Merced, N. Fork

First Descent: Paul Martzen Report: Sun, 2 Apr 1995

On March 24 & 25, 1995, Richard Penny and I made a difficult two-day descent of the North Fork of the Merced River in California. Richard had scoped out a 17-mile section from Greeley Hill road to the confluence with the main Merced. This creek does not have a big drainage and its headwaters are not very high. It is only boatable in the winter after fairly big rains. Not a sure thing in California. This winter, however, has been very wet and all kinds of creeks have been raging.

There is a gauge on the upstream river right of the bridge where Greeley Hill Road crosses the North Fork. It was reading 4.9 when we put in and 4.8 when we came back the next day to get my car. It was probably a few hundred cfs. Small tributaries came in often along the way and Bull Creek, 5 miles downstream, doubled the flow. By the time we got to the Main Merced, the flow on the North Fork felt like at least 1000 cfs.

The run can be considered in two sections. The first five or six miles from Greeley Hill Rd., past Bull creek to Ponderosa Way, cannot be recommended. In this section the creek is steep, often over 100 feet per mile, and quite technical. Normally that is nice but something about this streambed allows alders to grow everywhere, especially in the middle of rapids. It took us all day to make a bit over 5 miles, with one close call after another.

From Ponderosa Way on down to about one mile of the confluence, the run was much more reasonable. The gradient was much less, 20 to 60 feet a mile. We almost always had a relatively clear channel which we could see, through the trees lining the creek. We made good progress in this section, covering about 10 miles in two hours. We passed a lot of mining claims and cast-offs of mining equipment in this section.

About a mile upstream of the confluence with the main, the gradient increases to over 300'/mile as the river drops over a ser

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