Yuba Gap Big Kimshew Double Header

A few weeks ago I had one of my best weekends in Cali to date. I got to run what I would consider some of the best day runs California has to offer: Yuba Gap and Big Kimshew.

After having left the state for about two weeks to return to the Southeast for a work commitment, I was anxious to get back on the water. Fortunately, my first weekend back coincided with a release of Yuba Gap as well as the first few days of Big Kimshew for the season.

Yuba Gap was only releasing 200cfs which we were told was low but still good and worth doing for such a rarely gotten run. After having done it, I would completely agree with this assessment. While it wasn't the easiest day Ive ever had (because of the low water there were lots of extra portages) it was still one of my better days of kayaking in California. The rapids were big and challenging and lots of fun all at the same time.

A chill but cool rapid on Yuba Gap

After getting off Yuba Gap I was initially thinking there was must no way I could put on another class 5+ river the next day as I was totally worn down. But after a couple of beers on the drive back to get our cars, I quickly pepped up and realized being tired was no excuse for missing Big Kimshew, one of the more elusive runs in California. So with that it mind I followed the crew back to Chico for dinner and drinks and a plan to go into Kimshew the following morning.

I cannot say enough good things about that run. Its big (with two 40+ foot rapids), its clean (with no mandatory portages and only two commonly portaged rapids) and absolutely beautiful.

Me firing into Big Kimshew Falls (Photo by Darin McQuoid)

Jonas hitting his boof at the top of Big Kimshew Falls

Darin lining up for Frenchy's Forty

The South Branch of the Middle Feather

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to get on one of California’s best day runs, the South Branch of the Middle Feather. Anticipating a snowy and log filled road, we headed up a day early with a shovel and chain saw in hand to clear the way. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the forest service had brought in machinery and cleared the road for us. So instead, we drank cocktails riverside at one of the best camping spots I’ve ever had.

Camping at the put-in

Throughout the night, more and more people started showing up, and by the time I woke the next morning, our group had grown from four people to ten people, included in which were those who I will simply refer to as the Chattanooga Chargers. The level was also on the rise, but we decided to charge on anyways.

The run starts off mellow and slowly gets steeper and steeper. It goes from class 2, to class 3, to a 10 footer, to 15 footers, to 20 footers, to a 40 footer and finishes off with a beautiful 50 footer. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Darin McQuoid running the 10 footer which signals the beginning of the goods

Tim Collins stomping the first 20 footer

Meat the lip of the second 20 footer (Photo taken by Darin McQuoid)

Me at the first of the back to back 15's (Photo taken by Jonas Gruenewald)

Darin McQuoid at the second 15


Lunch time

I will say though that while each of the individual rapids on this run may not be super hard (but still class 5), the consequences to making a mistake are very much there and should not be taken lightly. There is one section in particular that starts off with a 20 footer that flows pretty directly into a marginal 40 footer (named 99 problems), which flows directly into a 15-20 foot drop that flows directly into a mandatory portage around a 100-foot waterfall. A mistake at any of these rapids could very quickly escalate into a fatal mistake (which one unnamed member of our group almost showed us when he ran 99 problems backwards, pitoned, got stuck in a hole, ran the next drop backwards and eddied out just before the portage).

Jakub Nemec soaring off the 20 footer just above 99 Problems

Will Pruett showing us how its done at 99 Problems

Me running the China drop, which is just below 99 Problems and just above the portage (Photo taken by Jonas Gruenewald)

After a not so quick portage around the large unrunnable waterfall, we did a sketchy seal launch and were on our way toward the 50 footer (it might be more like 40-45 but everyone else calls it 50 so I’m gonna go with that). Besides a few imploded skirts we all had good lines and celebrated our successful day relaxing at the lip of another big waterfall before beginning our steep and not so fun hike out.

Me approaching the lip of the 50 footer (Photo taken by Darn McQuoid)

Tim Collins on the charge!


Taking time to enjoy the scenery

Check out this video of the trip put together by Jakub Nemec

Dinkey Creek: The Spring Mission

Last week we ran Dinkey Creek. During the summer, this might not have been such an epic adventure but in the spring, when the roads are locked in by snow and the rivers are on the rise, running Dinkey creek can turn into a mission.

