuttle, and Charlie for declaring entire gorges "good."

Special note: Now that California Flood Safety founder Alex Wolfgram has run the Middle San Joaquin, he has completed every High Sierra river including Grand Canyon of the Tuolomne and Headwaters of the Kern. Hella Sick!

Find more videos like this on Caliproduct

Shot by Alex Wolfgram and Charlie Center, edited by Charlie Center, courtesy Caliproduct.com

Kings River Triple Crown

2009-07-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, July 18, Luke Liebsch, Macy Burnham, Chris Tulley and I completed what may be the longest contiguous descent of river in Kings watershed history, linking runs on the Middle Kings, Garlic Falls, and the Banzai Run in a hitherto unprecedented act of river-running. Though the additional 10 miles of the class 2-3 Banzai Run only added 300 vertical feet to the trip, they rounded out 50 miles of whitewater good times and crossed off a page on the guide-book check-off. Whitewater!

The Habitat 80 tracks nice and speedy through flat water, like this cheat-line one can take by crossing Saddlerock Lake on the hike in.

I call this rapid "the data archive," because it's so backed up. Macy launching into the bottom half.

If Tulley were a marine mammal, he'd be a gnar-whale.

Getting ready to launch off some smooth Ponderosa bark.

Luke smears that rock like he's waging an underhanded political campaign.

Afternoon T-storm advisory for the greater bottom 9 area. Tulley in the shadow of gloom.

But don't take my word for it!

2009-07-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

A.J. and I wait our turn to portage down the middle.

Reading Rainbow host Lavarre Burton would close his book reviews with the catch-phrase, "but don't take my word for it!" One must go and see for one's self the relative beauty and worthwhileness of rivers. It is one thing to browse the gorgeous photos, saturated with color, taken from god's eye vantage points on jscreekin.blogspot.com, and another to experience them firsthand from the boater's perspective. And so it was that I went to the raved-about Upper N F San Joaquin. I think I was talking about trying to get in there weeks before the river was actually running at the right levels, just to make sure I didn't miss it. Eventually I got on board with a great group and had a sweet trip down this section. I almost could have taken Korbulic's word for it since he hiked the 10 miles, ran the river, hiked out the 4 miles, rode all the way up to Sac-town, and then turned around that same day to do it all over again with our group.

For all the rapids called "triple drop," there had ought to be at least one called, "quadruple drop." Brian Fletcher in the mix.

For all the rapids named "pin-ball," there should be at least one called "ping-pong." Stookesberry stares it down.

The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, but that sh*t was still 70 ft. tall.

The other first-timers scout the "mini-crucible," one of the cool mini-gorges on the run.

The Fantastic Voyage

2009-07-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait, 2007 hike out.

My friend David Maurier said of the North Mokelumne, "I went to Fantasy Falls in search of unicorns, and I found them." For myself, I would say that Fantasy Falls was my unicorn, my minotaur, my elusive fugitive that twizzled his moustache in mockery just as he made his get away.

In 2007 I put on with a patched boat, which opened up like a trout with its belly slit when I poorly piloted it down a manky sneak on day one. In the next rapid, my sinking boat free-wheeled over the crux and I initiated a sequence called "beat down to wet-exit." My kayak f-ed, and myself committed a good ways down the canyon, I faced the snow-covered peaks that stood between me and egress. That was it. My reality check that showed me that the granite domes and sculpted walls we float past are more than scenic wallpaper that scrolls by, they are the imposing and real parameters of wilderness. As a friend recently reminded me, these places- rivers, mountains, canyons- are always mightier than us; it is just that sometimes it is made plainly apparent.

The trail was covered under snow, so I straight-lined it to the road, post-holing through balls-deep snow and crossing over an exposed ridge. It was cold, kinda scary, and not fun. Even without my kayak, which I later returned for and removed, it took a day. It was an experience that has changed my approach to river running.

Last month Charlie led Thomas and I down a two day bombing mission, and I got my redemption. The river charged me for my passage however, sending me swimming not in any of the notorious mackin' holes, but out of an innocuous-looking but perfect undercut one rapid shy of the reservoir. Mmmm, boootie beeer...

Charlie bombs rapids, not countries.

Thomas gets barreled in the tube.

Oh, my.

I would also like to give a shout out to our trip expeditor and former world-record waterfall holder Paul Gamache. As Chuck put it, "It is always amazing given how many variables are in play on a trip like this when we make it out as planned." To you prospective European visitors, let Paul handle the variables by hiring him as your expeditor to take care of all logistics, shuttles, and permitting. . Contact him for 2010 High Sierra packages, made very reasonable by the favourable exchange rate.

Kayaking on a bottled-water label

2009-06-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

Macy Burnham balancing his boat for a moment's rest.

Up and over Piute Pass, in the headwaters of the South San Joaquin, lies a creek that is fed by glaciers. Looking out over the Moraine as I cleared the pass, an unusual altitude headache throbbing and gusts of wind tugging at the kayak on my back, a single prosaic thought occupied my mind: what are we doing here? We were exploring a creek, going trans-Sierra ,East side to the West side (no-diggity), starting at the source, taking a gamble, and signing-up for who-knows-what. It was an awesome, cold, spectacularly-scenic adventure shared in good company. Enjoy the show.

Piute Creek from Taylor Cavin on Vimeo.

Flow Study v. Yuba Gap

2009-06-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

Time slows down on the hourglass slide. Chris Korbulic enjoys it.

The Diesel 80 boofs well, resurfaces predictably...

...and is easy to roll!

Darin Mcquoid has a laugh over one of those moments where someone sees their line, goes for it, and eats it!

In the wake of 9/11, the satirical newspaper, The Onion ran a headline reading, "Holy F-ing Shit! Attack on America!" After the first rapid on Yuba Gap, all I could think was, "Holy F-ing Shit! That was the coolest rapid I've ever run!" That it has easy access(Take the "Yuba Gap" exit off I-80), big,classy rapids(think East Kaweah size with Hospital Rock class), and a richter-factor that will push past what you may want all goes to show: recreational releases could give California incredible resources. I can easily say this was the coolest flow-study I've hopped on because it was also the coolest single-day stretch of river I've ever run. I say let's all fill-out some paperwork, and see what we can make off with here. Un-scientific statistic: I reckon that 30% of the 100 V+ kayakers in California made time to capitalize on this run during a 3-day window.

Photos 2,3 & 4- Chris Korbulic.

a vertical mile, and horizontal smiles

2009-06-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

Lower Silver Fork stack-up, Thomas Moore

Over a three day weekend I decided to gear up for the coming vacation of California kayaking by going California kayaking. First up was 2009 closing ceremonies on the S F American as Jared and Thomas and I ran a one-day trifecta of Lower Silver Fork, Lover's Leap, and South Silver at low-ish flows. Hightlight: running all of Lower Silver Fork blind except for the car-wash/balls falls set, which we portaged. California kayaking lesson: Keep that momentum rolling.

