Chamberlain Falls Rafting

2012 ended with a crash, literally. I hit my head pretty hard while kayaking the South Fork Yuba river (Edwards to Purdon), a class IV stretch of river. It was a step-up run for me as I'm trying to break into class IV kayaking. The Yuba, if you haven't been, is a beautiful river canyon with steep slopes, jagged rocks and gorgeous vistas. The whitewater is just as amazing, especially for an aspiring California kayaker. If you plan to kayak E-P, make sure you have a dependable roll. It would not be a fun swim through many of those rapids.

So, 2013 has begun with several trips to the chiropractor trying to decompress my spine (which suffered moderate-severe compression on the Yuba accident). I will probably miss about 2-3 more weeks of winter kayaking, putting me back in my boat at the beginning of February. I did, however, manage to raft this week with a friend of mine from All Outdoors (the company I guided for on the Middle Fork American this past summer). He owns a two person paddle-cat and we had a blast running the Chamberlain Falls stretch of the North Fork American river at a flow of 700cfs on the Dreamflows gauge. We ran two laps, which happened to be my second and third times down this stretch, and scouted 3 rapids on the first run: Chamberlain Falls, Tongue and Groove, and Bogus Thunder. Chamberlain was interesting. We actually became pinned, I jumped out onto the mid-river rock and unwedged us, then jumped back into the raft. Flows were mild and this turned out to be a good enough line down that we repeated it the second run. Tongue and Groove was just wide enough for us to slide through and Bogus was a mandatory portage. At these flows I felt that Slaughter's Sluice and Staircase provided the biggest thrills. The hydrolics were mild and our paddle-cat punched through them with ease as long as we didn't get sideways. We did get lazy toward the end of the second run and slunk sideways over a pour-over rock which promptly pulled us in for an unexpected surf session. It was pretty cold by this point and we were very pleased that we avoided a swim here.

The North Fork provided me with a much needed first adventure of 2013. The water was crystal clear and absolutely beautiful and the rapids were just right for me in my injured state. If you are thinking of rafting Chamberlain, 700cfs is a little bony. Our paddle-cat measured about 11ft long by 4ft wide and there were some tight squeezes. Also, thanks to Tristan for kayaking lead and snapping some photos. Below is a picture of us running the 2nd drop of Staircase.