The Kaweah's

California is doing some crazy things with its weather this summer...mostly just huge changes in temperature and precipitation. This has caused for hard windows in the runnable levels of the rivers that we want to get on. After some good times in the Northern Sierras we saw that the levels were looking perfect for some of the steep tributaries of the Kaweah. Mostly the East Fork, which is one of the best steep granite stashes in the State. So with a nice crew of paddlers I headed down to the old Hideaway Campground for a Memorial day weekend of shit running and good times. The flows were between 1350-1150 @ Three Rivers making for some juicy flows on the classic runs of the area. Celebrating Canadce's birthday we went up to the National Park as well where we ran some cool slides on the Upper Middle Kaweah and checked out the sights... including the Keebler Elv's house, and a cool young brown bear off the side of the road. All in all the Kaweah is a always a good time with great weather and brown runnings. Enjoy some of the shots from our short time down there.

A Go Pro freeze frame of the big Triple Drop on the East Fork. This rapid gets very large and scary at high flows like this.

Eric Boosting through a big seem on the South fork of the T. It was kind of a failed day, but we had fun and go to go kayaking.

I would have to say that it is almost never a good idea to run something at the same time as someone else... I still have to stick with that. Sick picture though!

I have wanted to run this mank piece of shit of sometime now...Skyhook is one of the dirty drops on the East Fork that pretty much never gets run. Only when you feel like you can take a hit.

This drop has got to be one of the best slides you can run...It is called Chuck's Drop after Chuck Kern who got the first Descent in 1997, I believe. Anyway this is a huge twisting slide that goes through a very scenic box gorge.

This is a good friend from Bozeman MT...young ripper Eric Johnson running the Big slide with me...there was like 6 of us who ran it I just didn't want to toss up all the photos.

When in Rome...if you are in the Kaweah land you have to go visit the Sequoia national park.

Taking a huge stroke on the drop after Chuck's to clear a diagonal hole.

Here is a shot of me and my new dog Gringo. He is from Fresno and is only 8 weeks old...he's a stout master!

This drop is called "0-60" because you start on a shallow slide and then hit all the flow and blast off the cool falls to avoid a nasty cave on the right. Hospital rock is great fun at these flows.

So after some good times at the campground and plenty of sun bathing it was time to move on back north to get on some more goods around the state. This place is huge!!!!! If you compare the amount of driving to any other place in the country you would stay away from Cali...but you just can't do that!

Later E.G.