24.5.07

Spring Lovin

To expand on the previous post....
As mentioned below, a boat or two was left on the shore of Bridge Creek a few weeks ago. This left the owners with a number of unappealing options: hike back in to either paddle the boats out, or hike all the way out again. Or they could choose to abandon the boats and let nature take care of business on those things. Not wanting to wait a million years to see any changes in the plastic, I decided to hike in and paddle one out, an orange Jefe to be exact. Lucky for me, another poor soul wanted to get on Bridge, so I invited him along, not really mentioning that I would be hiking the first mile and a half leaving him to paddle the manky section alone. He did great and we successfully recovered the boat, blazing down Bridge and Wooley with plenty of time to spare. Now for that broken boat still in there, hm?

After paddling a few more mellow days at the Salmon I turned south and made my way to Chico to meet up with Darin McQuoid . We had been hoping for Royal Gorge, but it had dropped out to a boat-breaking low level, so we decided to move south into the Yuba drainage. We quickly paddled Love's Falls, made some phone calls, then drove further south into the South Fork American drainage, where South Silver appeared to be running.
To be honest, I don't think either of us were super excited to be headed towards South Silver as consolation for not getting on Royal. It had always been on my list, but over time it slowly dropped as my impression of it fell into the 'too much hype' category...
However, we were both very impressed with the quality of the run and had a wonderful time as we slowly moved downstream and lapped Skyscraper.

Serious eye-candy...amazing photos by Darin McQuoid

Kevin Smith boofing at the top of Autobahn


Myself finishing off Autobahn


Again on a slide.


Towards a big hole.


Boofing one of the Teacups.




Boofing into Skyscraper




Boofing out of Skyscraper



Movin down Off-ramp.


Portaging on the Fantasy Falls run of the North Fork of the Mokelumne River......