Packrafting the Middle Kings

"The primary prerequisite for obtaining the title 'macho river explorer' is a lack of sanity. The impossible is merely the undone.” Written by California paddling pioneer Lars Holbeck in reference to the first descent of the middle kings by Royal Robbins, Reg Lake, Doug Tompkins and Newsom Holmes in 1982. In the ensuing 4 decades, the kings has developed a reputation as THE classic Class V kayaking expedition in the Lower 48. I'll spare the hyperbole and simply say that this is one run that nearly every class 5 paddler aspires to paddle some day. After years of waiting, team duckybuddies decided this was the time to experience the river for ourselves.

Arizona March 2019

Utah June 2019

The middle kings drops 6500 feet over it's course from LeConte Canyon to the confluence with the south fork. It passes through a granite canyon of staggering scale and beauty. Yet, with the exception of the Class 5 kayaking crowd few are even aware of the existence of the canyon, nor its designation as a national park. TJ might have described it best when he called it Yosemite without the people. I assumed he meant with fewer people, fewer tour buses, fewer selfie sticks and commemorative shot glasses. No, actually there are no people here. In 6 days we didn’t see another person. Just what you hope for on a paddling trip through the wilderness. 

Utah July 2019

Arizona Feb 2019

Not wanting to follow the same cookie cutter approach (i.e. the only logical route) used by every other crew that has ever done the kings, we started searching the maps for a new way in. What we found left us intrigued. Rather than a 7 hour one-way shuttle, this new shuttle was only 35 miles. Rather than a 2800 foot climb to bishop pass, this trail was more downhill than up. Rather than hoping to secure a walk-up permit for the South Lake trailhead, the rancheria trailhead had only seen 6 hikers all month which practically guaranteed our permit. But more than any of that was the thrill of doing the trip in a new way. Maybe better, maybe worse, but different.

Of the 10 people that read this post I'm guessing one or two have never packrafted, so it's worth noting a few key differences between kayaks and packrafts. 1) weight - a packraft kit comes in around 40 lbs lighter than a kayak kit. This is obviously an advantage when hiking in to rivers deep in the wilderness, but it also makes it easier for weak scrawny paddlers like myself to pick up the bow when boofing over holes. The second difference is that packrafts float higher and tend to hit fewer rocks at low flows, but they don’t slide over rocks as well as a kayak. This plays out in big granite slides as we will see. This extra flotation also makes it harder to surf out of a hole. The final difference I’ll note is that kayaks are easier to roll after you flip. Over the last 527 days of kayaking I’ve swam once. Over the last 100 days of packrafting I've swam 6 times, meaning I swim 31 times more often than in my kayak. 

As Alpacka continues to refine packraft design, they are changing what an inflatable boat is capable of and incrementally narrowing the performance gap between kayaks and packrafts. I am personally stoked for the future of the sport and to see where it all leads.

When we completed our big wilderness trip (video) last year I was a little surprised at how well the trip had gone. Not long after finishing we decided that the middle kings was within reason. There was no question that this would be the hardest run our crew had attempted, but our experience had proven that we know how to make it safely down a remote class V river in inflatable boats. Why not test ourselves and boats on something even more challenging?

The near-record snowpack in the southwest provided ample opportunity to train. Our first big test was New Mexico’s Brazos Box. Called the Shangri-La of kayaking in the southern rockies by folks who know what they are talking about, we were less surprised this time when the trip went off without a hitch. Despite being an incredible run, this canyon is seldom paddled due to a narrow flow window and access issues. In our case, the normally arduous 6 hour shuttle across private land was replaced with a pleasant 2 hour hike in. There are 3 standard portages on this run (unless you're Tom Janney), and we only made 1 additional portage. 

Not long after the Brazos we were able to tick off my biggest goal for the year, Los Pinos. This run had been sitting on the radar for years, with the takeout a mere 40 minutes from my house. But again difficult access has kept most crews (and myself) from an attempt. In this case another 7 hour shuttle plus an 8 mile hike in over a mountain pass. Jeny and Curiak joined us as we opted to avoid the shuttle and hike up from near the takeout. 10 miles in we made camp, then hiked up farther in the morning with empty boats and paddled back to camp for night 2, and then paddled out on day 3. The scenery is about as pretty as Colorado gets, and the vallecito simulator gorge delivered one of the best days of paddling I had all year.

When our beloved Valle finally ran out of water in early August, we spent several weeks waiting for the Kings to come in. Dan took off for the North Fork Payette while Jeff and Diegel took the alpackas down Upper Cherry and joined Curiak for the lost valley Merced.

