California whitewater rafting with one of the oldest rafting companies in the Western United States. California rafting on the most popular rivers in the West. Our official company blog...
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Middle Fork American is a river near Auburn just northeast of Sacramento, California. One of the prettiest rivers in our whitewater arsenal, we expect that we can raft the river every year. This year, our season will have some restrictions on some days throughout our calendar.
What this means in such a drastically low water year, is that we will be rafting this river. Why are we able to have water when the entire state is so dry? Well, there's this thingy called the FERC. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulates the flow for energy contracts to allow this river to have water in our 2015 season.
When the powers to be announced 7-day flow way back in January, I wondered. Then they said it again in February. I knew it couldn't be true. How? How can they allow everyday water when there was no snow pack or rain?
Now we just received an email giving us the schedule for Middle Fork American River flows.
MF FLOW DATES: all weekends plus more!
MAY: Memorial Day weekend;
sat, sun, mon, sat, sun for rest of month
Ahhh, the kids from WET River Trips are at it again. The first commercial trips follow the celebratory Smith trip with the launch of early season rafting trips in Northern California. This weekend on March 6th, the crew will be on commercial river trips on the North Fork American River just three hours from San Francisco and one hour from Sacramento. 2010 Season is here!
The story below just came in from the support crew for the whitewater trip they just did up north. Big Poppah holds the reins on the kids while the infamous guides take their first bite of 2010 whitewater rafting.
What I can't figure out is why they still listen to Wolfe's driving directions. Haven't they learned that the Wolf path is always the most extreme? LOL!
The whitewater team from WET River Trips has pulled off a stellar, early-season Spring Rafting trip in Northern California. We just celebrated the launch of the 2010 Rafting Season on three Forks of the Smith and Cal Salmon River on Class 4 to 5 whitewater in world class wilderness scenery with internationally known river guides on a private, non-commercial rafting trip a couple of weeks ago during Valentine's weekend.
Day 1:
We met and loaded up at the Lotus warehouse at 5 pm. Wolf, Justin, Jon, and Alex H. were ready and had everything laid out for the river trip as I arrived with the Dodge.
As usual, we packed heavy (you never know) with 2 rafts, 1 kayak, and a mountain of camp and personal gear. 5:30 and we were on the road to Jedidiah Smith Redwoods. After years of driving up I-5 to 299 and then to 101, we took the advice of Google Maps, and we went straight up I-5 to Grants Pass to 199 (Redwood Hwy) and back down into California (about 400 miles but less curvy and potentially safer). We pulled into Jedidiah at 2 am with a light rain and found our soon-to-be notorious site #41 as we rigged tarps and tents for a quick bivouac.
On the drive up, we conferred with Heffe currently living in the Pacific Northwest and arranged to meet up in our camp in the morning. I got up fairly early around 7 am and made coffee and breakfast. The crew woke to hot coffee and breakfast burritos to start off the day. As we geared up for the North Smith, Heffe arrived shortly after, and we packed the Dodge as we prepped for the North Fork.
Heading out, the rain stopped, and we were pleased to see partially sunny skies and drying roads for the shuttle in to the remote drainage of the North Fork Smith River. The drive in consisted of traversing a landscape that changed from Redwood groves to meadows to blank hills, and back again. Apparently the geology of the North Fork Drainage allows for deposits of copper and other minerals and the varying soils have provided an amazing variety of vegetation.
The previous rains had saturated the ground to such an extent that every hillside was cascading fresh runoff from the Coastal Range into the Smith River Drainage. A good day coming up! The remote put-in was “improved” with a toilet, changing areas, and a flat rock beach to drop off gear (thank you California Boating and Waterways!) Quite a crazy luxury for a river with a small season and in a remote location on a dirt road …very nice!
It was decided to take one raft (Justin, Alex H., & Jon) and two kayaks (Heffe & Wolf). We estimated the flow to be about 2,000 CFS. The trip was ready to put-in at 11:30 am, and I asked Wolf (the only one of us that had run the North Fork) how to get to the takeout in Gasquet on Hwy 199. He gave me the directions to head east over the bridge at put-in and then continue to a fork in the road where I would turn right and drop out of the canyon and then to 199. (sounded reasonable and plausible).
The boats pulled away from shore and I headed out on “Wolf’s Way” and at first the road seemed good with evidence of recent tracks in the wet surface and the ruts were “passable." That soon changed as the road turned into a trail littered with fallen trees and rock slides, but I had faith.
