I suppose this is long out of order from my travels this summer but I just came across an SD card with all the shots from my trip down Westwater Canyon. It’s crazy that I’ve lived only 3 hours away from this beautiful place most of my life and never took advantage and hopped on a trip until this year. It was the perfect way to wind down after the crazy excitement of the Outdoor Retailer show where we launched the new Liquidlogic Stomper and all the other great products with Legacy Paddlesports. I was pumped to meet up with my good friends from First Descents and share some sun, beers, and good times in the canyon. I mean, truly, that’s what this sport is about. As much as it feels good to push yourself, and seek challenging whitewater. It’s the times spent with your friends on the river that really makes you keep coming back for more.

Canyon entrance

We rolled up the night before launch and set up the rafts. Unfortunately, one of the groups with a raft wasn’t able to make it at the last minute so space on our two rafts was very limited. I decided I’d just roll self support style keeping more space in the rafts for the important stuff like food and beer. I moved my seat forward just a little and had plenty of space for my two watershed futa-floats, 70′ speedloader throwbag and camera gear. My bags held my sleeping bag, pad, jetboil stove, and change of clothes. The Freeride 57 still rode awesome and I was stoked to have it as we set up camp at Little Dolores and Jason, Matt, Angie, and I had an awesome surf session until the sun went down that evening.

It was an awesome trip with great friends. Here are some shots from the weekend.

Loaded up Freeride

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Scouting Skull

Matt going for a deep line

Peta guiding smoothly

Even Brianne, a total hater of all things Brown Claw and fun was caught enjoying herself.

Camp

Freeriding

Flotilla on the flatwater cruise out… Good times

Alright, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in civilization long enough to get caught up on all the photographs from California this year. It was a crazy season to be in CA, especially for a freshman like myself. Dinky Creek is a trip I will remember forever. You gotta work these days to truly remove yourself from the everyday life and crowds of people; Dinky was just that kind of trip. After finding our way to Balch camp in the evening we met up with some crews from a run that day and were stoked to hear of a great medium high flow. Dinky Creek is known for having some ultra clean drops, beautiful surroundings and as much challenge as you wanna bite off.

Our shuttle in the morning involved loading up the van full with people and heading up one of the slowest windy roads I’ve been on following the rim of the North Kings River. Being in the back seat of my van is the perfect car sickness machine so riding for a 2.5 hour shuttle back there was no easy task. Luckily, there were an abundance of great overlooks to check out along the way.

We loaded our boats for the two day mission and prepared ourselves to head in for battle with the manzanita bushes on the hike down to the river. The trail was pretty easy to follow, and keeping your helmet on to push through was definitely a good choice. Here is a shot from the first overlook and a quick break from the bushes.

Adrienne, being short, definitely had an advantage ducking and diving.

At the get in, eating some food and getting ready.

The first 3rd of Dinky Creek starts off with some really great bouncy slides with big pools waiting for you at the bottom. No warm-up necessary after the hike, so show up and start riding. Scouting is easy but one of the first lessons I learned is make sure you’ve got some good rubber on your feet. Walking around on slippery granite can be class V alone if your shoes can’t hold on. Here are some shots of Adrienne and Toby McDermot on the opening slides.

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After the opening slides you’re fired up just in time for Willie Kerns. A really fun almost-vertical drop, to slide, to hole, to sloping 30ish footer. It’s nicely gorged in and has the opportunity to offer all kinds of lines. Our group showed, as long as you’re lined up by the bottom, you should finish in good style at the bottom. Here is Geoff Calhoun leading the charge on the first drop.

He momentarily eddied out, then lined it back up for the grand finally. Here he is at the lip of Willie Kerns proper.

Adrienne also lined up for some Willie Kerns fun. (The Willie Kern name comes from the legendary paddler breaking both his ankles with a bad landing off one of the edges.)

From Willies drop down the river tightens up and falls down deeper into a committing canyon. The drops become bigger, consequences higher, and reasons to have the best people you can possibly bring in with you become obvious. There are some tricky portages too. The most challenging portage offers two options. Toss your gear from high and make a good size leap into the pool below. This option holds a fair bit of risk especially at the higher flows. Our group opted for the slightly more laborious but definitely safer option of lowering yourself and gear to a ledge below and helping each other seal-launch a more manageable distance. With this option only the last person has to throw-and-go; I highly recommend this safer option. Here is Adrienne and Geoff lowering down off my Speedloader 70 throwbag. The drop directly below the portage is a must scout, pick a good line as consequences for missing your line here are also high.