After attempting to drive Stephen Wright's van to the trail head of the standard hike in, we quickly realized that the snow would simply not allow that to happen. After pushing the van up a few hills and out of a few ditches, we finally decided that it was simply not going to happen. So from there part of the group decided to start hiking. We knew we had somewhere between 5 and 15 miles to go until we reached the trail head, and chose to commit to walking there.

The team using our paddles to dig the van out of a ditch

Dragging our boats through the snow up the road

Will Pruett charging!!!

After seven or so hours of hiking about ten miles of road, we eventually we made it to the standard trail head and started working our way down the two mile trail to the river. We were tired and sore and way over carrying our boats, but we still managed to take some time to enjoy the scenery on the hike down.

Dinkey Creek!

A tributary on the hike in

Right around dusk we finally made it down to the put in of the river. We decided to set up camp there and rest up to charge the entire river the next day. Dinkey Creek is generally paddled as an overnight, but because of our late start, we would have to paddle the entire river in one day. It was awesome.

Taylor Fearrington at the Willie Kern slide

Taylor taking a moment below a big rapid under the rainbow

Me at the bottom drop of Spike

Drew Duval entering one of many big rapids

Beautiful scenery on the Dinkey Creek

Taylor going for it on a classic Dinkey rapid

Me running the bottom 20 footer

Drew in the middle of the Nikki Kelly Slide

Me entering into the meat of the Nikki Kelly Slide

Our group hiking around the water blasting out of the dam

Was it worth the hike? Hell yea!!!!

Mexico 2009 Video

Mexico 2009

California 2009 Video

With California creeking season on its way once again, I thought I would share this video recently put together from our 2009 trip. Most of the footage is from Dinkey Creek, South Merced and West Cherry. Enjoy!

Adventuras en Mexico

Gareth and our fearless guide Fernando

Last month Gareth and I decided it was time to get out of the cold weather of Western NC and head south to the land of cheap tacos, warm weather and big waterfalls. We had heard nothing, but great things about Mexico (besides people scaring us about the border) and were excited to check it out for ourselves. After the long drive down to Southern Texas we decided to spend our last night stateside camped out on the beautiful beaches of South Padre.

Finding our campsite on South Padre Island, TX

After almost being arrested at the US border (Gareth decided it would be fun to set up the video camera to tape our border crossing which as it turns out is a federal offense and resulted in us being frisked, searched and the video camera almost being confiscated), we drove straight to the Micos River, outside of Valles City. The Micos is only a class 3-4 river, but totally worth doing for the fun factor of running lots of low stress waterfalls in one of the most beautiful places Ive ever seen.

After playing around in the crystal clear waters of the Micos, we headed to the Salto River, which turned out to be another one of those magical places. Lots of fun drops, super clean and super scenic. Unfortunately it is also the place where my camera stopped working. That said, the rest of the pictures from the trip are not great quality, but at least you'll get the idea...

Me at the put-in below the 60 footer on the Micos

Classic Micos Scenery

Me boofing a classic Micos drop

Gareth on the Micos

Playing behind the waterfalls of the Micos

Having a beer at the takeout of the Salto

After getting off of the Salto (and a quick stop at a sweet Taco stand), we hit the road for the town of Tlapacoyan, the launching point for running the Alseseca River. We spent two days exploring the Road-side section of the Alseseca and had a blast. The river is dirty, like the dirtiest river I have ever seen, and while that was hard to get past, the rapids definitely made up for it. There were lots of lots of clean fun drops, including one especially big rapid called "S-turn" which involves a 15 or so foot drop into a really narrow canyon. I actually decided to walk it on first inspection, but after watching Gareth fire into it it looked so much fun I carried my boat back up and fired it up!

On a whim we decided to leave Tlapacoyan before having paddled all the rivers we wanted to there in an effort to try and catch up with some other Southeast boater friends. We headed five hours South down the coast to the Rio de Oro, a run we'd heard nothing but great things about.