That faith took me into terrain worthy of the Rubicon Trail, and I made use of my low-range 4WD and my abilty to wedge large rocks off of the trail and to drag small trees to the edge of the canyon. After having to back-up a single track trail “trail” for over ¾’s of a mile, I tried my Verizon GPS …it worked! After spending over an hour in the middle of nowhere and feeling like a member of the Donner Party (albeit equipped with a 4wd Dodge truck), I had hope in technology as I headed back to a new trail spur that was only (by GPS) 8 miles to Gasquet!
The new road started out with promise (it was passable) and I got to within 6.8 mi of Gasquet when the road disappeared into 3 foot ruts, large rocks, large fallen trees, extreme mud and loose rock, I called it quits, turned around, back-tracked and found myself back in Gasquet at the pre-determined meeting spot (confluence of the North and Middle Forks) at 2:45.
Wolf was waiting on the road with a giant grin from running the North Fork Smith at what became over 3,600 cfs in flow (epic good flow) without any incidents and a crew that was ready to paddle the Middle Fork of the Smith through Oregon Hole. After listening to my “opinion” related to Wolf’s directions, a substantial lunch began with fantastic stories about waterfalls, caverns, primeval forests, and carnivorous Pitcher plants or its botanical name, Darlingtonia Californicus, and some awesome, continuous class 3 and 4 rapids, the crew headed out to finish the run through Oregon Hole and the Middle Gorge of the Middle Fork of the Smith River.
The Oregon Hole section is visible from the road (Hwy 199) and the crew attracted a crowd of touristas trying see what was going on at the river side as the crew scouted what they could. Every boat came through without a problem except for Wolf who submarined against a huge undercut and yet remained bolt upright in his kayak with only the top of his helmet still visable. Big fun… and I smiled broadly knowing that Wolf had experienced a “moment” that I could relate to clearly.
Take-out was at Myrtle Beach and only about 2 miles from camp. Camp was great; big meal, good stories, Alex H. on guitar, and no rain... or so we thought. Around 3 am, a light rain started and then the skies opened up at 4 am flooding our camp with over 3 inches of standing water. We were completely soaked. No worries, we headed off to the Hiouchi Café where we had a nice hot, dry, and substantial breakfast.
While waiting for our food, Paul Gamache rolled up with a friend and we exchanged info about the North Fork (he was leading a trip from CSU Humboldt’s outdoor program down the North Fork after our trip put-in). It was great to see him and catch up; but, as he left something was not quite right. As he got into his car right outside our window, he was laughing harder than he had a right to... damn... we soon found out why. He had reached up to our inflated raft and pushed in a valve and fully deflated a tube. Yuk, yuk. Little does he know what we did …it’s on! Written by : Big Poppah Resources: Smith River Alliance, California Whitewater Rafting
Part 2 continues next week! Bookmark this blog http://raftwetblog.blogspot.com
First W.E.T. River Trips starts March 6, 2010 this Saturday! We will be on the North Fork American and/or South Fork American. Days have been intermittent rain, big fat fluffy white clouds and blue skies. Looks like spring is here!
Mid- September is here and most of you are settling into the early fall season. This is my favorite time of the year in California. Mild weather (only 80 degrees!) and beautiful sunny skies remind us of how lucky we are out here on the west coast.
California... the Spanish name resonates with the history of gold rush towns and the wild, wild west. Yes, it is an expensive place to live. The trade-offs are many. Crowded cities with lots of traffic, homes that cost a half a million for just a basic 3-bedroom, 2-car garage house. For a newcomer, California can be overwhelming with multiple cultures and languages. The diversity here is rich.
We have every food from every place on the planet. Celebrations mark the calendar from every country. There is not a weekend that goes by that somewhere in California, someone is celebrating their own culture or national pride.
We celebrate daily on the river with our international guests. Predominately Asian, Eastern Indian, Middle Eastern, European, Mexican, Australian and South American, the guests come to play on the river with us.
We share the same love of the natural settings on the river. Some of their cultures love the river with a status of god-like reverance. We share that with them as we paddle whitewater rivers. We all love rafting! And that's a unifier no matter where you come from. Come share the river with us on the South Fork American or Middle Fork American... we will be American River rafting in California until Oct 4th.