Portaging over the Lover's Leap logjam, site of the 2010 lumberjack games.

The next day, I met up with Carleton, Willy, and the SE crew of Daniel, Brooks, and Matthias to freeze our faces off at high elevation on Fordyce Creek. I got us good and lost on the shuttle partly because the cloud cover was hanging like the Fog of War and we couldn't really see far enough to read the topography, partly because duh. Then it snowed. We debated whether to put on, then ran the creek in a 3 hour race against hypothermia. I had to laugh for our South Eastern friends because they have their Lie (the Green always runs), and in California we have ours (it's sunny all the time). Highlight: remembering how fun it is to remember rapids. California kayaking lesson: Do not be discouraged by logistical hiccups. They are to be expected until we find a cure for ADHD.Brohelm throws down some torso-rotation on "rotator cuff"

The day after that, Willy had the sharp idea to put on a river that is still semi-steep, but a lot lower elevation, Bald Rock Canyon of the M Feather. It is all about being in that place, and it was sweet. Highlight: exploring caves in the Atom Bomb Falls neighborhood. California kayaking lesson: Gotta pay to play, in this case either with dollars to the boat man who can take you accross the reservoir, or with thigh-presses to hike your ass out of the canyon (we chose the latter). To cap off the weekend, I ate what I am sure is the biggest burrito I have ever eaten.
Brohelm says that Curtain Falls could be the best boof in California.

Lower Mill Creek: a true gutter

2009-06-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

Katrina Skarda thinks this run is a hoot.

Mill Creek is a stream that cuts through an ancient lava flow that spilled off the flank of Mount Lassen. This gives the river a surreal character, because you can imagine how the liquid rock flowed and formed as you float down the water which in turn carved and shaped the rock. While the whitewater itself is not spectacular (volcanic rock is better for removing foot calluses than slip-sliding kayaks), the river canyon is nothing short of wild. In many places Mill Creek is less than a boat-length wide because the water has made quick work of cutting down into the soft conglomerated rock. Trip highlights included: Seeing a bear lumbering along on the shuttle road, raw-dawging water from Brita-quality side-streams (river right= good to go, river left = cow town), 3 liters of chardonnay-in-a-bag stowed in my boat, and angry beavers whose tail-slaps told us to "recognize!" as we paddled into the outskirts of Las Molinas. Mill Creek!

Bryant Burkhardt used to be my boss! Now he runs the show @ paddlecalifornia.blogspot.com

Katrina, Bryant and Matt make like the blue angels, minus the sonic booms.

Try to guess which way the creek is flowing.

Get your ass up here!

2009-04-27T22:17:00.000-07:00

This is not the greatest creek in the world... This is just a blog post.

I feel I can rhapsodize about this creek without contributing to "blowing it up." California has fewer than 100 class V boaters as near as I can tell. The South East is about 3000 miles away. These two factors should keep user impact pretty low, so I will go ahead and let loose on what a few have known for some time.

Darin hits "send."
Darin had texted with the phrase "flows perfect, get your asses up here!" He could fall back on a career as a motivational speaker with this brand of self-actualization. Confirmed flow and open roads on the South Branch of the Middle Fork of the Feather made a potent argument.

These waterfalls get back-to-back like some commercial-free classic rock hits. Thomas requests "Freebird."

The funniest thing all day was spoken by Seth who meant it when he said, "Now that we've made it to the back-to-back waterfall section, I feel like I can relax a little."

I had run this creek before at low flows, but once we realized that Darin's "perfect" was considerably higher, the bumpy lead-in turned into an awesome ride. It was pretty much nodding and bombing through this stretch until we got to the photo-op one-stroke drops and could "relax a little."

Seth relaxes a little.

Thomas goes while Seth sets safety and sense of scale.

The cool weather made the hike out from the edge of the world alright and the freshly burned forest was free of tangly undergrowth. I was stoked to escape to this place and to actually run waterfalls like I usually just daydream.

For better pictures and actual beta go to jscreekin.blogspot.com and find the South Branch Middle Feather page.

A little bit closer

2009-04-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

Darin Mcquoid, Golden Gate

Robbie Hogg, Upper Middle Cosumnes

Alan Speering, Upper Clavey

Alan punching a hole in the water like it's drywall and he's mad

Upper Otter Creek: 1d

2009-03-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

This trip began as the brainchild of Alex Wolfgram. During a shit-talk-storm at his house last summer, he showed me a boatload of American River tribs that had been run once or twice or not at all. Otter Creek was the name that stuck with me from this speculating, postulating, map room session of arm-chair kayaking. It came complete with an anecdote of a gold miner dredging the pool of a waterfall, the would-be take out of the run, only to find at the bottom of the ore heap evidence that the Chinese had beaten him to the punch and cleaned it out. Though this stream had been mined, and its lower reaches kayaked, there remained a stretch unknown to our kind. On March 2, Alex Wolfgram, Corey Tucker, and myself went in to see what the deal was.

Scars heal tougher: swaths cut by human activity make great access points. We soon found a trail that made the hike in buttery-as.

A ride down the otter-bahn: Alex Wolfgram on the first sweet rapid we came to (before the water started rising, browning, and scaring us downstream).

Corey Tucker on same. Something I noticed just driving into this zone, and became increasingly aware of as we hiked in was its jurassic jungle character. There is definitely some lush micro-climate going on as the trees were often encased in fuzzy mosses and the banks tangled with nets of vines. Adding to this effect was the pissing rain we had all day.

Crazy ox-bow...Thanks to the old flume trail this scout-ferry-scout-portage-portage affair only took an hour and a half. The rapid we portaged was a mesmerizing multi-pitch slide that was all good until the bottom. We think at lower flows the water would channelize in the right spot instead of fanning out over the whole thing, good and bad.

This is really happening: a perfect double on Otter Creek. Unfortunately at high side of Yee-Ha! flows (MF American went to 10k the night of our trip) it was cooking into the next rapid, which was not perfect.

Corey Tucker planing out like an Argentine futbol player celebrating a "GOOOOAAAL!" Once we got through the few hundred vert. feet of bedrock, we entered a class III tree lined float that was scary on account of the high-water and many bends out of view, but really fun on account of it being a steady wave-train. I think we portaged wood 2x in there and ran 2 IV's.

