On Saturday, Kim’s Mom and Grandma threw us a really nice engagement party, in a traditional Chinese style. With mostly Kim’s extended family attending, my friends and I showed up, in pouring rain, bearing trays of foods and gifts. After the door was opened, Kim’s Mom asked me a few questions (Do I love Kim? Will I take care of her forever? ) and then allowed my friends (standing in for family), in the door. The platters of gifts were presented, and then special engagement candles were lit. Kim’s mom, …

This time of year can be a little tough for boaters. All the spring and summer run off is mostly gone, and the winter storms haven’t shown up yet. Rivers are low and we start looking hard. I’d not heard much about Clear Creek, near Mt. Shasta in Northern California, just that it was fun and worked well even at low flows. The gauge was only 200 CFS, but school has been busy and I needed to get on the river. I sent out the “so, anyone paddling sat?” email …

SF of Silver Creek is most well known for it’s more difficult upper reaches, but below Icehouse resevoir, there is a gorgeous, fun dramatic Class IV. With an average gradient of 70 feet per mile, several class IV rapids and literally miles of continuos Class III rapids through dramatic scenery, this should be a popular run, but hardly anyone has ever paddled it. It’s been choked by the dam upstream, and the stream bed is normally just a trickle. Last spring, rumours of water being released led a group of …

Hilde was putting together a Grand Canyon trip. She guides for Outdoors Unlimited, and the trip would be a commercial trip run by them, but she was putting together a trip of mostly Northern California boaters, sort of a special trip. Kayaking the Grand Canyon has long been a dream of mine, on my list of things to do in my life. Private permits are tough to get and put together, and commercial trips are expensive and mostly done on rafts, so it hadn’t happened yet. To have a commercial …

The Cherry Creek run on the Toulumne has a well deserved reputation for being difficult. It is the hardest run in CA that is run by by commercial raft companies. Landon Lipke, manager of River Store in Lotus, CA, calls it the Class V proving grounds.
I’ve been paddling a lot the last few seasons, working my way up through harder runs. I was nervous about Cherry Creek, but felt strong, and I was excited to catch it on the last weekend they were going to be releasing water.
I headed up …

Last July, Kim and I paddled a two person kayak down the Gorge, a class III run on the South Fork American – I just got a copy of some photos. There are some pretty good ones, it’s worth clicking all the way through.

We’d planned on running South Silver Creek, not the famous section, but a lesser known section below Icehouse Resevoir. Unfortunately upon arrival, we noticed a distinct lack of water. Thinking quickly, we decided to salvage our day and run something on the nearby South Fork American. Some of our group were not comfortable with running Kyburz, so we settled on Riverton to Peavine. This si a fun section, nothing earth shattering, but good paddling and nice scenery. Certainly a viable alternative for a small step up from Chili bar or …

I’ve been wanting to get on Giant Gap for awhile, although I admit I was a bit intimidated by it’s reputation. but I’ve been paddlign tons, and feeling pretty solid in the kayak. This weekend flows were getting into a decent range, on the high side for a “first run” from what I’d been told, but well below the “That’d be suicide” levels it’s been at. So I was fishing around for something to paddle Saturday, and Albert and I settled on Giant Gap. I drove to his house, we …

On my friend Oliver’s site:

My friend Albert and I had decided to go boating. Many of the rivers in Ca are off the charts with high water right now, but Albert suggestion the Middle fork of the Yuba. The MF of the Yuba is sadly choked with dams and diversions, so it only runs when the flows are super high, high enough for the water to spill over the dam. The section we ran today rarely has enough water to run, but it looked good to go, in the 1200-1400 CFS range.
Knowing this was …