After the wettest December on record for most of the Southern Sierra, January followed up with it's normal precipitation let-down. We're talking goose eggs for precipitation, nada, donuts, the little boy who cried zilch. On the plus side we have had some beautiful weather; sunny and 65 has been the norm for about 3 weeks now. With all the snowpack built up in December, we were getting some spring like conditions on the rivers - time to hit the water!
January? Really?
Last year in March we had our Hospital Rock for Desperate Souls low water adventures. Here we were two months earlier in the season with slightly higher flows and super nice weather. Geno, Dave and myself were all able to sneak away from other obligations on a Wednesday and enjoy a spectacular day trip into Sequoia National Park.
Geno descending the stair rapid
It was Dave's first trip down this classic run and we had to keep an eye out for any changes that resulted from the December foods; still we made good time on the river. Luckily there were no new hazards left by the high water, if anything some of the drops had actually cleaned up.
The flows were relatively low, measured at 178 cfs at the zero-to-sixty guage, but everything other than 420 rapid was still good to go and fun. Dave nailed pretty much everything on his first time down and Geno got the photo of the day on Table Rock.
Dave checks out Super Boof
After getting to the diversion we found that there was no diversion, so Zero-to-Sixty was pretty prime to go. After not getting to run it at all last year due to water level, I was excited to get on it again.
The Author enters Zero to Sixty
All in all it was another great day on the Kaweah, hard to believe that we still have two more months to go until April...
