Last week I was stoked to get on two of my favorite California rivers. First up was a trip to the East Fork of the Kaweah with
rockstars Gareth Tate, Joe Ravenna and Nick Uruquart. We were worried
about the water level being too high, as it was obviously higher than
any of us had done it. After hours of debating-looking at the takeout,
looking at rapids from the road, looking at the bridge- we finally
decided to put on and it proved to be the right call. The water was
high, but manageable, and we had a great day working our way downstream.
The next morning Gareth and Nick had to head south to start some work, and Joe and I cruised north to Dinkey Creek.
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| Gareth Tate drops into Double Drop on the East Fork of the Kaweah |
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| Joe running the hourglass drop |
In my opinion, Dinkey Creek encompasses some of the best six miles of
kayaking you can find anywhere in the world. Yea, so maybe the hike in
isn't super fun, but hey at least its downhill. Once you actually get to
the river though, Dinkey is a playground for creek boaters, with more
waterfalls, big drops and slides then you know what to do with. I
have been fortunate enough to have been able to get on Dinkey every year
since I first started coming to California four years ago. This was my
fifth trip down the creek and it just keeps getting better.
We had a bit of a late start- partially because most of the
crew drove in from Sacramento that morning, but mostly because of a
directional mistake on my part. Whoops... thankfully our team was very
cool and didn't give me too hard of a time. We started the hike a little
after 3pm and didn't put on the river until a couple hours later. Good
thing our group of mostly Dinkey newbies weren't too concerned with
running some big rapids off of beta alone. We finally made it to camp right
around 8pm.
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| Joe's first glimpse of Dinkey |
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| Stephen Wright emerging from the manzanita |
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| Joe coming through the sieve rapid |
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| Joe firing off the biggest rapid of day one- Spike |
The next day was much more chill, and allowed for more time for scouting
and taking pictures. Everyone in our group did well and it was a
beautiful day full of tons of great rapids.
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| Darin McQuoid at a random boof |
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| Daniel Rucker at the S-turn rapid, one of my favorites on the run |
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| Stephen entering Anaconda |
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| Stephen on the left side of the Nicky Kelly Slide |
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| Darin going big through the Nicky Kelly slide |
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| Clay Wright bringing it home on the last big rapid of the run |
Not much else to say besides if you haven't gotten on this river yet, put it on your list and make it happen. Its pretty much perfect!