Gareth on the drop above "S-Turn" of the Roadside Alseseca


Gareth and Jon running "S-Turn"

A typical morning on the Costa de Oro

After camping out near the beach, we woke up early to start figuring out how we were going to get on the Oro. We knew absolutely nothing about the run besides that it had some sweet waterfalls and finished in the ocean. The only beta that we had was from a website that said to drive to this little town and ask for Pepito and that he'd show you the way to the river. At this point we hadn't found our other friends, but just knew that there was some chance they'd be there that day. After about 2 hours of cruising around the tiny town of Arroyo de Lisa, we found Pepito's parents, who took us to Pepito, we then took us to his brother Fernando, who fed us a breakfast of shrimp at his restaurant on the beach and then finally we were off to the river. We didn't fully understand what was going on, but Fernando was wearing flip flops and carrying repelling gear telling us we was going to come down the river with us.

As we were about to the start of the hike in, we heard someone honking at us and looked behind to see a truck loaded down with boats and our friends Toby, JJ, Ben and John as well as their friend Rocky. So as one big team we headed to the river with Fernando by our side.

After about a 45 minute hike in we arrived at the river. The first move of the day involved ferrying across the river above a 50 foot waterfall that has yet to be run.

Gareth checking out the waterfall at the put-in

Our man Fernando

The Rio de Oro turned out to be nothing short of spectacular. After a couple miles of beautiful, clean class 4-5 gorges the river drops off the first 30 foot waterfall. We all fired off it with reasonably good lines (I got a little worked and ended up behind the veil which was a bit scary for a moment) and headed downstream. None of us really knew what to expect, so imagine our surprise when after paddling for only a few hundred yards in a totally walled in gorge we came to our next horizon line. We were at the second clean 30-footer of the run. I was a little nervous because of my mediocre line at the first waterfall, so I took that opportunity to have a little "How to Run a 30-Footer" lesson with Toby Macdermott. Turns out he knows what he's talking about. I stuck my line beautifully.

Toby at one of the drops before the waterfall gorge

Me running the first 30-footer

Toby showing us how its done on the first 30-footer

Gareth below the second 30-footer

Besides being really clean, extremely beautiful and having two clean 30-footers on it, the next coolest thing about the Rio de Oro is that it finishes in ocean. So after finishing our run we all spent some time surfing it up in the ocean waves. Then it was time to celebrate an amazing day with fish tacos and beer on the beach. We finished off the night with a bottle of tequila camped out on the beach. Best day in Mexico ever.

The next day Toby, Gareth, John and I got up early for a sunrise lap on the Oro. It was just too good to do just once.

Gareth surfing it up on the coast

Beers and Tacos on beach

Paddling back to our campsite after our morning run of the Oro

From here the story gets less exciting... Rocky was writing a guide book and needed to do some exploratory runs. So as a group we decided to follow him along on his adventures. We basically drove all around, ran a couple class 3-4 rivers, portaged a 150 footer and then decided to drive even farther to do a multi-day on the Rio de Cajones.

It was on the second day of the Rio de Cajones that I fell while scouting a rapid and broke my hand. I grabbed a log that fell, and I fell with it, right on the backside of my left hand. I knew that it wasn't good, but at the time I wasn't thinking it was actually broken. I suffered through a few more miles of Class 4 just ruddering my way down rapids and doing my best to make it to the first bridge where I could take out. When we finally arrived at the bridge most of us decided to take out. John and I hitchhiked the shuttle back to the put in while Gareth and JJ hung out with our gear at the bridge.

Ben loading up at one of the put-ins

A local boy hanging out with us at a put-in

John waiting for a ride while hitchhiking the shuttle

A view from the back of a pick up truck on one of our rides on the Rio de Cajones shuttle

A tarantula we saw while shuttling

Once we got back to civilization after way too may hours of driving from the Rio de Cajones I got my hand x-rayed and confirmed that I fractured my index metacarpal. That was the end of paddling in Mexico for me... I spent the rest of the trip running shuttle, drinking and practicing my Spanish.

Our Mexican Thanksgiving

After about three weeks in Mexico Gareth and I were both running out of money, and with my hand broken we decided it was time to high tail it home (after a night of fresh seafood and drinking on Bourbon Street in New Orleans of course).

And in case you're wondering, I have one more week in a cast (and one week after that of "being careful") and my hand will be back in action and on the river again!