Big Bad Otter. The next time I got out of my boat I right away gave the signals for "huge," then "portage." There was a brown torrent gushing down a wavey, ramping lip into a tall drop with a re-connect half-way down, then a short pool and the river ran through waves and trees downstream. While walking around trying to figure out the portage route, I noticed a line down the guts of this falls that avoided rocks on the far left and right. I knew this was our take-out, so down-stream progress was no longer a priority. It was late, we were beat, and we still had to hike out a mile and a half, but I looked straight up to see the first patch of blue all day. Maybe this was a false omen, but I'm still glad I ran it. I walked back to Wolf and Corey who were staring at the chaos and told them I was gonna go. They were supportive with "Hell Yeah!" and "Alright!" though Wolf later told me he thought I was joking. I portaged my boat into an eddy half-way through the lead-in, mostly because I couldn't spare the daylight to scout and trace the line back any further. I snapped my deck on, splashed my face, peeled out, and spotted the seem between two laterals where I wanted to immerse myself. I reached forward, planted a right stroke, hauled on it, and then tucked it up to wait for the reconnect that never came. I realized I had cleared the reconnect when that moment passed by and then melted like the polar ice-caps, without the yank on the paddle that I expect from big falls.

Photo: Corey Tucker. Then I crossed over from glory to humbling as I resurfaced upside-down and reached for my on-side roll only to feel the thunder landing on me. I knew this feeling: locked into a side-surf. I switched over to my off-side, hoping I would catch some current and flush out, but rolled up to see that I was still side-surfing with the falls landing on me. Window-shade. First swim in a year. Pop up in big swirly eddy and made friends with drift-wood. Clambered out of the water like a scalded cat. Wolf grabs my boat! Wolf throws me a rope, wraps it around a tree, and I jump in and use it to pendulum from river right to left. I am down my paddle and my elbow-pads that sucked anyway. Wolf tells me that the mist and wind from the base was so violent he didn't really see my run. We hike out with one headlamp between three people in a tight procession, high on life, adrenaline, etc. and begin the half-joking curse of whoever came up with this idea in the first place. Hell Yeah!

Special Note: Fans of superstition will appreciate that this was my first trip wearing my brand new 5.10 savant shoes. Did I swim because I ran a waterfall at floodstage or because these shoes had never known the sweet taste of booty beer?

Upper Middle Consumin'

2009-03-05T20:35:00.000-08:00

The only un-dammed Sierra river. From the granite express-way at put-in to the quartz ice-bergs at take out, what better place to KILL IT?

Thomas Moore receives his briefing, assumes a false identity, assassinates the drop, and returns to the safe-house, making sure he is not followed.

Indisputable evidence that should compel you to find the accused, Ben Wartburg, GUILTY of murder in the first degree!

The man behind the lens, Daring McQuoid, captured in a hit-and-run vehicular manslaughter of this falls.

In Omo Ranch, the O-Mob runs things! Don't you forget it son!

Keepin' it lowcal

2009-02-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

Low elevation, low flow, but in the lowcality, I went and visual-ed Weber Creek, taking mental pictures of the put-in rocks, so I could relay the information to Ja-rad Noceti and determine if it was worth him and Thomas driving up from Sacto. I couldn't help but wonder why I'd been instructed to note the flow over a particular rock spline when there was a painted gauge on the bridge itself... but then, I was uninitiated to this trib of the South Fork American that flows right past my house, so I went along with it. The gauge is new and now we know- you need one for the run, if it's two, then "ya-hoo!" (if it's three let it be). Weber Creek Mayor Mark Devo cleared his schedule of meetings with the council and made the trek from two doors down to join us on the water.

Soc-em Dog, Barking Dog, Raw Dawg, now "Mad-Dog." River-running has given me many life-enhancing canine encounters.

Mark Devo, pleased as punch-bowl and making good on campaign promises.

Ja-rad Noceti stroking the "mini-Middle Kings-money rapid."

Thomas Moore on same, maybe I'll call it "spare change."

We scout rapids from the bottom up. Here you can see us ant-like at the bottom of this big rapid on a small creek. I ended up running it upright and alright, though the camera battery ran out first, the suspense being too much for it.

And California is BACK! It was so cold this past storm-cycle (of 9 days) that the precip fell as snow all the way down to like 1500 ft. This low-down run was one of just a few that co-operated this week. We'll just have to get the rest of the runs in the summertime!

All photos courtesy Jared Noceti except the one of him. Check his head-cam video @:
http://vimeo.com/3287854
related vids feature cool stuff like a bear encounter and successful log-pin rescue, both from the kick-ass Bullard's Bar run on the North Yuba.

Tony Hawk: a friend forever

2009-01-29T07:32:00.000-08:00

'08 file photo @~175 cfs: kineticinstasis.blogspot.com

'09 photo @~300 cfs.

I am sure that the pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, founder of Birdhouse and first to stick the 1080 spin is fine and well. I unfortunately can not report as well of the rapid on the Middle Consumnes River that bears his name. Thomas Moore and I paddled in Saturday to find the coolest drop on the run and one of the more distinct rapids anywhere has taken a turn for the less runnable. Often times wood makes a rapid sketchier, but there are those rare cases where a piece of wood makes the rapid what it is. "Go left and die" on the Green is one that comes to mind: boof the log like your grinding a rail and you boost your likelihood of making the best channel. The log in the classic channel of Tony Hawk (in the photo: at the tip-top near scouting David) plugged a pothole and diverted the flow up onto the gorge wall making for a wall-ride to banking-turn to skip across the pool experience. Now that it is gone the water drains into a pothole behind the big rock awaiting descents by hybrid kayak-spelunkers. Since the run has not seen high water in the past year (when the log was last seen), my guess is that it rotted away. Evil beavers would be my second guess, but I don't want to think about that. On the up-shot the right line, "Robbie Hogg's solitary confinement," looks a little more-runnable as a result. The whole rest of the run looks pretty clean except for the trip-wire log in some boogie water that was there last year. There is a rapid that used to have the yellow caution tape of a log across the top of it but I cut that out late in the UMC season '08. I whacked myself on that descent, but cleaned it up on Saturday. Let's hope the UMC runs a little bit in '09!

Daylight Savings -or- flow study v. 3

2008-11-17T20:49:00.000-08:00

(photo sequence: Sean Manchester, pictured below)

Leaves change, days get shorter. Flows drop, work picks up. Fall has made us parched beggars dependent on the faucets randomly opened up here and there.

There were the South Feather days of boofing down that classic dark gutter lined with Indian Rhubarb. The way the seasons worked out this year made for brilliant fall colors and not so bone-chilling weather. Taylor Robertson decided that the waterfall right in the middle of its first gorge would be a whole lot cooler as a rapid than a portage and started a charge of exercising the demons one huck at a time. Following hot on the heels of Taylor and his homeboys, my last run saw me at the bottom of the first gorge about 3 minutes after launching into the uninterrupted flow.

The North Yuba (pictured above) has been a welcome surprise witness in the kayaking court while the Yuba County Water Agency tinkers with the tubes and has no choice but to gush the water down the river to keep their contracts with the dams downstream. It is a beautiful place once one floats away from the seventy-story dam looming over the put in like the Gotham skyline, bristling with cameras, antennas, and the equipage of Homeland Security.

