San Joaquin

Kerchoff is a small but scenic reservoir on the San Joaquin river near Auberry. It acts as a forebay for the two Kerchoff powerhouses owned by PG&E. It is a nice spot for touring kayaks, but tends to attract a few jet skis on summer weekends. The distance to the dam from convenient launching areas is about 1 3/4 miles.
Downstream view from the trail over the dam. What you see here was pretty typical of the first six miles at this low 'fish' flow; long pools seperated by rocky shallows. We were able to squeeze through all of these spots on this date.
Nice view from the pool at the base of the dam. During spill, some of these gates would be open and water would pour over the top of this dam. A stairway leads down close to this pool, but rock scrambling and a little bit of poison oak dodging is required for the final 30 or 40 feet.
I don't know what kind of rock these cliffs are made of, but there is quite a bit of it along the first 3 or 4 miles of the run. It looks like it has layers in it, so I think it is a metamorphic rock of some sort. The streambed for most of the reach is granite, but in this first section, this rock sort of alternated with the granite. Sometimes this stuff was on both sides of the river, sometimes granite was on the left and this stuff was on the right. If I find out what it is, i will update this description.
Pool just upstream of the gauging station.
This brushy island is around mile 2. The left side was obstructed at this low flow. I don't recall any problems with it at normal boating flows >1,000 cfs.
This right side of the island channel was narrow enough to put our 52 cfs to good use.
This is looking upstream from the bottom of a portage. I think it is the 3rd class 5 rapid. Fifty cfs just goes underneath the boulders, so we carried over the tops. This was the least awkward of these three portages, by a small margin.
I think this photo is just below the 3rd class 5, looking upstream. The next photo is looking downstream at, I think, the same spot. Patrick looks happy in this picture, but he knew I suckered him into this trip and that he was probably going to be late for work.
This is the prettiest part of the river with this cliff rising on the left. There are some impressive domes and cliffs on the right in this section as well. A moderate rapid waits at the end of this pool, then you arrive at Binocular Rapid.
We had a final short boulder portage around this spot in the rapid just below Binocular Rapid. At spill flows this would be a 4+ or class 5- rapid