But then the guide says Dry Meadow creek is grade V and how hard can 7 clean waterfalls be ? Besides the online guides are written by a guy paddling a blow-up boat, that’s got to add a grade surely !
Determined to go to California me and my friend Alex hooked up with four other boaters for a trip in April, the only problem was these guys all work in the paddling industry, perhaps this was a bad idea. I got even more concerned when they suggested running Upper Cherry Creek a three day epic grade V+ paddle that is the test piece of the state, but by this time we were committed to going with them.
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We finally met our fellow travellers at the check-in at Heathrow and in the long wait for departure it became clear we were out of our depth. These guys had big ideas of what to paddle and from what they said the experience to match. Our first day in California was spent acquiring the proper guidebook and then heading off for a warm-up on the grade III Chilli bar section of the South Fork of the American. All of my fears were confirmed when I returned from the shuttle to find one of the group attempting to cartwheel his Gus (possibly the biggest creeker known to man) and only just failing, apparently he sold his Huck when he learned to flatwater cartwheel it. By the end of the river which would scare most British grade III boaters to death we were sure that these guys were not all talk.
In search of some steep creeks we headed up towards the Yuba where two tributaries are meant to be like the Lyn and Plym, good quality steep creeks. Unfortunately when we got there we discovered they were dry. The local boaters advised us to head upstream on the Yuba for some quality grade IV+/V action. Me and Alex declined and headed for the mellow grade III(IV) section downstream. The South Fork of the Yuba beckoned on the next day, this is a river of three sections, the first is grade IV, then a V+ and then a long section of V. We opted to start on the IV and see where it took us. It turned out that it was fantastic pool drop grade IV. The original plan was to get off at the end of the grade IV and decamp to the grade V section for those who fancied it. However, once in kit and on the river three of the party decided to carry on to run the grade V+ section, by the time they reached the end it was starting to get dark and they were exhausted.
The local paddle bums we met advised us that the Kaweah was running at a good level and that the place to be was the grade V+ Hospital rock section of the Middle Kaweah. When we got there it was clear that rivers are not graded V+ lightly in America and nobody really fancied it. After a long debate the grade IV Lower Middle Kaweah was ruled out as too easy so the grade V Lower North Kaweah was selected, by this time it was late, fortunately the run was short. On the first big rapid we had a portage and a swim and on the next boulder garden another portage and a loss of communication in the group. Alex and Adam decided to walk out and after a quick group huddle we decided it was best to stick together and we walked off up a near vertical bank, a first for me. After the failure on the lower we were stuck with what to do the next day. The obvious choice was the Upper North Kaweah described as granite nirvana in the guidebook. Alex was not keen so we agreed that we would get up early and me and the others would run the Upper North Kaweah and then me and Alex would run the Lower Middle Kaweah. The Upper North Kaweah is only 4 miles long, the only snag is that you have to carry your boat 4 miles over the hills to get to it. The walk was exhausting and took nearly two hours. Once on the river it was clear the guidebook hadn’t lied the river was amazing with numerous granite slides and bedrock drops. The only low point was reaching a drop and being too tired to carry round I ran it and ended up in a walled in stopper, the resulting swim was more annoying than painful being only 10m in deep water. By the time we got off I was exhausted and we’d been on the river 6 hours, there was no chance of a second run. The others headed off to the kayak festival on the Kern but me and Alex had a date with the lower middle Kaweah. This was a river that required all the skills we have developed during years of paddling in the UK as the entire bank was surrounded by barbed wire and no trespassing signs. We executed a stealth get on but once on the water everyone we saw was friendly.
Having ticked off the Kaweah we too headed down to the Kern hoping to do Brush Creek and maybe the infamous Dry Meadow creek. When we got there we discovered Brush Creek was running at twice the recommended flows and the others had found it taxing. As for Dry Meadow creek it is apparently silted up, to make matters worse the classic Forks of the Kern section was still under snow. With this news me and Alex decided to spend a couple of days knocking off the grade III+/IV sections of the Kern that run by the main road relying on the locals for shuttles. The best run was the wonderfully named Thunderbird run that starts at the campsite bearing that name and ends in Kernville. The others meanwhile headed off to run another grade V creek.
Once we’d done all there was on the Kern we headed north to Yosemite. The first stop was the Merced which runs through a grade V mini gorge out of Yosemite. Once you’ve left Yosemite you can choose where to get on depending how hard you want the trip to be, we opted for the grade IV section. As we got off it started to rain and the various people who stopped to talk to us while we walked the shuttle told us it was snowing in Yosemite. We headed into the park for a little Japanese hiking and had to stay longer than intended as the road out was closed due to an accident and snow. When we did eventually leave it was late and camping spots were hard to find.
The only river left on our tick list was the Lower Tuolumne, this is an 18 mile grade IV classic that is normally done over two days but can be packed into a single long day. By the time we found the get in it was too late to start a one day mission. The get in was down a five mile dirt track that took nearly an hour to descend. Once there it was clear this was a remote run on a high volume (90 cumec) river. We weren’t sure about the full trip with just two of us so decided to test ourselves on the first 4 rapids then hike back to the van with our boats. Mission accomplished we headed back to the town to ring the local shuttle company and set up for a full run the next day. As luck would have it as I was on the internet the other group sailed past in the van. Once we met up it was clear we’d had the best of the boating since parting they’d managed an abortive attempt at a river and one impressive waterfall. We decided to join forces for the next days paddle and spent 3 hours running the shuttle before settling down by the get in. When morning arrived it became clear there would only be four of us on the river. Knowing how long the scouting would take and the distance we had to cover we gave an ETA of 6 hours at the get out, in fact it took a little under this. The run itself was fantastic offering numerous grade IV rapids in an isolated valley and because we were early in the season the long paddle on the lake was actually very short and as a bonus we got an extra rapid.
The last boating day was spent on a 3 mile stretch of the Mokolumne a cracking little grade IV river with a great 100m section of solid grade IV at the end that would have been enough action for an entire river in Britain. With the boating done all that was required was to dry as much kit as we could and head back to San Francisco for some sightseeing.
So out of 14 days in California I’d boated on 12 of them but only managed one day on the granite slabs and drops that the state is so famous for partly because we were there too early and partly because in America when they say grade V they mean it. If you want somewhere with bags of good rivers and don’t mind a bit of driving then it’s a great place.
Richard Puttock