Liquidlogic Ladies Lounge: California Update 2008

photo: robin betz

One of the best memories I have from California is meeting Kaweah River Keeper Bill Pooley. In between highwater runs on the Kaweah Bill filled us in with the rich stories about everything from swimming after too many beers on the river, to unrecognized first descents, to stories about all our friends who had met him in years past. If you need to know anything at all about the Kaweah's or Three Rivers just visit Bill's page or drop him a note - Kaweah River Page.

Bill Pooley with Chris

photo: robin betz

The East Kaweah was still too high, so one day we ran around and looked at the South Kaweah ( it needed more water, and so did Clover Creek), so we went and ran the Hospital Rock section of the Kaweah at stompin' good flow.

Shout out to BC paddler Corey Boux - who bombed down with us at 5.5 on the stick guage. It was too high for Zero to Sixty but the 420 gorge and everything else was full of good water boofs, curlers, and stompin holes - High Side of Good!!!

Then took a day off and went cliff jumping...

photo: daniel windham

After chillin' in Three Rivers for a couple of days with Bill, we decided that Dinkey Creek would be dropping in just perfectly. It was so exciting to find all these places and show ourselves down for the first time. Stanley and Holbec give you the minimum directions you need to find your way there, as if they want you to enjoy the same sense of exploration as they experienced back in the day.

looking down into dinkey creek...

photo: robin betz

So yea, we took the scenic route to Dinkey Creek, a little offline, and missed our cut-off time to start hiking in. We were also taken aback when we were scouting to find the trail and witnessed a black hawk helicopter extracting hundreds of pounds of marijuana from the tributary we were about to hike down to get to Dinkey.

photo: robin betz

We decided to avoid potentially getting shot by the DEA and camped out at Ross Crossing bridge and waited till the next day to start hiking. It was a dirty start to the two trip down Dinkey, but all the millions of gigantic-super-clean drops on Dinkey definitely made up for all that b.s.

Clayton Gaar in Spike: