Flows on the Middle Yuba + First Descent + Pics

[Nathan H]

Some of you might have seen on Dreamflows that Jackson Meadow and Milton Reservoirs are spilling right now and will for several more days (To the 7th I think).

Chris Tulley, Culley Thomas and myself had a chance to explore two of the canyons below Milton reservoir this Friday. We put in right below Milton and took out below Box Canyon 1. There's actually some great stuff in there and the canyon scenery is like nothing else I've seen in California...except for the section right downstream of this that we explored earlier this year. http://www.huckinhuge.com/1st_D_Midd...x_Canyons.html

We had a release flow of 170cfs...which sounds kind of low, but was actually plenty for the Gates of Antipodes canyon and Box Canyon 1. They are incredibly narrow in places and quite locked in. At that flow, most of the significant drops were in the Class IV+ range with some obvious standouts. We all agreed that 300-350 cfs would be a sweet flow offering a legit class V experience or solid class IV+ with 5-6 interesting portages.


This might be a good opportunity to get some other trips in there so we can fill out the AW survey and get more data points for relicensing. These releases are part of the relicensing process but are mainly focused on fish flow studies. Give me a holler if you're thinking about it and I can offer thoughts on take-out access. We opted for a 1 mile, 1400 foot vertical climb out of the canyon using the Lilliput trail. Looked like the hike could be avoided on the other side of the river.

I put up just a few photos...we really didn't take too many with the weather system that came through Friday. I'm putting a video together as well that should be up in a couple days.
http://picasaweb.google.com/nathan.h...sAndBoxCanyon1

[Nathan H]

I should add that if we can ever negotiate a release of about 300-350, we can open up a solid Class V multi-day trip for our kayaking pleasure. Combined with the downstream Box Canyons 2 and 3, the full length run would be a full 3 days of action.

As these releases tend to occur in the fall, that would add a great trip to short list of creeking releases this time of year.

[acnelson]

How long did it take you on this run?

[Nathan H]

We did the run in about 7 hours from Milton to the take-out. It was a fairly slow pace considering Culley had a feverish cold and we scouted much more than was necessary. The hike was another hour and a half...but that can be avoided by shuttling on the other side of the river.

The lower two box canyons we did in April took two days...but that included some 4x4 shuttling and 5 miles of hiking in the snow.

[Nathan H]

http://vimeo.com/1909036

This clip has mostly other stuff, but has about a minute or so of what we filmed in there.

Also has the descent of the lower box canyons, upper cherry creek, fordyce, and the headwaters of the east kaweah.

[kellymoe]

Good stuff. That Antipodes Cyn reminds me of the Upper Big Tujunga Narrows run. Very tight.

[Keith]

Hey Nathan, definitely good info for the Yuba-Bear/Drum Spaulding Project relicensing. I will forward this post to Kelly Bricker of Devine Tarbell & Associates. They are the ones compiling the flow data as part of the relicensing process. I attended a focus group meeting at their office in Sacramento and this was exactly the kind of stuff we were talking about.

There was a real positive energy at the meeting as we talked about these runs and what the future may hold. It was also a good forum for the runs where there isn't any published information. Of particular note here is that Rory (she lives in the little town of Washington on the SF Yuba) has run some of these sections of the MF Yuba in a raft.