This was also the scene of the most hilarious turnaround in public relations ever after several weeks of hassling and stink-eyes from the dam personnel. After a friendly chat with Steve the dam operator, he radioed his people up top to leave a gate open so we could drive down to the river instead of hiking in. Our group was paddling mid-week on Veteran's Day and apparently the flow had been dropped down a little after the weekend. Steve was apologetic, "If we'd known you were coming we'd have left it up!" Steve, I just need your address, and I'll make sure you get that basket of mini-muffins!

I'd rather pray for whitewater than beg for it, so that is why my favorite day of boating out of the fall was when nature delivered and Thomas Moore and I got fresh tracks on the South Yuba, catching a spike of the first natural flow we'd boated on since the Kings. No pictures were taken, and few eddies were caught as we bombed down, Thomas leading like a hound dog sniffing out boofs he'd buried in his memory. Driving home through the lingering patches of the storm that had brought the water, I saw a double-wide rainbow. Not two concentric rainbows, but one that had a more full spectrum than any I'd ever seen. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green was only the half-way point of this mackin' 'bow. That's where Blue, Indigo, Violet took over and the spent wavelengths gasped their last with a glow of White like the northern lights on the inside of the arch. I'll take it as an indicator of lots of rain and snow and good things to come.

It's not trespassing if you're a guest.

Flow Study v. 2: Canyon Creek

2008-09-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

One day a week, I've been hard at it with these flow-studies, doing my part as an amateur hydrologist. So far, the time I've put in has been pro bono, but I've got a feeling that a fellowship or grant-money of some kind is not far off. In the meanwhile, I will continue with my independent research as best I can despite the lack of institutional support.

"I can't run the sh$t every day, but I can always dream." Alex Wolfgram on the dreamflows.com rapid.

(file photo courtesy Sparkle Motion)

I agree with Chris Tulley (pictured above) and his assessment of Canyon Creek that he posted on the on-line forum boof.com, ("boof" can refer to a vertical drop along a river, the forceful stroke one takes at the lip of such a drop, the brief free-fall one experiences after paddling over it, or the sound the boat makes upon landing). I have paraphrased Chris' comments.

1) Thanks AW and Bob Center for making this possible. It is fantastic to have the opportunity to get on new adventures like Canyon Creek. It is very scenic, great camping and warm lakes to swim in.
2) The run is not quality. Lots of sharp, shallow rocks = lots of gouges in your boat. Yes, folks this is mank... Majority of rapids have lines but they are marginal.
3) More flow would help this run but not make it great. Putting enough flow to cover up some/most of the rocks (~150-200 cfs) would remove some of the boat abuse but would likely make the run very continuous and intimidating, requiring long scouts and big hairy ballz.
4) If you go, bring a beater boat and a fire it up attitude. I'd suggest that you be V+ type and not afraid to take hits, definitely don't forget your elbow pads. Generally you should be the type of person who would rather take an experimental line thru a V-V+ rapid than portage.

To this I can add that Dave Steindorf of American Whitewater reports that not much more than the 120 cfs we had this past week can even be let out of the small penstock of the dam that forms French "lake." Every bit would help, so I say crank that thing counter-clockwise until it won't go anymore (and will say as much when I officially submit the findings of my exhaustive research to the flow study).

That's what I love about twenty-footers... I get older, and they stay the same height. Photo: Alex Wolfgram.

"Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white..." Were the Counting Crows inspired by Peter Malkin and his Pearl Jefe? Fresh from a week at Burning Man, the Russian somehow manages to run the creek without paranoia or hallucinations getting the better of him.

Corey Tucker gets in the spirit of the party.
Canyon Creek is what professional kayaker Zak Shaw would call a "young catchment." That is a polite way of saying that the stream-bed is as sharp as a chess phenom on ginseng supplements. It is so high up in the watershed that it hasn't seen the flows over time that would smooth out the rough edges. A couple more ice-ages and it should be a classic!

Paddler: Taylor Cavin, Photo: Peter Malkin.
Human history hasn't done the creek much better than the geologic timescale. The douchebags at the Nevada County Irrigation District have the thing locked down like cell block "D" after a food riot. You will have not one but four reservoir paddles to reflect on what douchebags they are if you paddle the whole stretch from French "lake" to Bowman "lake." My favorite rapids were right above and below Faucherie "lake," so there must be some sick scuba-diving to be done in that one.

A gutter of the earth.

upLATE: 1st Annual S Merced Boat Clean-Up Jamboree!

2008-09-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

1st Annual South Merced Boat Clean-Up Jamboree! from Taylor Cavin on Vimeo.Ok, Ok, so this is redundant and late coverage of this event. Be that as it may, this is video, wheras a few months ago on kineticinstasis.blogspot.com there were photos. It somehow got lost in the shuffle of peak-runoff sh$t-running...anyways, umm... here it is, as pitiful and sycophantic as a belated thank-you card. Green boat, K. Smith, Orange boat D. Maurier. The camera glitched for my run of the boo-boo, so that is shown as a still-image-stitch...you'll see...

The For-De-Shay Creek

2008-09-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

I believe that the stream was named by Quebecois fur traders exploring the region by canoe and therefore would take a French pronunciation of the spelling "Fordyce." After a parching August (with even the Oasis of Cherry Creek down to 50% flow for part of the month), it was great to have those f-ing dams do us at least a lick of good right at the end. With 400 12-inch, by 12 inch, by 12 inch cubes of water going from Fordyce Reservoir down Fordyce creek, every second, this flow study provided ample opportunity to study the flow as one floated over, through, and with it. With the crap-ton of dam release classics such as the Gauley, Green, and Youghigheny on the East Coast, there is no reason that California, which by comparison is dammed to tarnation, can't have an awesome Fall draw-down season as well. It seems the key for getting releases such as this one is the effort of motivated individuals in the paddling community who stay involved throughout the lengthy dam relicensing process.
Perhaps fired-up by the jeepers doing their rowdy stream-crossings, exhaust pipes a-bubblin, our group of five went ahead and fired up this rapid. Lizzy puts a little English on it.

Consistent Chris Korbulic hits the 7-10 split. This rapid looked a lot less picturesque from river level, with the big rectangle slab on river right kicking up a fan that could cool a Pharaoh.

Jared Johnson punches his boof-stroke like karate chop through brick. This rapid was the only one I walked back up for, a super smooth granite waterfall with many lines to be had.

Afternoon huckfest as two groups glob together and a whole bunch of people drop the Split Falls, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. This is me melting it like the Wicked Witch of the West (photo: David Maurier).
Death-style shot: This was one of many standing trunks of trees drowned by Spaulding Reservoir and exposed by the low water level. Fishing line snagged up this Crawdad leaving his exoskeleton to bleach in the sun.