It was late August before the Kings finally began to drop into a runnable flow window, and we ended up starting the hike in with 1120 cfs on the gauge. Dan and I left after work from Durango and made an all night drive to meet Creamer and Diegel at 5 AM, where we dropped a car at Garnet Dike and drove to the Rancheria trailhead. I had never met Tom and was shocked when he started running laps around us on the hike in. I hope to be half as fit some day.

The first 10 miles of hiking are pretty unremarkable, but that all changes the minute you crest the rim and get your first view of tehipite valley. Perhaps the best reward for our chosen route was that we didn’t gradually build up to tehipite via some other beautiful but less impressive parts of the river canyon. This was an all of a sudden slap to the face. It was more grand, beautiful, and intimidating than I was prepared for.

We descended 3000 ft to the valley floor and found a spot to hang some bear bags with extra supplies. This allowed us to offload about half of our food and spare gear here to further lighten our packs and boats. With the sun already behind the west canyon wall, we rallied an extra few miles upstream at a near-jogging pace and found a sandy beach next to the river to call camp for the night. Everyone soaked in the river for a while to cool off before calling it a day after 21 miles of backpacking.

In the morning we continued upriver, hoping to make it near the top of the run by night 2. As we were passing rattlesnake canyon I was in the front of the group and nearly stepped on, well, a rattlesnake. We paid a bit more attention to our footsteps from then on out, but otherwise had no more close calls. We had been following a seemingly forgotten trail that was probably built in the 1930's by the CCC which wound its way between spectacular old growth sequoia and pondo amid moss covered boulders. There is no bridge so the west side of the river is more or less inaccessible to hikers during much of the summer, hence the poor trail condition.

At Simpson meadow we inflated a boat and ferried across to the east bank, and then followed the much more defined trail to the upper canyon. We reached our planned campsite with about 1 hour left before dark at the end of another 20 mile day. We had walked 40 miles to get to this point rather than a 15 mile stroll had we come in from the east. Honestly I can't foresee many people ever repeating this approach. My feet were wrecked from walking 40 miles in river shoes rather than hiking shoes, but Jeff is never short on energy and motivated to inflate the boats for a little boating in before dark. By the time we made it back to camp Dan had caught a fish, Tom had a fire going, and the beers had cooled to river temp. The fun part of the trip was just beginning.

Waking in the morning about 2 miles below palisade creek, we left our camping gear and headed upstream with empty boats just so we could slide our way back down. This was some of the funnest paddling of the trip. Countless clean bedrock slides with just about the right flows for most of them. We made some slow but rewarding miles showing ourselves down the river, portaging when needed and paddling far more than we walked.

Does it get any better than this?!

Somewhere in the middle of the ledges gorge I dropped into a hole with no speed. After locking into a side surf for 35 seconds I had plenty of time to realize that I wasn't coming out of this in my boat. Taking the less noble option, I pulled while still upright and swam into a nearby cave with my paddle. I was able to reach out and grab my boat which was still recirculating in the hole, and inside of the cave I drained the boat and climbed back in before continuing downstream. This is the shortest and most benign swim of my life. I'm not making light of the risk, but swimming with a packraft really isn't the same yard sale that it is with a kayak. 

By this point we had pretty much dialed in how much water we needed covering a slide to stay in control, and the lead in drop to Money Drop was too low for us to make the slide-to-boof move. It was frustrating to have to walk one of the signature drops that I had thought might go in our inflatables but so it goes. With this disappointment still fresh in my mind as we approached the devils slide, I was more or less determined to run it lest we miss out on all of the 'big ones'. After having a scout my teammates did not share in my conviction that this one needed to be paddled, leaving the onus on me to see how it would go.  

The lead in honestly looked too shallow to have enough speed required to bust through the lateral and get to the left to be set up for the bottom, but I just couldn't force myself to shoulder around this drop. There are times when you scout a big rapid and see the line and are so inspired that you stick it perfectly, but this was not going to be one of those times. While entering the ramp my boat drug a bit on the rock, checking some speed. I tried to move left but got rejected back to the right by said lateral. At this point I took a deep breath and resigned myself to what I knew was coming. It felt like I was airborne for a second or two, and then hit hard and flipped. I was able to roll up to the unexpected surprise to see that I had cleared the hole at the bottom and was going to stay in my boat despite a bad line! A second later proved me wrong, and a flurry of forward strokes had no effect as I was sucked back into the hole. I swam for the second time in an hour and Dan eventually bagged and hauled me to shore. After racking up a few of months worth of swims in the same morning, I dialed it back and was content to walk around the waterfall gorge with Tom while Dan and Jeff absolutely greased it. 

