Feather, West Branch

Kevin Hendricks, Chris Chandler, Charlie Guilbault and I were on beautiful Feburary day run. After cleaning up the takeout trail we headed up to the put-in. I am going to call this flow the upper end of good.  The flow was 900 cfs, 1.4 on the staff gauge at the dam. While most of the rapids are just fine at this flow, I think this is the highest flow that I would recomend running the dam.  We ran it on the right, rafther than the typical left line,  as there was more flow exiting below the dam on the right and it was easier to set safety.  We all decided to portage Stop, Drop and Roll on this run.  There was a line but it was very thin.  A little right and you would end up in the seive, a little left and would would get pinned on the rock on the to the left of the exit. To top it off the hole at the botton was pretty stout.  The rest of the rapids were all good to go.

Spring trip on the West Branch. This was a chance to experience the West Branch shortly after the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most expensive wildfire in California history that came through the area in November 2018. The fire burned into the canyon the West Branch flows through but the whitewater was all the same.

Hitting the West Branch first thing in the morning before heading to work with Dave Steindorf, Charlie Guilbault, and Thomas O'Keefe.

Tricky rapid at high flows. Don't end up on the Wall

Dave Steindorf, Megi Morishita, Kevin Colburn, and Thomas O'Keefe got out for a quick run of the West Branch when in town for the American Whitewater board meeting.

Dave Steindorf took us out for an afternoon to experience his local run.

Door 2 and 3 are visible in this photo. Door 1 is off to the left and door 4 is around to the right.
Looking upstream from the bottom of Let's Make a Deal.