Floating there, with the stratified sand rings around the reservoir, the sight of the Yuba dumping in through a sculpted gorge, and my friends paddling off to the boat-ramp, I reflected on something. The Fordyce was the first California River I paddled over two years ago; I had not paddled it since. I remembered how I'd been impressed, by the exposed granite peppered with pines, by the attention getting rapids (portages for me), the meandering flats through tall forest. Most of all I remember putting on kind-of late, taking out in the dark, and feeling very spent from the scale of kayaking in the Sierra. That first glimpse was a fair indicator of the potential to be found in these mountains. I find myself amazed again and again at what we have here.

Special note: also on the creek this same day were Mike Fentress and Walt Garms who first descended Fordyce 25 years ago. To have that kind of a tenure on class V whitewater is bad-ass as far as I'm concerned.

A ride through the ringer (MF Kings)

2008-07-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

Avast! The following blog entry shall take on a length befitting of Homeric poetry. This story's scope is on par with that of it's subject, the Middle Fork of the Kings, a river that transects the Sierra Nevada. Starting in the snowfields of the range that contains the tallest peak in the lower 48, the Kings drops over 7,000 feet in the classic stretch run by kayakers. So if you're still scrolling five minutes from now... take heed! This is gutters on its annual gabfest!
Though his real title is "Dudebro von Brohelm," he now goes by Willy Pell to shake anti-immigrant sentiment. In this picture, Willy runs Herculean logistics with his butter knife. The thing about the Kings is that it takes Herculean logistics to get at it, but delivers a whitewater pay-off equal to the effort buy-in. Because the river is so remote, the nearest access to put in is actually over the backside of the drainage, through Bishop, California, in the desert rain-shadow of the Inyo Valley. Because the Kings sits square in the middle of the High Sierra, it's take-out is conveniently as far as possible from either the northerly route through Yosemite, crossing over the Sierra at Tioga Pass, or the southerly route, which goes all the way around the Sierra. Take your pick, shuttle is about 300 miles one way.
We all have our cross to bear. For some of us, it's a kayak loaded with overnight gear which we literally have to bear. Because our group convened at take out the night before a full day of shuttling, we were already a day and a half in transit when we arrived at trail head to start the hike in to the headwaters. A Hike!? A hike, you say!? 300+ miles by car, and 12 on foot. These terms are non-negotiable.

Now the funny part. The area around the Kings is designated as wilderness, and overnight stays within it are limited and run on a permit system. The permits are cheap, and we had heard were not running out mid week, but were a formality worth following through, we reckoned. After running the shuttle, a delegate from our party arrived at the US Forest Service office in Bishop just at the close of business hours in time for some employee to shake his head at her through a glass door as it swung shut. Boo! Anxious to put on the river and more fearful of the mighty laws of Nature than than the feeble codes of man, we commenced hiking our boats in over Bishop Pass the following day undeterred, not feeling the backtrack into town from our campsite. It was just as we neared the top of the pass, and would have been within sight of La Conte Canyon, that Homeland Security, in the form of US forest circus rangers, overtook us and pissed on our picnic. After groveling to an ironically named Ranger Keith Waterfall, (no joke!) we negotiated being able to at least leave our boats and gear as far as we had carried them while we hiked ourselves and our food out that day, thereby remaining "day users," and not needing a permit. "Cut off at the pass," like Geronimo's band, we beat a retreat to Bishop, secured the permit for overnight travel, and proceeded to wreck a happy hour.
Some kayaking crews use helicopters to access badass new drainages, others to shoot sick footy. We pretty much just get buzzed by them like the ghetto bird flashing its search light around on COPS! These dudebros had their body heat scanners out for a lost hiker who has yet to be found.

After reflecting on the situation, a team member mis-quoted a popular kayaking film: "The culmination of our total lack of preparedness has led us to now."

Having regrouped, we went in the following day, day 3 and a half, to get in there "for realsies," put on, and start generating blog content worth viewing. We join our heroes at the top of Bishop Pass...

Along the hike, nature likes to taunt you in your suffering with incarnations of pure beauty.
Thomas Moore (no relation to James Bond star Roger Moore) gets it on during a chilly day one on the river.
If this rapid is known as "the money rapid," and I believe it is, then this photo captures Dudebro von Brohelm becoming a cash money millionaire.
I've never seen so many blue nomads in all my life! Or Robin's Egg. Or Perriwinkle. Or whatever the hell color that is. Lizzy English gets on the rail like a Japanese commuter as she exits Sik Camp early day 2. Deliberating dudebros looking on say "Oh, there's the line."
Let's meet team Raw Dawg, shall we? Left to Right: Taylor Cavin, Lizzy English, Jared Johnson, Thomas Moore, Willy Pell, and David Maurier. We are Raw Dawgs because we drink the waters of the Middle Kings without filtration or purification and call this "Raw Dawgin' it!"
David hits "execute," and registers the domain name "www.thebomb.com" with a single rightie stern draw.
First Descent: Jared Johnson, June 2007. This run was followed a few short minutes later by myself, and followed this year by several Raw Dawgs. Whether known as "Raw Dawg Falls," the "Tatlow Rapid," or, most likely, "the thirty footer," it is now open for business.
The team collects itself in between committing through the entry gorge and dropping over Raw Dawg Falls.
Taylor Cavin refers to himself in the third person and boofs the holy heck out of Raw Dawg Falls.
A public service announcement from Jared Johnson, reminding you that the Middle Kings is not all about clean sliding falls. Hope you like stacked ledges, son!
Oh, she's a real beauty, this one!
By Sierra standards, this river's got more wood than an Amish barn-raising.

On a personal note, thank you, Middle Kings. You push us to our peak and reveal our true selves. You reward our knuckle-bangers and suffering with satisfaction far sweeter than the complacent comforts of our workaday lives. You are so awesome.

Glad we go the hell out of there when we did... As it was we paddled garlic Falls at a sporting 1400 (est.), twice last year's flow since the river actually rose rather than fell during our trip down it (due to daily afternoon thundershowers). Putting on two days later would have spelled misadventure for our heroes as they would have embarked on a celebration of portaging known as a "portage fest" of the first order through the Bottom Nine miles of Bottomitude.

the Cherry drainage pilgrimage

2008-07-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

This year's visit to the holy land of granite creek boating did not disappoint. There were dispirited moments of boat schlepping, carnage deja vu, and linked-up boof-boof-boof sequences that were the stuff of dreams. It seems like planet Tattooine always serves it up a little different. This year there was hazy smoke from a fire south of Cherry Lake drifting through the canyons, last year there was a freak June snow-sleet-hail storm, and the year before I couldn't tell you because I was having my mind blown. There is a little video window for you, but if you haven't been there, I recommend it. Taking a backpack instead of a boat means less punishment on your back, no sweating the narrow flow window, and an easy drop in from Kibbie Ridge to the epicenter that is Flintstone camp. Media simply cannot do justice to the straight out of sci-fi domes or the overall feel of trekking through a moon-scape without so much as a blade of grass in your path.

