The All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting California River Blog

Well kids, it’s time to pack up your sleeping bag, brush the cookie crumbs out of your tent, and head on home–the Merced River is officially out of commission until next spring when its rolling waves trains will reverberate with the happy hollering of soaked-to-the-bone whitewater rafters once more.  Until then, if you need a fix of class IV whitewater you have two great options for Northern California rafting left this year.  First, you have the Middle Fork of the American River, whose 17 miles of rafting goodness will surely satisfy your need for speed.  If its incomparable class IV rapid Tunnel Chute doesn’t do it for you, then I really don’t know what to say.  Perhaps skydiving is your thing?  You also have the Tuolumne, with its beautiful clear water, gigantor boulders, and the highlight of Clavey Falls, a class IV+ drop that creates wall-to-wall whitewater…… 

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The Mighty Mer is a fickle river, with a character as inconstant as the moon depending on flows.  Until recently, we’ve had flows of around 2200-2000 cfs.  This amount of water creates the huge rolling wave trains that make the Merced such a fun whitewater river, but it also makes it inappropriate to run the lower section of the river, which is called Quarter Mile.  Now that the water is starting to drop to approximately 1500-1600 cfs, we can start running the Quarter Mile section.  This includes s a long class IV rapid with a 3 remarkable drops to the river trip, and also a 25 foot waterfall to the day!  We scout the different sections of the rapid–and we push the boats over the falls and walk around to the bottom.  Current flows, combined with the level of the reservoir below the raftable section of the Merced, (more…)

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