Last month I went in with a group to fire off Upper Cherry Creek. The place is beyond words when it comes to whitewater, pure granite bedrock everywhere you look, fantastic slides and teacups galore. The work involves an 11 mile hike to put-in followed by two days of substantial paddling. We were going in on the low side of runnable so the upper section was scrapey, but that made Cherry Bomb Gorge and Double Pothole almost mandatory.
I visited this run in 2002 and walked plenty of stuff. But going back in this time I planned to run plenty of the drops I cautiosly avoided. With only 8 days of paddling this season, I was not crisp, but I wanted it.
I was waiting to get video from my buddies of day two since my camera took a technicolor yawn, but we lagged, so here's to the stoke
The animated version of the first day:
And the static version:
Upper Cherry Creek
north of Tuolumne Meadows
kayakbackpack
A granite dome gorge to start off the day
Aprehension on the scout in Cherry Bomb: one kayaker pitoned a rock at the bottom of a drop downstream of here
The calm before the storm: well into Cherry Bomb Gorge with Cherry Bomb still looming downstream - a 30 foot slide to ski jump with a 10 to 15 foot drop followed by infinite teacups
The monster known as Cherry Bomb
And the teacups that follow
Releif at the campfire after finishing day one, or apprehension about Double Drop to start off day two? Some, but mostly just pure exaustion from the hike and paddle so far.
Let's get the day started with a nice clean 30 footer
The Double Drop is a 25 foot pothole followed by a 10 foot pothole. That is the reward. The work to get there consisted of an uber manky narrow slot
followed by a second, even narrower manky slot directly into an ugly pillow
from which you had to line it up
and huck. I initially decided to run the 30 footer and walk around, but once I was amped up from the 30 footer, I went after Double Drop. My line was ugly. My bow surged to the right after the first slot, and was pushed by the center rock above the second slot. The rock pushed me backwards and upside down through the second slot. I ended up in the forever-eddy to the left of the nasty pillow. I had no idea what the pillow would do to me, but with only one choice, I peeled out, broke through the pillow and lined it up for the big drop.
Downstream, we continued with some fun slides and falls
And were finally rewarded when Cherry Lake came into view.
First you you talk about kayaking in front of us, now your posting videos and pics all over the web- does it make you feel like a big man to blatently cheat on your skiing friends? You sick kayaker you
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doing stupid shit, so you don't have to
sick TR thanks for sharing. damm cali is so good...wilderness...granite...clean drops...I am trying to remember why I didn't move to Auburn after college...oh yeah...she just reminded me...
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