The waterfalls Dinkey

2008-06-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I got to engage in the ultimate skirmish for a California weekend warrior: Dinkey Waterfalls, a bad-ass run typically done in two days. Royal Gorge, a 3-day run, said, "F you, quit your job." Fantasy Falls, also a 3-day, said, "Go F yourself. And quit your job." Dinkey Waterfalls said,"Enter my inner gorges and plummet over my clean granite rapids. Then go to work on Monday with the grin of a poop-eater." The fine compatriots who had my back on this one were Culley Thomas and Chris Tulley (dopplegangers in name only) and Macy Burnham (who had been there before and led us off Willey's drop, a 40 footer, blind as bats). Side note: this run is no cake walk and got my attention more than once as you will see in the closing shot of this vid.

Golden Gate: billions of customers served!

2008-04-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

Much respect to the old school. People have been running the Golden Gate section of the South Fork American since the Raegan years. Since the days when your kayak would fold around you like pita bread if you so much as touched a rock. Since the days when "technical apparel" meant cut-offs and Chuck Taylors.
To the original bad-asses, Golden Gate was the shit. In my mind, this fact lends the Gate long-lasting legitimacy on top of the fact that it's still the shit. It's as real as a home-made casserole, MTV's "the Real World," and a pouch of gypsy power crystals all put together. On the real.
"Please sir, may I have another?" Sean Graham goes through "initiation."
Once you get over the wierd, blind boof over the knuckle, and dodge around the hole...
...it's a "straight shot," the name of this rapid, as run by Thomas Moore.
"Mr. Smith" to his students, Rick T-s up for "Taco Bell" and orders a Big, Beef Cheesy Meltdown, speeding past the intercom and proceeding directly to the window, demanding satisfaction.
"Cannon-Ball!!!!" Sean Manchester goes over the "diving board," in "All F-ed Up."
Sean contends with lateral waves like a gladiator staving off starved lions.

Praise Allah it's Friday (video included)!

2008-04-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

Over the past weekends I made three trips down the upper middle consumnes, thanks to whoever figured out that you can run it that low (sort of). The run is a geologic split personality, equal parts hot-ass rapids and broke-ass rapids, but all in all a great venue for fight-club-esque weekend shenanigans and a backyard run by Cali standards. This short vid from one day last wknd shows John Warner, Jason Hale, James McLeod and Dave Garringer killing it, and me eating a slice of poop cake (cause no one does that anymore). With the coming weekend's flows looking like dam release playboating will be the hot play, at least I can vicariously re-experience the Consumnes through myself. The artist is Bloc Party, the track is Positive Tension.

The North Shore Project

2008-03-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Fluid Groove Productions has put up this video called "The North Shore Project," documenting the whitewater of the rugged streams flowing into Lake Superior. This is not Fluid Groove's first rodeo; they won "Best Accomplished Film" at the 2004 National Paddling Film Festival for their effort, "Dakib," meaning cold water in Ojibwe. This video features new footage of classic runs such as the cascades of the Cascade, the Black, and the Baptism, which I was fortunate enough to paddle Spring of 07. I can attest that they are some quality jams, but that bedrock will destroy your kayak.

getting closer to Nirvana

2008-03-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

Cully Thomas in a moment of weightlessness, Middle Kaweah.
Kevin Smith bombing into the box rapid on the Main Tule.
Eric Giddens catches a bounce and enjoys doing it.

Peter Malkin finishes "four deaths" in Bald Rock Canyon without suffering a single death. Peter is also suspiciously affiliated with kayakussr.com, a resource for kayaking in the Altai Mountains.
Myself floating over a piece of granite as classic as Audrey Hepburn (photo: Peter Malkin).

Have been back in Cali for a while now, kayaking almost every weekend, all thanks to whoever invented the drysuit. Enjoying the days getting warmer and longer, waiting for that melt to start and those diurnals to start pulsing like Karl Rove hooked up to a polygraph. Have to say, life is pretty good when this is the kind of kayaking you can get in on the shoulder season.

Dipping Blades into Mirages

2008-02-20T10:44:00.000-08:00

The Sespe Creek mission was an act of faith from the very first. When David and I leave Sacramento, a strategic location for getting at classic whitewater, and point the car towards Los Angeles, the sprawling Babylon of civilization gone awry, I feel fibers in my body twitching, resisting the idea out of instinct and principle. With the hydrograph that had held steady all week at a reportedly good level starting to drop that day, reason also joins the protest (see above: we put on the 16th). When the bubble of light pollution from the misnomered City of Angels comes into view as we turn off the 5 and switch drivers near Magic Mountain, I accept the unlikely adventure as it plays out in the style of a David Lynch film. Macy and Luke meet us at a semi-legal camp spot, and we boost towards the river after sunrise. The sight of patchy snow hiding in the shade as we shuttle up and a battleship-sized sandstone formation greeting us at put-in hint at adventure and overshadow the risk of stranding ourselves in a dry desert gulch. As we paddle in, I remind myself of other beguiling put-ins that tell nothing of what lies downstream: the innocuous miles of class II on the way in to the Green Narrows, the float through a swamp leading to the steep slides of Minnesota's Split Rock River. As I bang my loaded boat over shoals and through willows, pinning like a butterfly specimen and falling behind, I keep faith that the snow will melt, the tribs will come in, the river will channelize.
Macy runs this 10 footer on beta. Trick of perspective makes it look like 2 footer.
David reckons, "the heck with boofing, I'm going for the slot with the most water!"
Macy goes with the, "I'm hitting so many rocks as it is, I might as well drive up on them completely!" school of thought.
At this point the river sieved out like a sewer-grate and we portaged through a jumble. I feel justified in stealing this picture from David's blog, because it features my likeness and at no point did I agree to full disclosure of intellectual property.

Luke gets all up in the pour-over's bizniss. I feel justified in stealing this picture from David since I took it.

Once we entered the gorge the next day, our faith was rewarded with stunning topography, rare bird-life, and sandstone rapids, smooth like a single-malt scotch, yet rough as shark-skin. We got a good lead-sweep rhythm going and routed many rapids on boat-scouts and no-scouts, the thought of another chilly night motivating us towards take out. We left one rapid for next time with more water, and saw the river completely sieve-out twice. The general character in the steepest few miles could be described as pour-overs pinched between huge boulders, with a few slides mixed in. The flow was surprisingly adequate for most of the good rapids, but we did well to do the paddle out as the sun set on day two, the flow continuing to drop. All in all a great trip, a good chunk of gradient, and a chance to experience the desert environs that had gotten into my imagination on the drive back from Mexico.

