Truckee

From Tahoe City to Floriston the Truckee is best considered as 6 sections, with many variations possible:

Tahoe City to River Ranch: Class 1 with many raft tourists in the summer. (Use Tahoe City gauge)

River Ranch to about Bridge 4: Nice short class III- run. (Tahoe City gauge)

Bridge 4 to above town of Truckee: Class I-II, starting out II+. (Truckee gauge)

'Town Run' through Truckee down to Glenshire: Class III (Truckee gauge)

Glenshire to Boca: Class II+ (Truckee gauge)

Boca to Floriston: starts out class II, then to III- as you enter Floriston Gorge, then Jaws and Bronco at Class IV.   Many people call Jaws & Bronco only Class III, but this stretch is very familiar to the local boating community and is run frequently.  Viewed without this familiarity effect, I agree with Bruce's comment earlier, and the Holbeck / Stanley book with their IV rating.  (Use Boca gauge.)

Then downstream of Floriston, the run down to Farad has nice gradient starting out Class III with the blown-out dam rapids.

Ran this as a three day, two night overnighter [partially] with fellow packrafters Sami Feld and Andy Rich and some innertubers. This shuttle was fun – I staged a bike at the Amtrak station in Truckee on my way to park my car at the put-in, Silver Creek. I then paddled all the way to Reno, getting a Lyft to the Amtrak station, training back to Truckee, and biking back to Silver Creek.

The funnest sections are near the town of Truckee and near Floriston for sure – we portaged Jaws but will get after it next time!

400cfs is too low in my opinion– there was a lot of scraping, but mostly in the section after Floriston.

The Floriston Rapid, which is the last half mile of this Truckee section, is closer to a class IV than a III. A less experienced boater expecting III would be in for a surprise. I have run the Floriston Rapid dozens of times over 15 years, boated all over the country with some international experience, and boated a lot of III, IV and V's . Holbek and Stanley claim 'the last half mile is a good class IV rapid'.

Surfing under I-89 at Floriston.
Looking upstream at Bronco at Floriston.
I-89 across the Truckee at Floriston.

Surfing at the site of the old diversion dam at
Floriston.