Getting Ready
Great day yesterday on the NF American. Six boats total, all catarafts except for one kayak. Warm and sunny following a snow day in the foothills. Excellent low flow with 1.8 feet on the upper gauge at Iowa Hill Road. A bit tight at Chamberlain Falls! Note that none of the narrower framed boats got stuck at all.
Stuck at Chamberlain Falls
Waterfall
Still, there were beautiful waterfalls everywhere and some fun surfing to be had.
Surfing at the nosestand ledge
Bogus Thunder was a bit boney, but everyone made it fine. Here is Bob styling the left side run.
Bob in Bogus
There is a new slide (pretty big) on river left in the middle of Staircase, but it didn’t seem to have deposited much in the river. No change to the rapid that we could see. In the lower section below Yankee Jims, “surf alley” was it’s usual fast fun wave. Have to catch this one on the fly! Several other surf waves in this section are great fun, including “the big one” that I won’t surf in the little cat when the water is up. I caught Mark surfing one of the smaller ones.
Mark Surfing
It was a great day on the river, complete with a little carnage at the bottom of Grand Slalom when one of the cats flipped in front me. Luckily no one was hurt and all equipment was accounted for. Miraculously, a missing shoe turned up downstream quite a ways!