Cali Part 2: Just When You Think You've Had Enough The Middle Kings Gives You More

It's hard to express in words what the Middle Kings experience was like. Everything about it exceeded my expectations. Just when I thought the hike was almost over, there was more. Just when I thought we were getting close to camp on the river there was another rapid to run. When I thought the scenery could not get any more beautiful, it did. When I had enough of the bottom 9 and thought it could not get any steeper, all I saw only the tops of trees indicating more steep whitewater. When I thought there was no way that Steve's boat could crack any more, several more cracks appeared, rendering his boat completely useless.




















After Upper Cherry, I experienced a 3 day waiting/logistical puzzle that seeemed to last forever. I met up with Phil and Jeff on Thursday morning to find out that Chris had an emergency and was forced to fly to New York to care of things more important than kayaking.















The three of us that were left met up with Steve and Bob: Two fine representavies of Canada. The plan was to hike in to the Middle Kings and run the whitewater for four and a half days. After dealing with everything we had to deal with we were finally at the trailhead, ready to hike on Saturday evening. We made the 14-mile hike over 12,000 foot Bishop Pass and down to the river in about 10 hours. After a favorable interaction with Ranger Bob, and a good night of sleep, we were paddling the Middle Kings by 9:00 Monday morning.


















For the next 4 1/2 days the Middle Kings pushed me to my limit. I ran a lot of amazing whitewater, did a solid amount of portaging, and took in some incredible scenery. I can not say enough about how well our team worked together, and stayed cool during some of the more difficult moments. If it weren't for the wonderful way our group worked together, this amazing trip could have easily been a negative one.





This experience was physically, and mentally the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Phil, Steve, Bob, Jeff, and myself all arrived at the confluence of the middle and south fork of the kings, stronger, tougher, smarter, and a lot more humble than we were 6 days prior at the south lake trailhead.

California Part1: Upper Cherry

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