NorCal Spring Break '07. Part 1: The Clear Creek death march.

For Spring Break, I got to take a four day trip to NorCal to paddle some California whitewater with my bros Brian Rudd and Erik Larsen. Brian and I met Erik at his home in Ashland on Wednesday night, and early Thursday morning we headed south. The first run on our list was Clear Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River. Erik had been doing some research through guide books and web blogs; most of our info came from the blog "Jefferson State Creeking", an awesome resource for California boating. Erik had been watching the levels and it seemed as though Clear Creek was good to go.

On the way to the put-in, we caught a few glimpses of the creek, which looked awesome. Unfortunately for us, the road to the Clear Creek trailhead was gated, turning our 1 mile hike into about a 4 mile hike. We decided to gear up and hike.

Brian Gives it a go.

The first 2 miles are all road hiking, which went relatively quickly.
Once we got to the trailhead, the hiking became a bit more strenuous due to the lack of trail maintenance.

On the way in, we caught several glimpses of the creek deep down in the canyon. It looked big from way up on the trail, but we figured that if it was bigger when we got in, we could walk the gnarly drops.
The first big rapid we came to was only about a 1/2 mile from the put-in. We gave it a look, and decided to walk it because the lines just looked a bit burly for our class IV boating skills.
The next drop we came to presented a big horizon line. We scouted it and decided to give it a go.

Erik cleans the second drop.

The author taking a different line.

By the time we got to the third drop, about two hours had passed. We quickly realized that we were running short on time, and decided to walk out of the canyon. BIG MISTAKE. It took us nearly four hours to move 500 ft. It was hot, sweaty work through steep unstable slopes and dense thickets of poison oak. The death march from the bottom.
After we got to Nordheimer, we looked at the guide book. Turns out that when we went in to the canyon, the flows were double the high recommended flow, turning class IV drops into big class V. FINAL SCORE: Clear Creek and poison oak 1, Ryan 0! One day, I will be back to Clear Creek for revenge.