I met up with a few dudes from the Stanford Kayak club and headed out to the Sierras for some whitewater paddling. On Saturday Ben and I bounced out of Palo Alto, across the Central Valley, up the New Priest Grade (2700 feet in 6 miles), to Groveland to get a permit, and down the Burma Grade (3000 feet in 4 miles), thus dropping into the Merced River valley. Along the way I cursed my GPS unit and decided to ask the mountain bikers on the "road" for directions.
For those of you unfamiliar with California, the Merced is the river of Yosemite valley fame. It drains the famous valley with Half Dome, El Cap and so on. We put on not but 5 miles downstream from the exit of the park.
Fun section, lower water for the year, but still worth it. It was good to be out on the water.
Then we bounced over to the Tuolumne near Groveland, CA. Set shuttle, got up early, bounced down the dirt road to the bottom of the gorge praying that no cars were coming in the opposite direction, and put on around 9AM. Previous experience led us to believe that we would need more than 6 hours to do the 18+ mile run. We did it in 4 hours.
Allen adroitly angles around aerated agua.
Looking down the Tuolumne gorge. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny California day.
Needless to say, it was very dusty on all of the twisty mountain roads that I drove over the weekend. At times, dust was caked on the back bumper of my car. It won't rain for months.
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