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Thread: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

  1. #21
    ROL's Avatar
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    Re: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

    Drew, I think we're pretty far from the OP's thread at his point*, but yes to Patterson and North Fork of Kings from Balch Camp to confluence, as well as parts of Dinkey Creek above that. Above Balch the NF is unrunnable, but beginning below Black Rock Reservoir to Balch is the North Fork Jump Trip – in fact, an astounding canyoneering journey (…possibly the most 'committing' outdoors thing I've ever done) full of slippery granite traverses, painful jumps into cold, deep (hopefully), black pools, and 100 foot rappels at the lip of vertical waterfalls. I don't know what "Hell Hole" might be. Many runs have been renamed, and reclaimed as first descents, since I stopped routinely running Class V. The Middle SJ, as you say, is a sore point for me, and turned out to be a watershed(!) event in my continued boating over the years – and that's all I'm saying about that. The run beginning with a 'portage' over Bishop Pass you are describing is the Middle Fork of the Kings, pioneered by Royal Robbins and company. This fellow ran it solo a few years ago. Only as a point of possible related interest, I have had a kayak self-support website for such activities in the works for some time, KayakWild.com, but have yet to get it going. At this point, I may be secretly hoping kayak.com will buy the domain name from me, make me rich, and put me out of my misery.





    * most of these locations are in Sierra National Forest.
    Last edited by ROL; 23-Jun-2014 at 18:49.

  2. #22
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

    Yeah... kinda an inside track conversation at this point, ROL (my apologies, Garrett)... But I've watched em running the North Fork of the Kings with binoculars,
    looking like little ants in yellow hardhats, way down the cliff edging their gear hour after hour down those waterfalls. But somebody has sure done it, cause I done seen it! My own "whitewater" misadventures were again, naive inner tube things in some very dangerous spots - several pals of mine went over a waterfall once
    and miraculously survived without any broken bones, but plenty of stitches. One of them taught school for two years there at Black Rock - talk about an out-of-the way spot if you need groceries! For those of you who don't know the area - presumably everyone else - it's a tiny hydroelectric support community perched atop a giant boulder above the canyon. There's a magnificent cliff nearby called Patterson Bluffs, which have to be skirted to drive up the canyon. Engineering projects of the past on steroids. The Hell Hole is a stunning little confluence of the River and several creeks, with big waterfalls on each side falling into a conspicuous pool - a miniature Yosemite. It's a major drop below Wishon Res, way upstream from Black Rock. One of my dad's key employees and the local high school principle were fishing buddies back in the day, and would do a series of 400 ft rappels down into that thing - maybe 2500 ft down in all, then somehow winch back their ice coolers full of huge rainbow trout. They'd always bring those fish to us, cause we had a superb granite slow-cookin' smoke house.

  3. #23
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    Re: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

    Quote Originally Posted by Kerik Kouklis View Post
    Winter in Yosemite Valley is magic. Fall and Spring are also very nice, but the crowds are starting to build. There is NO good reason to go to The Valley in the summer. Ugh...

    All in all, sounds like a great trip!
    True enough about winter, and I suspect that many of us more familiar with the Park share that sentiment as our much preferred season, but to emphatically state that there is "NO" good reason to visit the Valley in the summer is simply nuts. For someone who is new to Yosemite, not visiting that magnificent cathedral stone, no matter the perceived difficulties, would be the same as traveling to the Louvre and not seeing the Mona Lisa because of crowds. I might even break my rule of not going past Olmsted on occasion to view some LFPF members' prints at the AA Gallery in the Valley.
    Last edited by ROL; 24-Jun-2014 at 12:00.

  4. #24
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    Re: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

    That's my point, Drew. I'm sure that every creek has been "run" over the last 20 years or so. By "running", we include many body crushing portages, roped traverses and rappels, and short drops in order to claim some variation of a first descent. That is of little interest to me, anymore. The problem with the waterways you have mentioned, is their water is almost entirely locked up in PG&E plumbing. Natural flow between Wishon and Black Rock is restricted mostly to that coming from Rancheria Creek. These runs have unnatural seasons fortified a few days of some years by scheduled releases.