From the main portage down it cleans back up again with more awesome slides, boofs, and ultra classic moves. We made our way through “breakfast slide” just as the sun was coming down making for some awesome lighting and great shots. Here is Toby and Adrienne showing us how it’s done.

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A few drops down from breakfast slide we rolled up on two California locals and immediately could tell the scene wasn’t right. They had a rough day fighting with poison oak and battling out some really technical moves on the canyon walls due to losing gear on the main portage. They had opted for the throw-n-go from the high ledge and each of them lost their equipment through the rapid below. One of their boats was tied up in the rapid, unreachable, but luckily, the other members gear finally ended in the pool where we had met them, slightly damaged but for the most part, in usable shape. We decided to join in with them for the night and offer up whatever we could. We got a great fire going in a hole in the rock and exchanged stories from the days adventure.

Drying off the gear in a true veterans fashion.

Kayaking is an amazing sport for so many reasons. One being the ability to roll up on your fellow kayaker in need and be willing to do whatever you can to help them. We shared food and layers and discussed the plan for making it out in the morning. We had a SPOT rescue GPS with us and knew we could easily call out for help if it came to it. Hiking out of Dinky is really not an option, especially solo. You have miles of dangerous terrain in all directions and navigation in the thick oily brush would be treacherous. The one member who’s gear made it to the eddy decided to join us on the paddle out and we would send help with the SPOT coordinates for a rescue once we got out. The full moon in the canyon silhouetted the rim and the frogs surrounding us on the rocks kept the night full of life as we went to bed. When morning came we were quickly alerted by the sounds of a helicopter skimming past the canyon rim. Plan A quickly changed to plan B and we all frantically waived down the California Highway Patrol chopper. After several passes they threw down the below note in a tube.

We sat down, got their attention and as they pulled away to get a radio signal we frantically grabbed all our gear and made a tiny landing pad on our granite slab camp site. It was incredible the ability of the pilot to bring the helicopter into the narrow canyon. He landed twice on the rock, just big enough to set down the feet for a brief minute. First time to let out one of the officers and a second time to load our new friend and take him away safely.

A rescue like this couldn’t have possibly been made any easier. Our only loss was time and we finally departed from camp by noon with many miles of whitewater till our destination back at Balch Camp. We reviewed our river signals one more time to make scouting quick and confusion limited and hit the river. The endless and awesome clean drops of Dinky Creek did not disappoint. With the sun setting on all our minds we moved quickly and unfortunely many perfect 20 footers and awesome slides did not get captured on this trip. I guess that’s why I already am looking forward to next year. Here are some of the final photos I grabbed from the second day.

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Needless to say we made it out safe and sound, even with ice cold beers waiting at the take out thanks to our new comrades from the river. There is nothing like an adventure-filled trip on the river with some of your closest friends to make you really appreciate everything in life. We celebrated with another great camp deep in the California forest and slept soundly under one of the brightest moons I’ve ever seen. Here are some parting shots from the final day. Hope you enjoy the pictures. I’ll be posting more from the past month in the next week so stay tuned and keep coming back.
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SYOTR

Here are more photos from the Cali trip thus far. The day after getting off Big Kimshew we hustled over to Quincy, CA with our sights on some bigger water and the Middle Feather. This was an awesome way to spend our 4th of July. Even though non of us brought any fireworks there were plenty of American flag covered Budweiser cans to feel the holiday cheer. We loaded our boats full and it was a great opportunity to test out my Stomper packed up. The new outfitting makes it so easy to pack full of gear. It’s amazing how much stuff you can bring on the river. Here is most of what I brought and check out how the backband is up and out of the way.

The Middle Feather is normally a 3 day mission but with all the CO boys having to get back to their jobs by Tuesday and catch their flights Monday night we opted to crush through it a bit faster thanks to Tom Janney sort-of knowing the lines. All said and done it took us less than 24 hours to get through the canyon. Day 1 begins with a beautiful class III sight seeing mission. The crew ahead of me had a bear swim out into a rapid and check them out; a sight I’m jealous I missed. After about an hour of boogie the gradient picks up into some awesome boulder garden rapids with the most beautiful granite walls I’ve ever see on both sides for miles. Here is the main event on day 1 with Tyson and Tom showing how to thread the needle past this massive hole on both sides.

