The Powder Gods Deliver

This has been a scarey looking start to the winter, 55 degrees and havy rain in Truckee are not what should happen in December. Having faith in the inevitability of a correction myself Håkan and Magnus commited to a 3 day trip to Tahoe over xmas and booked a hotel in SLT on the presumption that if nothing else we could rage all night. As it turned out we ended up at Kirkwood all three days since it had amazingly reasonable conditions considering it had been repeatedly rained on in the last week. True to form the NWS posted a winter storm warning and Sunday night Tahoe got back to its real form dumping 2 feet of fresh at Kirkwood for our final day. We managed to cut fresh tracks pretty much all day in windy and uncrowded conditions making for an amazing finish to the trip.

Håkan airing out a little rock band.

Mavericks - Kayak surf session

Unable to arrange for either the rivers to run, nor anybody to come with me to paddle this weekend, we took playboats out ot Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, home to the famous Mavericks, reputed to be the largest cold water surf break in the world. The crew was composed of myself, Heather, Håkan, Magda, Anders and Helena. The inside break was pretty small today, and so I followed Håkan and Magda out towards the main break out by the reef at Mushroom rock where it was definitely going off. Even though this is still inside the main Mavericks break it was big, as in BIG!. Watching Håkan and Magda ahead of me silhouetted against the breaking surf I was starting to feel nervous remembering the double overhead hammering I'd taken in Costa RIca 12months earlier, however there was a distinct channel to sit between two breaks and pick your moment so I started to feel more relaxed again as I watched Håkan pick a couple of good rides. Finally I was happy I understood how the break worked and committed to a big ride. For a moment I thought I'd made a bad choice as the face quickly steepened and I felt myself rising up towards the peak. Paddling hard I got the boat upto speed as the wave started to break and I took off on the ride of a lifetime, wohoo!!! Looking round as the wave faded away I was in time to see another huge wave behind me closeout spectacularly and simultaneously along its whole length. Fearing the worst, I looked for the others as the surf dissipated. Sure enough there was Magda swimming by her boat with Håkan assisting. Luckily no more big waves came through and we were soon in a safer area drifting along the breakwater away from the beach. Magda made 2 great attempts at an assisted rescue but it was practically impossible to get into her small S6 without re-flooding it again. And so rather than waste more time whilst we drifted further we started to head back the beach towing. I raced back with the boat passing Heather who had spotted that we were in trouble, alerted the others, and dumped the boat on the beach, returning to help Håkan. Anders had a tow line with him, and with the 2 of them towing Magda we soon got her back to the beach. Amazingly she was in good health and not at all cold having dressed wisely in a farmer john and dry top.

Xmas in November

In keeping with my tightass tradition I went home to the UK at Thanksgiving so I can do other stuff at Xmas. Predictably the weather bordered on insanely bad; gale force winds, hail, rain and snow. Undetered I headed down to Anglesey to meet Gary/Wendy/Rach/Chris with all the offspring in tow. Chris demonstrated true UK grit by going windsurfing in a force 7 with temps hovering just above freezing. Gary and I amused ourselves by rescuing another lemming off the rocks where he had washed up exausted.




Rach and Wendy demonstrated remarkable culinary skills my making a full christmas dinner, with which I managed to make myself ill by gorging myself. Somehow we didn't give any of the kids frost bite or hypothermia despite our best efforts. Woke on monday back at my mums to 4" of new snow so I went hiking with my dad around Dovestones.

NF Feather

We hit up the North Fork Feather release this weekend curtesy of every paddlers best friend, American Whitewater (AW). Lot of old friends there as normal and good weather. Saturday Dan and I ripped a quick Cresta run down to the crazy slalom course set up for the afternoons race. I'm not sure if it was the unconventional course or me being not on my game but I had two miserable runs so I was out of the running for an early pick at the best of that evenings prize giving. Nevertheless I still scored a great drybag and the party was a raging sucess. We bivvyed out at Belden town on a clear night and fired up for a couple of runs of Tobin in the morning. Water seemed better than the 1000cfs that we expected and Jessica, James and Dan joined us for the fun, though James and Dans adrenalin meters looked a little pegged, especially after Dan narrowly missed swim at the putin in class II. James took some awesome shots with his digital Nikon on the first run. which he sat out. Then Dan sat out the second run and shot some more. Enjoy.....

Mokelumne Races

Another year of Loma Prieta races has come and gone. More typical sunshine graced this years races rather than last years epic freezing downpour. I had bought an old glass boat the week before so Keith and I had done some hasty glass work to get my long legs in there, and with the resin barely dry I had a whole 2 days to relearn how to paddle a long boat before the race. As it turned out both myself and Dan sharing the boat turned in really great times in expert-B but my one 50 cost me a top 3 place, b ut I was still happy to have done so well in such an alien boat.

Pushin' Rubber

As the summer pushed on I've been having all sorts of problems with my hands and I've been forced to go light on the kayaking. However the need to get on the river was irresistable so a cunning plan was formed. Dan and I borrowed a raft from Tom and paddles from Jim and ran the mighty gorge of the South American (Yawn!). It turned out to be way fun, none of us that good at guiding and with some mutiny from the crew we laughed all the way down beofre cracking beers as we hit the lake. Who says rafters are all lame?

NF Mokelumne

I've been wanting to get this one for a while and the chance came up this year. Myself, Dan, Gerald and Margerite met on a sunny June morning at the takeout by Tiger Creek dam with no idea what we were about to commit to. Class III/IV with one V at the end did not do this run justice. The water was on the high side, but I'd have to say I'd prefer that flow, it made it way fun the whole way. The start was spicey from the get go, with one long class IV finishing in a suprisingly big drop that got everyones attention, setting the tone for the day. I felt that we were making excellenet time, the river was continious in nature, always fast moving water normally with rapids. One or two big ledges could have been very exciting if you blundered into them but it was all good. However as the day wore on it seem like we should be about done and we started kidding ourselves that ever big drop we found was Mokelumne falls, the elusive last class V rapid. Meanwhile the grade gradually kept ratcheting up until it was continious big water IV with enough pushiness and stuff to avoid that it had our 100% attention. Early in the evening, starting to feel tired and with Margerite starting to look a little pushed we finally knew that we had encountered the real Mokelumne Falls. From the last scout, river left we could see vertical rock walls on both sides of the river and big horizon line with mist 100 yards downstream. Between there and us lay solid IV+ big water pepered with holes and no way to scout without a death defying eddy catch on the opposite shore. Knowing that the move to make the scout was both beyond Margerites safe boating level and that we would be commiting to the falls (which is unportageable) we faced the unthinkable...a portage in poison oak hell. We had to drag the boats back upstream 100 yards and ferry to the otherside then commenced to haul the boats up through the vertical jungle on the other side with the throw ropes. It took us most of the remain daylight hours to even get them an estimated 300 feet above the river without an inch of downstream progress. Faced with benightment we made the obvious choice, swallowed our pride, tied the boats off to tree's and traversed above the cliffs bush wackiing through the Oak. We made it down a steep slope to river level as the last light faded and immediately drank more water and tried to do some washing to minimise the inevitable Oak rash that was comming. Then we made our ways down the rocky river shore, comming on a good trail within a 1/4 mile and the power house and road another 1.4 mile further. One botle of Technu later we unran shuttle and formed a plan to find a motel quickly as we were beat. However the day hadn't done with us yet, and not a single motel vacancy could be found. Faced with no where to stay and the desperate need for a hot shower to ditch more poison oak we headed home arriving after 3am....just another day of adventure in the Sierra foothills.