NFMF American, The real deal

We were late getting to the rendevous with Keith and by the time we got to the trail head the leaders in the Western State practice run were already coming up the trail the opposite direction. That slowed us down even more as we had stop repeatedly to let people past on the narrow trail. Once again I was last to the putin, the Wyoming crew being blazingly fit. At about 12:30 we started on the water, not good timing with 13 miles of river ahead including 7 miles of hard class V that none of us had ever seen.


The first mile was just easy boogie water but then around a sharp right turn the bottom dropped out and we started scouting and portaging. Sierra foothills style scouting and portaging .....Oak ....jungle ...boulders....
Some of the stuff we walked probably would have gone with a little less water, some just looked pretty insane.

Even so there were some awsome clean drops in there, including a pretty big must run waterfall with a gnarly looking hole on the left. Eventually we got to what to the well known, must run, Lions Gate rapid. Here you seal launch onto a long screaming slide that fires you out over a 10 foot ledge into a big pool overlooked by an overhanging ampitheatre of rock. What a scream, the world needs a rivver that has 20 Lions gates in a row...despite every effort 4 out of 5 of us still managed to run the ledge completely backwards, luckily to no ill effects.


It was near to sunset by the time we finished and we learned later that a group had walked out, benighted, the day before at the hell trail we had walked also. Andy had scored us all dinner at a nice place in Forresthill without a wallet and wearing only polypro with no shoes whilst we finished shuttle, and soon everyone started to look a bit Zombie like. I gave Andy the keys to the WRX so he could head back whilst Keith, Jamie and I scoffed the burgers he'd bought us...of course we also had to pay the bill!

NFMF American Reconnaissance

This years Cali road trip was fast coming to an end and we were floundering a little after finishing a mellow Mill Creek overnighter. The previous week I'd been off my game, confounded and intimidated by unfamiliar high water conditions on the Kern, my motivation had been low and my nerves fried. I wasn't feeling good about my weak performance the last few trips, and I found some new motivation to turn it around and get us fired up again. I'd been researching beta on the NFMF American for a full year and now the word on the street was that the water level was coming into the right window. The bible said that it was possible to walk in at the half way point and get just the last 6 miles done so we fired up to go check this out and get a feel for it. At the takeout the river looked about 800cfs so we fired it up. We found the trail and it didn't look very inspiring, but in blazing hot weather we started down the side of an extremely steep canyon for a 2000 foot descent. The ground was covered with dry leaves and pretty soon we were all falling on our asses. Within 15 minutes I'd lost touch with the 3 others and just tracked there path through the leaves. Eventually I got to the river but I could find nobody. I tried blowing my whistle but still no luck. After walking upstream a ways I found Andy and Jake, then Jamie came paddling downstream. It wasn't a good start, 4 of us finding 3 different putin's! We boogied on downstream and it was pretty much read and run, hard class IV for the most part with a bit more spice occasionally, one in particular that we looked at hard before running.

Right at the takeout one more ledge confronted us, it looked sticky but I took a run at it. Jamie wasn't so lucky in his GT and was busy getting his ass handed him as Andy paddled straight into him, nailing him in the face with his bow. Somehow he wasn't badly hurt but it was a close thing. Feeling fired up by our day we commited for the following day and left a car at takeout so we could go straight for the upper putin the following day. We called Keith on the way back to Nevada City needing a second probe for the main event the following day.