Upper Otter Creek: 1d

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'

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

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

'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

(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

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 Nevada County Irrigation District has the thing locked down like cell block "D" after a food riot. You will have not one but four reservoir paddles to reflect on this 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!

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...