Oh, and check out www.kineticinstasis.blogspot.com for an alternate report of this trip, as well as David's endeavors in New Zealand and elsewhere in California. Whose trip would YOU rather go on? Polling begins next week.

I'm no geologist, but I'm pretty sure this sh!# is granite...

2008-02-04T16:45:00.001-08:00

The Rio Zacate flowing out of Pico Bonito national park. This whole mountain range has largely intact rainforest and rises up just a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
Did I first d the Rio Cuyamel? Only it knows.
Udo shows me down the upper Congrejal, a cherry-creek style run, at a great level. Udo goes way back in Honduras, all the way to '92 when he went on a badass kayaking trip on which he and his boys found a totally runnable river with a clean 30 footer and a bar at take out (Hopefully I'll make it back for that one). He decided Honduras was the place and has run a raft company on the Congrejal ever since.

Honduras- As big as you want to go...

Honduras marked the turn-around point of the road trip. Kat and I motivated down through Guatemala to go Scuba diving at an island off the Honduran coast which we had heard was the cheapest place in the world to blow bubbles amongst the coral. It was a crazy place, most of it was at most a foot above sea level and swampy and though there were hardly any cars on the island the locals constantly tore around on 4-wheelers and mopeds, providing a droning back-drop. When we were ready to leave, a 4-day storm system moved in, preventing the ferry that had taken us to the island from making its trips. So we stayed a while. When we made it back to the mainland, some of the rain was still draining out of the mountains, as you can see above. This part of Honduras really made an impression on me with its natural beauty and the extent to which it has been left pristine as compared to other places we saw on the road trip. I really just scratched the surface here and I think it is the most under-rated kayaking destination in Central America.

Another roadside attraction!

2008-01-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

While camping out near the ruined Mayan city of Palenque, a Californian on his way to the intergalactic rainbow gathering in Veracruz noticed the boats on the roof and stopped by to chat. Turns out Dan, who happens to be Fred Corriell's cousin, is a kayaker, but hadn't imagined he'd end up kayaking on his trip to Mexico to fly kites and practice holistic health in a communal setting. We were going to the Agua Azul river and waterfalls the next day and invited him along. Fortuitously enough, he fit in Skarda's gear and boat and subbed in for her on the river. We conducted aerial reconnaisance (bought postcards of the river shot from above). We negotiated access (chatted up the security guard who was eating lunch with his back turned to the mess of tourists swimming above the waterfalls). And then we dropped in. The river goes into countless channels, braiding together and splintering apart in a veritable maze of whitewater in the jungle. If you were here at high water, there would be many days worth of taking new lines and new channels, but the water was low, so we followed the ones that looked to hold the most cfs. It is a typically travertine river, which is to say it looks like a large-scale set of fabricated pools from a miniature golf course, with turquoise water pouring from one into the next. After paddling down a ways, but not arriving at the famous final falls which drop the river to its confluence with a larger river, we began attaining the flats and carrying up the grippy rapids back to put-in. I have a feeling I will find my way back to this place. Thanks to Dan for sharing these photos with me.

"Kayakismo es prohibido." Security guard man didn't want us running this one. The pool below was a nice put-in.
Paddlesports can be a life-enhancing activity!
I'm not showing off my cross-bow, my paddle actually got caught in the vines.
At this rapid, going right is wonderful. As much as travertine makes for easy rapids, it also has a heinous propensity for making caves behind curtains, as in the case of the left side of this guy.

Baches and Topes... (potholes and speedbumps)

2007-12-12T23:19:00.000-08:00

Baches and Topes are the hallmarks of Mexican roads. Ups and downs. You must scan the roadway for baches (say "bah-chays)" with vigilance, picking your line between the asphalt craters and braking when the road sieves out into a mess of them. Topes ("toe-pays") are souped-up speedbumps interspersed at the frequency one would find stoplights on a US road and are the Mexican way of checking speeds to sub-Autobahn levels in places where the baches may not have riddled the roadway. Topes are the so precipitously tall that you must come to a dead stop to summit them without sending sparks over the pavement as you roll down the backside. Ups and downs are part and parcel of travelling. You might find yourself the mark of a corrupt cop or an unexpected guest at the table of a friendly family. It is what it is. These pictures are some of the ups of the Mexico trip thus far...

Kat boofs the (insert expletive of choice) out of it! (Rio Salto)
Splashing through the aquarium on the Salto. This rapid was actually used as a location for a scene in the film "Finding Nemo."
Left to right, Taylor, Dr. Jorge A. Marquez, and Kat. If you go to San Luis Potosi, ask around for the doctor. He'll cure what ails you and is great people. He and his son are the two most enthusiastic paddlesports enthusiasts in the area.
An aggressive ferry angle.
A bit blurry, but I feel that the beams of sunlight in this photograph are documented and irrefutable proof that God loves kayaking. This is the very last drop on the Alsaseca before the confluence with the Bobos. Upstream of this drop lies a rapid I hope somebody runs someday...

In Mexico, as fugitives of our checkered pasts...

2007-11-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

Kat Skar-face waits for it... waits for it...

Skar-face likes to stomp it down. She kayaks through the jungle as if her paddle were a machete slashing through the tropical foliage. That is, until she gets salmonella... Now instead of her making passage through water, water makes passage through her.

Let it be known, the chicas propositioned us to have this picture taken. We were not however able to bring these particular chicas back to the hotel due to the fact that one of their boyfriends took the picture.

Apres kayaking cervezas are good... Kayaking on an actual river of cerveza... even better!

What you need to know about road-tripping to Mexico: 1) Texas tried to kill us. Mostly through sheer persistence of its vast, featureless landscape, which starts to give you strange ideas, like leaving your travel partner at a gas station. 2) If you get a "speeding ticket" within minutes of crossing the border but several blocks from where the alleged violation occurred, do not be surprised. Instead, grovel and try frantically to recollect a language you have not used in over a year. 3) Sugar cane trucks are top-heavy. Pass with care.

Mexico has been good times so far, from portaging a travertine dam on the Rio Tampaon where the whole river vanishes only to reappear on the other side, to lapping the natural amusement park of the cascadas Micos before a live studio audience. We are now at the Salto section of the same river but 100k upstream, awaiting a cessation to the bacterial onslaught on Kat's guts. In the meantime, we check out the tourist waterfalls. If it's on the map, you can't run it. This blog is dedicated to Dr. Jorge A. Marquez, a local kayaker who was kind enough to treat Kat pro bono and hook us up with cipro, yo.

Never give in!

