The only word I can use to describe how I felt on the way to Big Kimshew Creek is “gripped.” I’d heard too many stories of the multiple 60-foot waterfalls, the hard portages and the dicey helivac that happened in this gorge a few years back.
Now, in the afterlife – that is, my life AFTER Kimshew Creek – all I can say is this run will give you a different fix on reality, an altered perception of what “BIG” is, and the pleasant, intoxicating knowledge of what it’s like to go where rainbows are born.
In other words, Kimshew is the SH*T! This run is better than South Silver and Bridge Creek COMBINED (A-List Members KNOW how I feel about those runs). Kimshew’s added challenge is its 7-plus miles in length, making it a true Class V+ wilderness adventure. Looking on our maps and guesstimating, Kenny and I ventured that the thing drops on average 300 feet per mile. The section in the gorge, though, must be significantly steeper than that.
I got the call Thursday afternoon from “Kimshew” Kenny, telling me that Friday would be THE day for Dewin’ some Shewin’. After listening to him describe the run for the past several weeks, I didn’t know whether I should feel relief or despair. Surely, running it would put an end to all the horrible visions I’d created in my mind – not to mention Kenny’s incessant chattering about this creek. (He’s got a right to talk: he’s now run it four times). On the other hand, the price of exorcising those demons would be seeing the real thing for myself.
After the usual logistics loco, Steve Chambers and I arrived around 1 a.m. at the take-out near Stirling City where Big Kimshew dumps into the West Branch of the Feather. (You'll need a map to find it -- start out from Paradise on Rt. 191.) I couldn’t see it, but the roar of the water and Kenny’s assurances were all the affirmation I needed; there was water enough make a run.
When Kenny woke me shortly after 7 o’clock the next morning, the first thing I saw was the last drop on the Kimshew, the beautiful, curtain of green that is the last 20’ balcony drop on the run before it joins the West Branch. After seeing this view, no kayaker who suffers from BDL, or Big Drop Lust, would be able to resist.
On my map, the road that goes up to the put-in is called Reston Road, but I didn’t see any street signs. Once you come rejoin the pavement from the dirt road out of the take-out, make an immediate U-Turn onto the other dirt road to your right. We followed this a long way, veering to the right after the bridge over the West Branch, and started to hike down when we saw snow. Use a good map to make sure you know where you are.
It took us less than a half hour to hike to the river, and when we got there, it had that eerie flatness of a river that’s about to drop off the side of the world. From my guess, I’d say there was 200 cfs in the creek, if that, and we could have used 100 more. (At this level, the rock visible in the take-out drop on river left was showing about three feet high.) We put on between 10:30 and 11 o’clock.
The river starts off through classic Sierra granite, and you boogie through some boulders and one mini slide before coming to a thumb-rock boof drop that marks the true beginning of the run. Boof right to avoid the wall on the left.
After this, we came to our first portage, which was marked by a huge boulder in mid-stream that split the currents into a sieve on the left and a mini gorgette on the right. Kenny says the right channel has been run with some excitement, and it looked a shame that it was too low for the entrance drop to be negotiated cleanly that day.
Below this, we saw our first true falls: a 30-foot boof slide that’s the reward for negotiating the somewhat tricky entrance. Entering left, we made our way right to launch off the flake that sails you over the drop. Smiles all around after this. Below here, there was a funky rapid that dropped into the narrowest of granite slots above a second, six foot drop that had to be boofed left to avoid pitoning. Both Erik and I went into the slot and got flipped by the “wall current,” rolling up in time to make the move at the bottom. Kenny bobbled through the slot upright and hit the bottom clean.
An easier, but similar slot rapid follows and is run on river right. Hang on and DON’T flip. It looked shallow.
This section was followed by more nice boogie water and several slides that would have had some serious holes had there been more water. I won’t blame Kenny for the serious hole that I did find in an otherwise unremarkable spot; I saw him roll after going through it and charged anyway.
I became part of an endless spin cycle in a very boxed-in slot on river left that would spit me out when I flipped, only to suck me back in when I tried to role upright. The thing was only about three feet high, but near perfectly enclosed. After three or four revolutions of this, and losing grip of my paddle, I wet-exited in the otherwise calm waters downstream and saw Kenny smirking my way. I guess they don’t call him Crazy Kenny for nothing. Erik and Steve saw my line and scooted over the damp rock on river right.
After one more series of slides, we stopped for lunch, maybe a little less than halfway through the run. This is where the heart of the falls section begins, and it begins with a bang.
The first big falls is every bit of 50 feet, and while not truly vertical, it’s close enough to it. It drops straight into a red-walled gorge that quickly dumps over a tricky, 20-foot falls less than 100 yards downstream. After setting a very tenuous safety where Steve clung to the river right wall while holding a rope, Kenny dropped the monster with style, entering on the spout and finishing straight off the final boof.