    And that is the problem with the North Fork Kings below Black Rock. It drops over 1000 feet in less than a mile, through a series of vertical falls and cascades into deep plunge pools. Normal runnable Class V - VI water maxes out between 100 to 200 fpm. It is unrunnable at normal fish flows, and beyond deadly when releases occur. For that reason, anyone attempting the canyoneering style Jump Trip needs to know when releases occur so that they are not swept out of the defile down to Balch Camp. FTR, the inner gorge, below BR where the action occurs, cannot be seen from the NF – Wishon road. Unless someone has been guiding this thing, I think it more than likely that far fewer people have seen the inside of this gorge first hand than have seen the summit of Everest. One can get a taste of it by driving down to the BR Res. parking area and walking downstream to a 25 foot drop above a set of twin waterfalls, know as the "Jungle Book Falls", just out of view and dropping a relatively insignificant 30 feet onto a wide, polished granite shelf. Then, downstream, the fun really begins…



    Last edited by ROL; 24-Jun-2014 at 12:00.

  5. #25
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

    Thanks for sharing the pics - I recognize the spot. My favorite "swimming hole" was between a set of 200 ft waterfalls that had to be climbed to get there. I tried hiking back up there a few years ago and simply shook my head at how foolhardy we kids were. The more customary swimming hole was further downstream where kids had the habit of routinely jumping off a rock sixty feet up. I never had the courage. Too much risk of a hidden log down in the foam. And the rattlers on the path up ...!!! And I know far more than I should about the giant engineering projects. Two friends were killed in an avalanche-control dynamite accident building the Helms underground plant, along with a well-known climber. 250 more were killed underground before completion. And the even more incredible seven mile bore thru San Joaquin diorite (about four times as hard as El Cap monzonite) went right below our property with the world's biggest diamond drill bit (yeah -drilled, not blasted- 23ft in diameter, at a cost of over $20,000 PER FOOT for over seven miles). But no loss of life on that project. My more youthful foolhardy rope tricks were more engaged with figuring out how to get a big sluice box in and out of some undiscovered section of the river. A day of backbreaking work would yield about half an ounce of gold - not worth much back then, but today?? Anyway, it was all for "fun" - another crazy to do. Sudden water releases were and are always a dicey situation in the lower canyons. I can sure remember getting trapped on the wrong side of the river and going hand over hand about three hundred
    yards on a steel cable. ... but that's just called going to market some places in the Himalayas.

  6. #26

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    Re: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

    I've done some of that backbreaking gold dredging work in AZ, but never found a half OZ in a day. I was with some people that did though. I was wondering about the gold potential in some of those rivers, like the Kings.

  7. #27
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Back from Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite Tioga Pass

    There have been gold, tungsten, and even platinum mines all over the Sierra. But the Mother Lode per se ended at the San Joaquin River, the little town of Coarsegold being its southern terminus. It's still quite easy to find some quiet spot in the San Joaquin and dig black sand out of some pothole, and use a traditional
    gold pan to get some color - along with pretty little red and green garnets and black hematite. There are still a few large commercial mines too. But it's the guys
    going into the riverbeds with scuba gear and vacuuming up stuff off the bottom that are having the most luck - that is, if these areas were inaccessible to dredges
    back in the old days. And there was a rather stunning giant gold nugget hoax pulled off recently, which didn't fool me for a minute. The Kings river obviously gets
    quite steep upcanyon, as it splits into three forks, constituting the deepest canyons in North America. The geology is quite complex, and includes a wide vein of
    marble with many cave systems, two of the being open to the public. I particularly like the old metamorphic rocks in the lower canyons and the ladders of smaller
    seasonal waterfalls, as opposed to the main rivers. They can be a lot of work to explore, esp with a big 8x10 kit. But it is utterly amazing to what labor and suffering some of the old mining operation went to get to certain places. And sometimes those operations were in fact scams intended to sucker Eastern investors,
    just like "Beefstake Mine" of WC Fields fame. But I could go on and on about the local lore. As you head north into the Mother Lode proper, some of the geology
    changes dramatically. Marisposite is a lovely stone seen on certain road cuts.

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