By the time we reached the end of the waterfall gorge it was getting late in the afternoon and we were still half a day behind schedule. We knew there was a stout section of river between us and Simpson meadow, and so we chose to portage along the trail to make up some time. Walking downhill along a trail meant that we covered a lot of distance quickly before we put back on the river. We eddy hopped downstream to make sure we didn't drop in to raw dog blind, but when the gradient never picked back up and we eventually realized we had walked past raw dog gorge. Honestly I wasn’t that upset.

Day 4 we paddled the “Middle 4”. You never really see many photos or footage from this section so we figured it would be a pretty cruiser day, but we were wrong. If it were a standalone section it would be more famous, but it gets overshadowed by the big brother Bottom 9 section downstream. I guess I will continue the tradition and gloss over it, but suffice it to say that it is a full day of rapids with great camping waiting for you at the end.

Camping below tehipite dome must be one of the best river campsites out there. If only there was a good fishing hole. Jeff outdid himself here, dishing out strawberry shortcake followed by white Russian cocktails made with heavy cream. The extra calories were welcomed, and as the alcohol began to take effect we speculated about what lay downstream in the infamous bottom 9.

We were on the water by 8 AM on day 5. Tom had seen enough of the kings to feel satisfied, and he was able to hike out the same trail we came down knowing that the car was still waiting at the top. The bottom 9 starts pretty abruptly with a large rapid that we ran the lead in to before Dan and I made our first big portage of the day. Whether he blew the eddy or got inspired at the last moment is still unclear to me, but Jeff had a great line down this one. 

We had psyched ourselves out a bit, expecting this to be some next level section of whitewater that we had little business attempting to paddle but what we found instead was a number of awesome rapids that we were stoked to run. We made a few portages, but most were fairly short jaunts through the increasingly desert-like vegetation. We got into a rhythm as we moved downstream, taking our time enjoying the day and the excellent rapids. 

About the time we relaxed and our grins had grown ear to ear, the river changed. The next 2 miles were way steeper, more continuous, and more full on than what we had seen that morning. The portages started stacking up, and our progress slowed. At the worst point it took us an hour to descend 100 vertical feet of a section that drops 1900 feet! Luckily we had 2 days to make it from Tehipite to the takeout so we relaxed and continued at our own pace rather than feeling rushed into making loose decisions. The challenge of showing ourselves down such a steep section of river sans-guide and unlocking this puzzle was one of the most rewarding pieces of the trip!

The light was starting to soften as we came upon the stand-out rapid of the day. So many great boofs stacked up through this one! 

By this point I was starting to wear down from 5 days in a row of 10-12 hours on the move and Dan really shined here. I've only seen it 3 or 4 times in as many years, but when Thurber catches fire you just fall in behind and try to keep up! Not long after this sequence the river made a hard right bend and the gradient eased up a bit as we routed down several rapids with Dan in the lead. We eventually ran out of light before reaching the confluence, and made a hasty camp just as dark settled in.

In the morning I ate what few calories remained in my drybags before we hit the river early (again). Some mostly mellow paddling brought us to the confluence before too long. The trip wasn’t over yet, but in my mind we had done it. The feeling of satisfaction here was palpable as we all looked at each other with big grins and satisfied howls. At this point I didn’t care if I swam 5 times in Garlic falls, because nothing was going to take away the sense of accomplishment of what we had just done.

I assumed that Garlic falls would be a cruiser big water paddle out with some easy rapids. Wrong again. As it turns out this is a 'semi-classic' section of California class 5 (quoting Darin McQuoid here). And it was good! Eventually this section too ran out of gradient about the time we passed the second waterfall.

At Garnet Dike we deflated the boats and started another all night drive to get home in time for work in the morning. I couldn't wait to see how much my 10 month old son had changed in the past week, and I think the entire team was pretty excited that we didn’t have to hike or paddle again tomorrow.  

Garlic Falls. Jeff and Dan on the left bank for scale.

I completed the trip with two swims, and it's unfortunate that they both happened in the first few hours because it changed my mindset so that I walked a little more than I normally would have. But boating is as much of a mental sport as any other. I'm grateful that after so many years of waiting for this one the stars aligned and I was able to experience a new world class section of river with some good friends, while doing it in a slightly different way than has been done before.

In many ways what makes the middle kings so special is a magnified sense of the same reasons we paddle any river. It's the camping, the scenery, the shared sense of adventure, and the feeling of rising to the personal challenge that was set long before we ever took the first paddle stroke. I hope I get to enjoy these same things all over again next year, when we test the limits of ourselves and of our packrafts again. This time on the Stikine.

Just kidding