Kings

Parked at roadblock on Garnet Dike road and hiked in another 1.9 mi to Hermit's Hole.

Enjoyed the 8.5 mi run to Kirch in 2:15. River definitely getting boney at 900 cfs- I dragged on a few rocks.

Good run with just one boater swimming in River Rat.

A tremendously beautiful river corridor. So dry out this winter – this was the only Class III run south of Merced in CA. Hitched in with my packraft and ran it solo.

April, Amanda, Ed and I wanted to see how the Kings was at 650 cfs. We put in about half way up, but below Mill Flat Creek. Places where the river spread out were certainly shallow and we joked about getting the lowest hit counts, but most rapids were super fun. At normal flows the Kings is a wide, unobstructed river with nice waves, but few eddies. At low flows there are rocks and eddy lines galore. It was a perfect flow for a beginner wanting to learn eddy turns, peel outs, and surfing on tiny waves. It was great to see Amanda getting more and more confident as the day went on.

There was plenty of fun for out of practice advanced boaters as well. We were catching eddies left and right, attaining back up and working little slalom courses. We ran tight technical lines down the rocky edges of the rapids, getting in lots of boofing practice.

The most interesting rapids of the day were near the end. Sidewinder was so much fun that we carried up and ran it again. There is an easy sandy path slightly back from the water that I discovered after we had already bushwacked near the water. Roostertail hole is dangerous at low water, as the current slams into a wide block then bounces straight up. Fortunately there was room to avoid the hole on either side with a wider path on the right. River Rat was a good finale with the biggest waves of the section.

This is Doug and his crew from LA, rafting down Rooster Tail rapid. Great job guys!
This is in Crazy Horse rapid, looking upstream on river left of center.
Gary and the great Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Taking a cooling dip in the big lazy eddie.

Bear Wallow Rapid, aka Banzai, may not look like much from this distance, but the water is moving like a frieght train. The wide white line just to the lower left of the raft(Downstream river right), is a huge nasty hole occupying over half of the river width. As you can see, the main current goes into the middle of this hole. At high flows a sneak channel opens up around the left side of the gravel bar island.

The more famous Banzai Hole is washed out at high flows. At lower flows Banzai lurks in the convergance of the various entrance currents.
The Hermit's Hole launch area is upper left in this photo. Bump City rapid is the right channel hidden by the grass at the bottom of the photo. The left and middle channels are options at high flows but become too shallow at low flows.
One of the nice views while heading up the road to the Garnet Dike put-in.

Raft heads towards a big wave in Wildcat rapid. A pourover that is visible in the upper left corner is Upper Wildcat.

Johny Gomez guiding a motley crew.

Banzai hole has removed all but one paddler, but that one will be removed as well, before the boat is released.
This raft crew has hit the middle of Banzai Hole at a sticky level. They get an exciting ride before swimming.