Dipping Blades into Mirages

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...

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!

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)

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...

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!

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"

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.