Sunday, April 09, 2006

Visalia, California


Hey yall,
I have been in Visalia the last 2 weeks doing some creek boating. It has been raining non-stop the whole time making some of the classics like Hospital Rock and The Tule unrunnable so we had to find other runs to do.
The first week the Kaweah was running between 2000 to 6000 csf. (much too high for the upper) We spent a few days running the lower which was easy and quite boring. There were 2 swimmers out of a big hole backed up by a undercut, but I'm with WCKA so what do you expect. This got old fast so we moved on to the North fork of the Kaweah.
The lower north fork was the first run we did. It was a easy creek with some fun slides and boofs. The portage "Cherry Falls" is a 20 footer give or take a bit. The first day the river was reading 2 feet on the bridge and I was shut down on running the falls due to the "teacher must run first" policy. None-the-less it was a fun day.
After 2 rejections on the upper north fork due to flows and trail conditions (or when you get on the wrong trail because Polk tells you it's a short cut and you hike 12 miles with a creek boat and do no kayaking the entire day) anyways after 2 tries on the upper we gave in to another lower run. This time reading the gauge at 3.1 feet we did a high water decent of the flooded river. The run became a entirely different and much more fun. The portage looked good so Orion, Polk, and I fired it up all launching big boofs in to the seam at the base of the falls going deep and popping up stoked.
I'm leaving visalia tomorrow and heading for the feathers, yubas, and americans. There will be plenty more updates coming out soon. Peace E.G.

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