2007-10-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

Life is too short! I've begun a learning process that will never end! Never give in!
Sorry, I started playing the music from the 7Rivers Expedition Middle Kings segment in my head, which I do every time I see the granite needles from that time lapse shot with the clouds whipping through. They were a welcome sight indeed coming up over Bishop Pass at 11,700 ft. with a kayak on my back loaded with lots of gear and not enough food. I am here to say that the hike in to the Middle Kings makes the Upper Cherry hike-in seem like a pleasant jaunt, one you might take on a lazy afternoon with a picnic basket. But it keeps the riff-raff out, is totally worth it, and rounds out the epicness of the overall experience. Oh yeah, and the shuttle is kind of long too. That said, the Middle Kings is the most amazing river I have run in my life. The fact that it is one of the last High Sierra runs to go meant that I felt very on it with my paddling and the multi-day aspect. The fact that an ordinary run takes five days meant that our group had time to come together as a crew. The fact that you are about as remote as you can get in a state of 50 million people meant that every view was stunning. I also had the good timing to celebrate my birthday paddling out through Kings Canyon of the Main Kings on day 5, with the notorious bottom nine miles behind us and a safe descent under our belts. Photos by Kevin Smith. Yellow boat, Jared Johnson, blue boat Taylor Cavin, green boat, Greg Spiecher. Never give in!
Palisade Creek slide
This slide goes directly into...
...this drop! (see the trail of whitewater leading into it?)
Mad ups to Jared for making this look good and inspiring me to run it.
Jared runs the Beaver! (I believe only been run 4 times so far...)
Roger's Creek cascades into the Kings near where we camped with much trepidation for the following day and the bottom nine miles.
Goodbye Tehipete! See you next year.

Putting the "Wheee!" in "Kaweah"

2007-10-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite drainage for day runs in Cali (so far). They crashed a road up the main Kaweah Canyon back in the day to harvest the giant Sequoias for timber, so here is one classic Cali watershed that doesn't require you to be your own pack mule to access it. Fortunately, they soon found out that the Sequoias are crumbly and worthless for timber, so you can still go and oxygenate yourself amongst them after a day of kayaking. King's Canyon/ Sequoia is the only national park I know where you can go kayaking legally, so even though the 80$ a year for a parks card is steep, it beats 1000$+ fine for illegal runs in other parks. And the crazy thing is that we kayakers haven't f-ed anything up yet! Or needed to be rescued by rangers with their mad skills! Crazy! These pics are some East Fork, as well as some middle Kaweah above hospital rock. To do that run, turn off to the right onto a dirt road when the paved one starts heading up and away from the river at the hospital rock. Go till it dead ends, hike down the left side of the stream that flows into the Kaweah, and put in below the horrid undercut you will see there. From here down to the normal hospital rock take out at Potwisha campground, everything is runnable. Wheee! If you want to know which pics are East Fork and which are Mainstem, you should go run them both, then compare and contrast. Photos are by Eric Giddens and Kevin Smith, kayaker is myself, Taylor Cavin, paddlesports enthusiast.

Like kayaking on the moon only...

2007-10-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

...there's still gravity. Which is fortunate, since I'm not sure how kayaking would work without it. Would you boof and then keep hurtling through space like so much astronaut ice-cream? Hmmm... When I was curled up in a crater and looking around the bare granite expanse of our put-in camp on the West Cherry Creek, kept wide awake by the full moon's bright light intensified in the amplitheater gorge, I couldn't help but draw the comparison between the celestial body up there and the earthly one on which I found myself. Next time I'll pack in a golf club and an American flag to re-enact Niel Armstrong's tomfoolery. The first whitewater pics are from West Cherry with a crew of Sean Gerlach, Sam Sutton, Brendan Bayly, and Josh Nielson of NZ, Evan Garcia who has a keen river memory once he finds the river, and Devon and Garrett from Northern California who we met at trailhead. Upper Cherry ended up as Sean, Sam, Brendan, Evan and I met by some of the craziest weather I've ever seen... read on.
Evan stomping.

Brendan charging the same rapid, shot from downstream.

Josh recovering a spin on the Charlie Beavers rapid.

There IS in fact a kayaker here, Evan Garcia buried in the flow of the 30 ft. pothole drop on West Cherry, en route to a vertical extrication... kind of a theme with this crew, but it's all good, set safety and charge hard!

Snow fall in June on Upper Cherry (Christmas at the Cherry Bomb!), but no one got the memo in time so no one had santa hats, much less adequate layers or sleeping bags.

The cleft of granite that dropped the jagged jumble of boulders that creates the portage immediately above the Cherry Bomb Gorge and juxtaposes horrid mank against oh-so-clean!

Sam Sutton kick-flipping his way to the first ever swim in the base of Cherry Bomb Falls proper! The holes in the Cherry Bomb are being claimed quickly, with Robin's hole, Riley's hole, and now Dylan's hole and Sam's hole having been named, so snap up some of this prized real estate by taking a terrifying swim while you still can!

editor's note: Getting Sam out of the pothole where he swam was one of the scarier rescues I've been a part of mainly because we couldn't SEE Sam until Brendan fished him out. He ended up in the pothole that is partly cut off by the edge of the picture. We were only guessing that he was still in there and had not flushed downstream or behind the falls. Something like three and a half minutes that Sam was chilling in there (head above water but completely out of view) while we decided that Sean should run the falls and wait downstream in case Sam flushed or had flushed, figured out how to get down to the base of the falls, and then picked our way through the spray-soaked boulder jumble to where we could rope him out. Moral of the story: SET safety in dicey spots, don't improvise it while shit goes down. There seems to be a rumor that you can't set safety on the Cherry Bomb; this is just a rumor. Then again, somebody has to be the one to run sweep...

The author drops it like it's hot while a crew of A-teamers huddled on the scout rock do the granite paparazzi thing. (thanks Josh Nielson of whitewater-koa.blogspot.com for the photo)

The Royal Gutter of the North Fork American

2007-10-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

These photos are a spotlight on James McLeod, dirtbag extraordinaire. He'll cut down christmas trees for weeks on end or please the idiosyncratic demands of moviestars or whatever it takes to buy a few weeks to doggedly pursue that mix of volume and gradient. He was the one on the trip who had been in the Royal Gorge before and knew of its inner recesses and wonders. The hope of getting on this trip and catching this exquisite, way too steep piece of whitewater was the reason I drove straight on through to California from Minnesota. Jared Nocetti and Brent Idaho rounded out the 4-pak. Definitely cool to do this run and check out the giant waterfalls of Heath #2, Rattlesnake, Chuck Kern Falls and Wabena, even if the vantage point I got was from the hellacious portage routes. The outlandish scale of those drops almost made the stretches of river that we did run seem like boogie water. Crazy fun boogie water. Blitzing the 30 miles of paddle out on Generation/Giant Gap in one day gave me temporary jello arms and a lasting feeling of having done something.

The bicycle shuttle to put-in was necessitated by a stretch of snow on the road that prevented vehicular passage.

Wake and huck on Heath #1.

Going "shredder style" off rattle snake falls.

Railing it out at mini-curtain.

A beam of sunshine on the split falls.

The team below our portage of Chuck Kern Falls.