Tule, MF

The Tule is a small but spectacular drainage on the southwest edge of Sequoia National Park.    There are several different sections which are paddled, starting with extreme boating up high and ending with moderate boating through Springville to Lake Success.    As we get more information we will create separate pages for each section.

Getting there: From Porterville take highway 190 up through Springville.  The Highway follows the river to the top of the drainage.  google map

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Clay Wright recalled in 2007:

'It's been years, but it's pretty memorable.  I think that's the first  place I would take a SE'rn creeker for a Cali introduction - steep  and incredibly runnable.  You guys should dial that thing in and  check out the upstream sections for sure.  I've never had the time (1  week between rodeos) to really poke around.

Downstream of the confluence is mostly good to go at low water.   There is one nasty sieve marked by an imposing bounder on river right  at the end of a 'boat-scout' section right before a sweet drop you  can see from the car.   There have been some close calls and it is  close to the confluence as I recall.  There are many many rapids and  it requires a lot of scouting but low water is still really good to  go.    Many of these rapids have large holes at higher water and we  portaged a lot on that first higher flow trip.   It is NOT the easy  section it looks like from the road unless the water is low (under  100cfs).   To Coffee Camp took us 3 hours at an estimated 350 - 500  cfs - lots of holding ropes and scouting and portaging ;  and we  thought we would run the full 6 miles before checking out the drops  upstream.

Came back at estimated 70-100 cfs and cruised d

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