Stanislaus, S. Fork

We ventured back into the S. Stanislaus again this summer(late June 06) and found it at around the same flow as the year before. We found drops upstream of the put-in above Hwy 108. There are a series of drops back to back with a drop in the middle that had some issues. We put in below the sketchy one. Not sure what lies further upstream but there was good water and there are gradient lines on the map...maybe check it out further next year. The rest of the run was great-no wood. Except for the First Dam. There is a pipe suspended across the lip of the dam. We were forced to run the dam in the left of center-unlike our far right boof last year(pictured Dam). The 2nd Dam dished out some punishment to one of our group members. The spouting man made 4 foot vertical drop has a sticky and powerful hole at the bottom and apparently is not too deep. Running left of center avoiding the hole seemed most sensible. Continuing on downstream, We ran the two portages we made last year, basically our whole reason for going back in. The first one you can scout from the take out road on RL. We ran it down the left. The second one above the series of drops at the end was only run by myself, but was fairly clean. Run down the right and boof through a narrow notch at the bottom.I called it 'The Cervix'. Great fun run-class five skills required-especially if no one in your group is familiar with the run. Our first run took us 6 hours. After we knew it well, our second run took 2 1/2 hours. All drops have been run below Hwy 108. Have fun.be safe.

Another note, Some of us found it easier to portage both class 5 drops on the right. Also watch out for the tree at the end of the run. Big tree lying across the river-catch the eddy under the tree on the right-its a bit of a limbo-and watch out for the undercut behind the eddy.

dont underestimate its stickiness