Big Creek

Stellar underrated V run! Consistant gradient of South Silver style granite bedrock interspersed with technical boulder gardens. A group of 5 of us ran this 4/9/06. Here is what we found:

FLOW

We had what we deemed a great boatable flow of ~200 to 250 cfs, for a class V run down to S. Merced. Note: the online guage is way off (it read 17 cfs the day we ran it) while the Merced below Briceburg was @ 3800 and falling due to recent rain. (Chris is refering to a gauge that is no longer listed on this page. It was gauging a diversion from the creek rather than the creek itself. The gauge now linked is on an adjacent creek of similar size. Hopefully flows are fairly similar between the two drainages and the present gauge has better accuracy - PM)

CHARACTER:

Lots (10+) of classic Sierra bedrock drops of 10-20 ft. Some great slides and big boofs. Some sections of technical class V boulder drops that reminded me 'Big Creek' in the Smokies (classic SE squeal like a pig creeking). We did not experience the 'brush' referenced in the streamkeepers description. Lots of horizon lines to keep you on your toes...smile

HAZARDS:

1)At our flow (~200-250cfs) the 4th drop of significance (shown in above description as the 'slide') becomes a nasty river wide hole that should be treated with extreme caution, as it is basically becomes a low head dam. We vertically extracted someone from here and it was not pretty.

1. Wood. There were a few big logs that looks like they could shift around. That said there was a nasty log jam strainer at the very bottom of the second major boulder garder rapid. Which was several hundred yards long. The strainer was basically blind and a bit walled out. Scout/walk high river left.

Other than this all the rapids were runnable and had clean, albeit sometimes narrow lines. Expect to get out of your boat to scout frequently.

ACCESS:

PI: The gate was locked for us just after crossing the golf course. There is limited but discrete parking here. The hike is ~2 miles.

TO: We parked at a pull off with a restroom ~1 mi downstream of S. Merced bridge near Wawona. Shuttle is super short and could be walked.

TIME: First time runs by mere class V mortals should expect 4 or more hours to scout and run this ~2 mile stretch.

OVERALL RATING: 9 out of 10.