Our fearless guide Tom Janney:

Tyson Titensor close behind:

We made camp on a beach a few miles above Devils Canyon with a great view, fire pit, and even a grill which came in handy for the full rack of ribs I packed in the back of the Stomper.

Camp on day 1:

Packing in the protein for day 2:

Day 2 we all woke up early and got fired up for another day of big water class V. Again, Tom hopped in front and lead the charge. He had been on this run about 5 times before and impressively chose good lines most of the way through. There are so many rapids on this run it’s impossible to keep track. We rarely scouted or stopped in eddies. He confidently charged us through saying, “I think it’s this way…” and we would blindly follow. The holes are massive on this run and I was the first to test it’s power early in day 2. Not quite awake, maybe 5 minutes down from camp, I dropped into a big one and took my licks for a solid amount of time. Long enough for the crew to eddy out and enjoy the show but luckily I held on till it’s fury was over and it let me out still locked in to my Stomper 90. There were no swims on this trip and my eyes were open the rest of the day through. We reached the new takeout, just upstream from Milsap Bar on river left around noon and waited for our chariot to pick us up and say our goodbyes as the crew headed back to CO. It was an awesome trip and I can’t wait to get back next year. The flows for our trip were around 2,800 cfs.

Here are some more photos from day 2.

Jared Johnson charging in the morning:

Tom, rapid above the portage:

“Chunderboy would do it”:

Jake routing through Helicopter:

More coming soon, keep checking back.
SYOTR

Well it’s official Mom and Dad, I’m no longer a virgin, I have finally found what life is really all about, kayaking in California. I’ve waited so long to have my chance at the goods all over this beautiful state and I’m pumped to have an entire month ahead of me with nothing on the agenda but to kayak as much as possible. We hopped in the van and rallied out of Hood River after one last high water lap on the Green Truss. Stopped and said hi to Shon Bollock working on his new movie that you gotta check out the trailers for HERE. Then hustled down to Sacramento Int’l to pick up Will Rostron and Rolf Kelly. We drove through the night thanks to some navigation errors (you can’t always trust GPS) and finally took a break only to wake up, call the rest of the crew, and find out they were 2.5 hours in the other direction with their sights set on Big Kimshew. So back on the road we went up all kinds of twisting Cali roads and found the spot we thought to drop in.

Here is Rolf our fearless leader checking out the scene below after taking a wicked fall while hiking down.

After finally making it down to the river I was so pumped to finally be in the magic of Cali where you can go bigger, slide longer, and stay smiling for miles. Here is Will on the first falls of the Kimshew, a perfect way to break us all in on a beautiful 20ish footer of granite goodness.

Jake, (sorry I don’t know your last name) caught a strange flake in the lead in but luckily the pool was deep, and it sure makes for a cool shot.

We definitely caught the river on the lower side of good and the in-betweens from the first falls to Kimshew falls was a bit low. Showing up to Kimshew got us all fired up and the River just picked up pace from here on through. This bouncy 40ish footer got the team fired up with good lines by all.

Here is Sean Lee probing first.

Followed by Will:

Then Andy Blanksley from above.

The photographer gets no love but it was great getting shots of all the CO boys firing things off. I had smooth lines too and was very surprised with how softly the Stomper landed off the drops. More awesome gorged in slides and boofs lead us down the next main event with Frency up next. The seal launch into the entrance sent you right into the current making set up quick and probing into the depths o so good and soft.

Here is Andy off this beauty as well.

Tom Janney was kind enough to grab my camera while I tested the Stomper’s ability to plug as well. Yeah it does that too:

From Kimshew Falls all the way to the takeout was just awesome, tons of boofs, slides and fun in an amazingly beautiful place. We were so lucky to have Brianne on this one to sweet talk and wink her way down and get the van through the locked gate saving us from having to hike our gear the 5 miles back up the road. Here is how the Kimshew lets you out, Will running the final drop with an awesome landing that sends you deep. From here we hauled to the Middle Feather and I’ll have shots up from there soon so keep checking back.