Middle Kings - an even bigger pack raft adventure!

We’d been at it for four longish days:  two days of hiking about 20 miles each, then two more days of paddling  - and portaging - some of the hardest rapids we’d ever done in pack rafts, deep inside the Kings Canyon National Park Wilderness.  The scenery alone was worth the journey; we were less than a hundred miles from Yosemite in a valley with essentially the same geologic makeup, with a white granite dome that soared a higher-than-El Cap-3500 feet over the steep river valley we shared with exactly….no one.   We were slowly working our way down the Middle Fork of the Kings river, and camped just above the most notorious section of the canyon, with an exit possibility.  I’d been paddling at my limit and having a nice time doing so, but with 2700 feet to drop in ~8 miles my limits were going to get pushed. Do I take it the exit or forge on downstream? 

In August of nineteen hundred and ninety seven I bumped into the mighty Kern brothers: Johnny, Willie, and Chuck, at the summer Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake.  They had driven hard across the Nevada desert to reach the show in time to work it  - as some of the early “professional” kayakers getting sponsorship - after doing a descent of the Middle Fork of the Kings.  It may have been only the second descent; the first was done by Reg Lake, Royal Robbins, Doug Tompkins, and Newsome Holmes in 1982, where these extraordinary first descenteers (not just here, but all over California) declared it the hardest run they’d done.  

A fun pic I got a few years ago at the OR show:  Reg Lake is far right, with other legendary kayakers (l to r) Chris Spelius, John Wasson, and Rob Lesser

But it was a new era of shorter boats, better plastic, and more honed skills, and no doubt the Kerns and their pards likely did first descents of most of the rapids the pioneers had portaged.  

 The numbers were impressive:  12 mile hike in over 12,000 foot Bishop pass, 44 miles of river, an average gradient of over 200 feet/mile, and a few miles over 400 feet/mile.   These guys were the best in the world, and they said the Middle Fork Kings was pretty mindblowing in many regards, including of course, difficulty.  Not long afterwards was the release of one of the first of the new generation of kayak videos called “Liquid Lifestyles”, made by Scott Lindgren, one of the Kerns’ go-to pards, and I was absolutely stunned by the magnitude of the whitewater.   I was paddling some of the garden-style class 5 California rivers at that time, but this was clearly a big - and probably insurmountable - step up for me. 

In the ensuing 22 years the Middle Kings has become world famous among the gnarly dood (and doodette) kayak world, and John Muir Trail and Pacific Crest Trail hikers have been surprised in the late summer to see people lugging hardshell kayaks that tower over their head and are filled with camping gear and a weeks worth of food up and over Bishop Pass.   Images and videos of epic-ly long granite slides and huge drops in steep gorges against a stunning backdrop pepper the interwebs.  I didn’t think too much about it; my class 5 exploration days had kinda waned due to drought, pards that faded away and (mainly) living in a desert, but then pack rafts came along.  Since pack rafts are great low-water crafts more people have been able to paddle them on runs that are typically done in hardshells at much higher flows.  After a fortuitous bump into Willie Kern a year or two ago I followed up with him via email and asked him what he thought the Middle Kings would be like at low flows.  His answer:  still hard, probably pretty laced with sieves (where water rushes through rock gaps that a kayak would not fit through; sub-optimal for the craft’s captain).   Made sense to me, so I kinda forgot about it again. 

Until this year.  After two trips to California where I was able to join pack rafting Wunderkind Jeff Creamer (Jeff is no doubt the best never-has-hardshell-kayaked pack rafter in the world) for trips down the upper Tuolumne, upper Cherry Creek, and upper Merced it began to seem reasonable that the Middle Kings might go as well.  So when Jeff said that he and two super-solid pards of his from Durango were going to give the Middle Kings a go, I decided somewhat abruptly to jump on board. 

I will admit I had a fair bit of trepidation; Jeff’s thought was to head in when the Kings river gauge was dropping below the low side of medium, which was definitely not “low”.  Based on this, we would likely have between 300 and 500 cfs, which turned downhill steeply enough (like 2-500 feet/mile), can create some ferocious whitewater.  However, Jeff’s unusual idea to take advantage of the hikeability of the pack rafts by walking in from the West instead of over Bishop Pass (thereby taking the shuttle from 8 hours to a couple) and then walking upriver would give us a chance to scout the run as walked up, and since I knew the valley would be magical, I figured at worst it would be a great backpack trip (albeit a heavy-ish one, with the boat and assorted paddling gear). 

In addition to the rapidly-improving Jeff, his pards from Durango were equally strong lads who could not only paddle, they could march as well, which is important in pack rafting.  Dan Thurber has been paddling since he was a kid in Eastern Oregon and has spent many years at the class 5 level in a hardshell and teaches swiftwater rescue classes, and John Baker is another strong class 5 hardsheller who’s paddled all over the world.  Both have taken to pack rafting and have been pushing the limits of the crafts with tons of laps on Vallecito Creek, and the three of them have had recent impressive descents of Colorado’s Los Pinos Creek (jeff Video) and Wyoming’s Bull Lake Creek (Dan’s blog).  It didn’t take me long to recognize that these were young, talented, interesting, and solid guys to head out on an adventure like this one.

The hike in rolls through surprisingly (for the Sierras) nondescript terrain for about 13 miles to the edge of the canyon, but the view from the edge makes up for the previous dullness.  The view of the 4000-foot deep valley that sprawled below the soaring spire of Tehipite dome was simply outrageous:

Even though the view kept up on the descent down into the canyon, we couldn’t really look up at it; the super steep gradient of the trail that was covered with slick oak leaves over a decomposed granite surface with poison oak lacing the edges of the trail demanded full attention, and by the bottom my quivering, quaking quads were the focus of my energy. 

At the bottom we had a bigger perspective of Tehipite Dome:

and while typical national park trails look like this:

Our trail was a bit more primitive!

We had to be attentive to actually stay on the trail as we headed upriver, and lost it more than a coupla times, tho the bear scat helped keep us on track, since clearly bears like trails too.

As we climbed we had periodic views of the river, and what we saw was actually pretty encouraging, with a fair bit of what appeared to be class 4 boulder gardens:

Of course, rapids always look a lot easier when you aren’t geared up and about to peel out of the eddy and commit to the looming horizon line! 

We did see some of the infamous meaty rapids that we assumed would be portages once indeed we were geared up and heading downstream:

foreshadowing!

And we were psyched to be able to have boats for a mandatory crossing of the river:

This was probably thigh deep; not a big deal but enough that walking across with a heavy pack would have been a challenge in the middle.  In anything other than summertime flows crossing the river in this meadow would be a bit desperate; perhaps that is why our trail was very little used!

Another full day of hiking upriver brought us to a beautiful granite slab adjacent to a long thundering slide, about a mile below where Dusy and Palisade creeks combined to form the Middle Fork proper, and where the John Muir/Pacific Crest trail combo passed by on their way to the LeConte ranger station. 

Once at camp, Jeff and John decided to quickly gear up and head upstream for a half-mile of paddling back to camp to get a sense of how the river was, since the short bit above camp looked promising.  They arrived back at dusk, with a report of “yah, it’s pretty real!”  With that experience and comment resonating in our head and the white noise thunder of the huge slide just feet from our feet, we went to sleep wondering how the next few days of paddling the mighty MF Kings was gonna go. 

to be continued....

thanks to Jeff Creamer for the pics...