The All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting California River Blog

It is as we expected–the 2009 rafting season on the Kaweah is over.   We no longer have reliable, solid rafting flows so we’re packing up and heading north to our summer stalwart rivers, the South Fork and Middle Forks of the American, and the Tuolumne.  Soon enough we will be able to add Cherry Creek to that list–we’re just waiting for the water to come down low enough (sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but high water on Cherry Creek isn’t a good thing for rafting).

So farewell Kaweah and Three Rivers Hideaway!  We’ll be back, same time next year.

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http://www.vimeo.com/823937Based on the 2009 snowpack and current temperatures, we anticipate that this weekend, June 6-8, will be the last chance for rafting trips on the Kaweah River.  After that, flows will likely be too low for good whitewater.  HOWEVER!  There are some possible thunderstorms on the horizon that could very well extend the season by another week.  We’ll keep you posted. 

But, bottom line:  If you’re in the LA area and want a last-minute adventure close to home, check out the Kaweah while you still can!  Watch our Kaweah rafting video to see if this technical and high-speed run is for you.

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It’s always fun for us to see our name in print…..(well, in computer screen pixels and flickering light…) so we were excited to see ourselves featured in an online article on the Kaweah River.  The Kaweah’s class IV rapids and technical hydraulics create excitement every spring and is one of our guides’ favorite springtime runs.

Check out the article at:

http://www.rundown.com/article.php?article_id=476&article_title=Weekend-Runaway:-Whitewater-Rafting

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It’s been a great season down there in Three Rivers with some seriously epic days and awesome whitewater, but, as they say, all good things must come to end…… so after this weekend our Kaweah guides will be rolling up their boats, packing their personal gear, and heading home before being re-deployed to other rivers like the Tuolumne and Cherry Creek for the rest of the season.  If you want to get in on the action before they break camp, better get on it because this weekend is your last chance (but if you can’t finagle it in time, don’t worry, you can get your Class IV fix on the Merced for a few more weekends, and the T all summer long).

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The cycle of cool-hot-cool-hot weather we’ve had in California lately has kept our wetsuits in rotation a little longer than we expected, wool sweaters out in force, and cloudy skies fooling even veteran guides into forgetting their sunscreen.  As long as we’ve been rafting you’d think we’d know that cloud cover is no substitute for zinc oxide or avobenzene…..

Sunburns aside, one result of this funny weather is a stretched out season on the Kaweah River.  Super hot weather could render this update useless in a week, of course, but right now we think we have a good solid two weeks left.  Southern California rafters! Get a carpool together and head north!   Share gas money, get some snacks, and play 21 questions until you get to Three Rivers.  The Kaweah’s class III and IV whitewater have already given us some epic days–big surfs, tube-stands and even a flip or two.  Your group is sure to make some memories of its own . . . The Kaweah is good for that sort of thing.

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As you know by now, water numbers across golden (well, still pretty green actually,) California are perfectly normal this year–which is perfectly lovely news for whitewater sports enthusiasts. 

The story on the Kaweah River, in Southern California, is a little confusing.  If you google water stats for the Kaweah you’ll see numbers that are a little higher than what we reported in our “flow prediction report” a little while back.  Here’s why:  Snow water content in the Kaweah Watershed is at around 120% of normal this year. However, since 2007 was pretty dry, the ground and plant life is prepped to soak up a lot of the run-off this spring.  This means less will flow into the river, which is why we are predicting that this will be a “normal” rather than a “high water” year.

The reason this is still good news for Southern California rafters is that the 2008 season on the Kaweah will be longer than it was last year, when there weren’t very many weekends the river was running at great flows.  We think the river will peak sometime around the Memorial Day Holiday weekend.

If you’ve never rafted the class IV whitewater of the Kaweah River Canyon, check out the video we shot there last summer to give you a taste……office cubicle one day, screamin’ whitewater the next.  Cowboy up!

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These guys are good at tracking flows… they’ve gone with us year after year and know just when to start calling the reservations office and ask about which of our Spring rivers are running when. So it wasn’t a surprise to me that for our first of only two weekends of water on the Kaweah this year, we saw many of AO’s most frequent floaters.

Willy, our beloved German guest who came rafting with us somewhere around 20 times last year, had never seen the Kaweah until last weekend. Paired in a boat with fellow enthusiast Dan, who actually joined us for guide school this year, he commented later that it had been one of his favorite days on the river ever. This, of course, following a beautiful grand finale in Holiday Rapid which included both a perch and a surf. (Holiday rapid is one of my favorites… it starts out with a very technical backpaddle into and “airplane turn” that takes the front of your boat just barely past a huge hole… and then doesn’t let up with the technical moves and big whitewater until a few hundred yards downstream. Translation? Lots of opportunity for plans B, C and D to go into effect.)

As for myself for my first weekend back on the Kaweah this year? (more…)

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The theme on the Kaweah River these past few weekends has been all about team bonding and brotherhood. With two fraternities doing trips (one from UCLA and one from USC), and then a masters women’s rugby team joining us this last Sunday, we were prepared for some pretty rowdy and crazy days.

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On Friday night, it took hours to get any food or service at our favorite restaurant in town, and strange animals started making noises at three in the morning. Then on Saturday, Brook “Lead Foot” Johnson found herself hiding from a very angry campground manager who was covered in the dust kicked up from her truck, and bad river karma was passed on to an unwitting guide through a harmless-looking tent. What in the world was going on in Three Rivers?!!

As may have been gathered, our first weekend back on the Kaweah wasn’t, as they say, smooth as “buttuh”. Don’t get me wrong- we had a great time seeing each other and the river again. It’s just that there were a few small kinks to make the weekend that much more interesting.

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I know there was a boat here somewhere…

As promised, Thursday is weekly pictures and quotes day! The above and following pictures are a few of my favorites from Mark Reiner’s 2005 season shots on the Kaweah River near Sequoia National Park.

[Click here to see last week's shots from the North Stanislaus.]

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