Fourdice Creek aka the boat breaker!

We had our first big day yesterday with two broken boats, Berno crumpled the nose of his and Shannon cracked the hull of his. To add to this we had two swims out of the bottom of the same drop.. but all of that aside, it was still had a primo day on the river! The day started at 6am where we drove 20min up a 4wd track 2miles until we couldn't get passed the snow, then walked up and over a saddle for another 4 or 5 miles with our gear. Even though there was a bit of distance, it was definitly worth it for the snow-boating!

On the other side of the saddle we jumped on/in our boats and slid down the track in the 4wd rutts down the last 1.5-2 miles, by this stage I was naked because hiking in full kayak gear was far too hot to be busting our ass' in the scorching Californian sun. I just wrapped my long johns around my waist like a loin cloth to save Shannons eyes and it was good to go! We finally caught up with Berno and Josh at lake fourdice, waited for the irish pair and paddled the flat water for about a mile to the dam, walked around it, and finally put on the river.

Berno at Lake Fordyce after the walk

Doing some walking in the snow around the dam at the top of the creek

Irish Graeme on the first rapid of the day.
This sweet long slide that got everyone really excited...


Berno on his big slide! This is were he went deep and let the Mystic use its powers to cusion the hit...result being a crumpled nose.

Josh stomping the one and only ledge drop of the day!

From here there were a few other sweet rapids before the we started busting a move to get off the water before nightfall. Much to our disgust the rapids became less-clean, and with a tired team we were all stoaked to reach the lake signaling the end of a huge day!

South branch of the Middle fork of the Feather

For the last couple of days Berno, Joshy, and myself traveled down to the South Branch where we camped for two nights to experience heaven. When people ask why travel so far just to go kayaking sometimes it is hard to explain. Why travel to California though? Because it is packed with gems like the South Branch! This is the kind of run that you can't find back home in NZ. With a gradual warm up with some shallow boulder gardens, the gradient picks up, and before you know it you come around the corner and there's a super clean 15 footer which sets the scene for the rest of the day.

Josh Clarke getting some air under his boat

Once it started, the goods just kept coming until the end of the run. With this being our first run on South Branch, at each horizon line came more excitement. With the rock type over here being granite, it offers a totally diferent style of boating to back home which is primo.

Me gettin my boof on

Josh in Disney Land

Bernard Oliver droppin into the white


Me gettin some air time

Stomp!

This was one of my favorites on the run. Hard left, boof, and make the eddy before the 50ft portage. This was in the section where you look upstream and there are waterfalls as far as you can see and looking downstream you are looking off of the edge of the world. An amazing place!

Me on the second to last drop

Another amazing thing about this run was that at the take out there is a super clean 50 footer. Super cool to run, amazing free-fall, and the end of my paddle (snapped on day two). Lucky its the last drop on the run!

Josh Clarke with the tuck to end the day!

car is sorted!

Well... after spending a day in the sun in the parking lot of some super market putting in new shock absorbers, a cruisy run on the north american river that I forgot the name of, and a beer session of fitting the van with some bomber roofracks we are sorted for two months of boating!
With us being as cheap as we are we decided to fix the problems with our car ourselves. It turns out that doing this in a foreign country where you know no one and own no tools is not as easy as we anticipated. We ended up spending close to a full day chasing down parts and tools to finish the job and if it wasnt for the boys that were bored across the road in there workshop lending us their tools and area we may have spent the night in the shopping car park. lucky we really are resourcefull people and we pulled fingure and got the job done just in the nick of time...7hours later...
Then today we jumped on a streatch of the noth fork of the american for a cruisy class four streatch that was similar to the Rangitata back home, picked up supplies from wall mart, and then put on the most solid roof racks I've ever seen! Now you could call our vehicle that at the start somewhat resembled a soccer mom vehicle to a pimped out kayakers wagon ready to be thrashed!

NOW we can finally focus on kayaking!!