On Monday June 30th I took a bus, 3 trains, and a plane to arrive in California around midnight. Chris Gabrielli helped me out in a big way, by picking me up at the airport and driving me to arrive at Cherry Lake around 4:00 AM. After sleeping for one hour, packing my stuff for another hour, I was hiking into upper cherry, with a proud crew around 6:00 AM.
Myself, Bryan Kirk, Andre Spino-Smith, Jed Selby, Dave Fussilli, Jared Seiler, and Nate Mack endured the hike to the put-in, getting on the water around 4:00 pm. We rallied through the first awesome set of slides, and one gorge before we got to camp for night 1. Being up that high with that much smooth granite was like being on Mars. There was nothing but smooth granite as far as the eye could see up and down the river.
We got a casual start on day 2, made quick work of Cherry Bomb Gorge, where quite a few of us landed on our heads off of cherry bomb falls, and then headed on downstream. After running endless amounts of clean waterfalls, and truly epic whitewater, we arrived, exhausted at Cherry Lake around 8:30 pm.
Where the river met the lake we ran into the nicest man alive with a power boat. He was kind enough to tow us acorss the lake rather than have us paddle six miles of flatwater to our car.
Although upper Cherry was absolutely incredible, and everything I ever hoped it could be, it was really just a warm-up for what was next.
I conveniently forgot the battery in my camera for this mission. For some awesome photos check out www.teampyranha.com. The pictures you see here were taken by Jared Seiler and Dave Fussilli
0 comments:
Post a Comment