The music scene is really hopping... like bunnies. Big fat bunnies. Big fat fluffy bunnies. DanDan wrote this little ditty a bit a go ... and the kool team is up in Portland with Mayyors and the Ganglians at the Portland Music Festival... wonder how it's going...
"I went to the Vox Gallery the other night and saw Wolf Eyes. It was loud! Wolf Eyes is a noise band from Detroit, Michigan, USA who has released well over 500 things on various labels with the main one being American Tapes. Other bands that are lumped into the same category or genre of music are Yellow Swans, Axolotl, Hair Police and Black Dice.
Afterwards, I went to my friends house. Their names are Daniel, Kandice, Tony, Kyle, Alex, Teddy and Alexa. They all love music and they play it all day on all 3 levels of the house. (Notes: the poor neighbors...) some really great bands jammin' under one roof such as Pregnant and What's Up.
They are making music that is so innovative that it goes beyond genres and classifications and into a whole new world of laptop-lullaby-psychedelic-blissed-out-sphinx-on-a-surfboard-style jams of eternal mind, body and soul. Pregnant just released an album on Lost Lamp Records called Beautiful Moon.
ONE TIME, at the same house, I saw a great show. It was Psychedelic Horseshit from Silt Breeze label and Fabulous Diamonds and Ganglians and Mom. It was so bone dog! bone dog! This show was the sloppiest of all hippie punk; slurred vocals through break, through a window of cheap beer and too much hair.
Old dudes in short shorts with shorter songs... handing out free 7" records and nobody even wants them. On the other hand, Ganglians rip a jankle pop-style and use reverb to the max. It is about as pretty as MOM's chicken feet throwing while smashing a raw egg on your face and singing through an Alvin and the Chipmunks style vocal effect to old 60's surf dance and kids songs mania. Whew!
Pschedelic Horseshit are from Ohio, I think. Check it out on Silt Breeze label, because if you don't you are a fool and you will never get to hear this band in the good early stages before they sell out and start opening up for death cab for cutie. Fabulous Diamonds are cool tooo. Check them out. They make music for rainy days in my opinion, at least, and I once heard someone label them as goth. I'm not too sure what that means, I always thought that goths liked minimal techno. Hehe.
At this very moment, I am at the house that I have been talking about this whole time. I am using Kyle's (from the Ganglians) computer to type this shiz.
I AM BLIND I AM TIRED (tired... I am the definition of tired, dude!)
ALEX JUST PUT JENS LEKMAN ON THE HOUSE STEREO REALLY LOUD, IT IS FUNNY.
Death Sentence Panda are f*ing vicious female-fronted radness. They are going to be playing a show in Sacramento with Sactowns own Mayyors, Sucks and the newest all-girl band on the scene, FATTY ACID featuring every girl that I know including my girlfriend on drums. They are a super punk puzzy dance with no breaks and no practice. They sound great, and it makes me feel like a wussy." DanDan WhiteLite ~~
The Tahoe Paddle Fest is coming on August 1st - 2nd! This free festival encourages children, teens and adults to participate in healthy, sustainable outdoor activities and paddling sports. The Tahoe area is home of Washoe Tribe of California and Nevada, an indigenous people from this locale. The Washoe Tribe is an event sponsor of this fun festival.
This first annual paddle event will highlight non-motorized watercraft with a nod to the indigenous water craft that might have graced beautiful Lake Tahoe long ago. Watercraft from indigenous cultures to modern times will include dugout canoes, standup surf paddling and outrigger boats. Racing these crafts will be another highlight to the weekend.
Tom "Pohaku" Stone, University of Hawaii professor who is an authority on Hawaiian surfboards and outrigger canoes will also serve as a keynote speaker.
Promotion of safe boating and the importance of checking for the invasive mussels that could destroy Tahoe's sensitive ecosystem will also be encouraged. Tahoe Basin and Educational partners are providing free demos or educational outreach for this event.
Tahoe Paddle Fest is located close to several paddling rivers including the world famous American River trips. Both California whitewater trips on South Fork American and Middle Fork American are within 1.5 hours from the Tahoe area. Close enough to paddle the white water river while enjoying the displays and exhibits from the festival.
Contact Tahoe Paddle Fest for more info or call them directly at 530.318.7599 to reserve sponsorships or exhibitor booths.
See you on the water!
Thank you to Tahoe Paddle Fest for this summer update! Thank you to Ecomentum Green Marketing for cool surf pic of Prof Stone!