He had warned both Erik and I about landing on our sides off the drop, but that didn’t prevent either of us from doing so. Afterwards, we reflected on the fact that both of us had the same thought right at the lip of the falls: what have I just gotten myself into? As for myself, I know this is the biggest drop I’ve ever run for the amount of time I had to think about falling on the way down. I entered the spout aimed the tiniest bit right, to avoid the hole on the left.
At first, I thought the falls was one
drop interrupted slightly by a pad that launched you off the whole thing, but
I quickly found out that there was a third drop within the drop.
I think it was this hidden drop that cocked right and caused me to land on my
side – I’ve still got the bolt marks from my bulkhead in my right
shin to prove it. Curiously, Erik got cocked the other way. In any case, the
falls was not as straightforward as it looked.
But it did drop you into a gorge that was unmistakably distinct from the top of the run. It’s from this pool that you can see the river start dropping out of sight, straight down into what seems like an endless basement of granite, winding its way away from the sun and into the shadows toward the West Feather.
The walls of this gorge and the slippery rock made it extremely difficult to scout the next drop. There was little space to get out on in the eddy on river left, and even less space to on which to deposit your kayak while looking at the drop. I wrestled with the boats and clung to the wall while Kenny and Erik precariously scouted the nasty 20-footer below -- it had a piton on the left and a munchy, backed-up hole on river right. But the portage down the slimy, slippery wall on river left didn’t look very easy, either. Meanwhile, Steve, who had stood safety for us on the big drop above, was still on the other side of the river.
Those were our positions when Kenny’s boat slipped off the rock and into the water – just above the drop and with two paddles inside it. I was amazed when Erik, without hesitation, jumped in after it, got one arm on it and swam back into the eddy. We lost one paddle to the falls, but that seemed like a small price after the near disaster of losing a boat downstream. It doesn’t take long to realize once you’re in this gorge that getting out without a boat would be a major endeavor.
Once we corralled Kenny’s boat and made use of a breakdown paddle, Kenny led on the nasty 20-footer. All I can say is that it’s easy to walk a rapid after you see someone else go off it and get worked; it takes a lot more balls to charge it to get your buds a little further downstream like Kenny did. Nonetheless, he got swallowed by the hole and came up sort of sideways on the seam between it and the backed-up outwash behind it. This was all in a swirling bathtub sort of teacup, immediately above another five-foot drop, and didn’t look like a fun place to be.
In that frozen second of time when an outcome is unknown, I’ve got to say it was unnerving to see Kenny out of his boat, suspended in the foam below that drop with no certainty about which direction he would be pushed next. Afterward, he just said he was trying as hard as he could to stay on top of the water and get downstream. Fortunately, he washed out of the tub and into the swirling eddy below, which was just above another, 25-foot long slide that slammed down to the right. Kenny clung to the wall next to some caves before expertly climbing out of the bowl himself, unassisted.
With the three of us still up on the walls above the drop, all we could do was watch helplessly as Kenny’s boat washed downstream. On top of that, the breakdown Kenny was using that replaced his other paddle was also washed downstream. After a pretty non-eventful morning, it seemed like things were starting to go wrong pretty quickly for the crew at Kimshew.
But then Kenny noticed both of the lost paddles floating in the caves that he had climbed out of. As he went downstream to see if he could find his boat, Steve didn’t flinch for a second from lowering himself into the cave to retrieve the paddles, with only a rope clipped into the safety harness of his PFD.
As he extracted the paddles, Kenny came back upstream on the opposite side of the river, signaling to us that he had indeed gotten his boat back. Miraculously, we found ourselves whole, healthy, and without any lost gear. (Kenny’s Salto did suffer a gash in its squared-off stern, but nothing a little self-bonding electrician’s plastic couldn’t take care of. Maybe it shows the boy scout side of him, but Kenny seems to carry this amazing material – rumored to be illegal in various states – as standard issue on hard-water runs.)
After getting squared-way, we knew we had to get a move on. We had spent well over an hour at this spot below the first big falls, advancing less than 100 yards downstream during that time. As Steve put it then, “We need to get out of here.” From then on, we knew, we had to boogie, and the challenging part of the run was just beginning.
After running a 20-foot slide, we got out to scout the next big drop, which was every bit of 60 feet long, narrow and gnarly. I didn’t have to look more than a few second to know where my line was – down the left hand bank. The rapid enters at the top on the right, only to fold into a massive hole before plunging over the crux once again. Where it lands, there’s a nasty, no-way-out eddy on river right that completely walled in. Kenny said he got in this eddy at higher water, and had to climb out on his own. After this point, the rapid squeezes down even more into a too-narrow channel. Having just witnessed what Kimshew was capable of, we all shouldered it.
After this drop, there’s a good section of river that has several smaller, but challenging rapids in it. One is a good drop with a big hole on the right. Another is a slot move, surrounded by boulders, also on the right with a powerful hydraulic that gave me a huge back-ender as I went through it. This all happens above the signature drop of the run: Frenchy’s Falls.
This 50-foot, true vertical falls got its name a few years ago when Stefan from Donner Summit (originally from Quebec) had a heart-wrenching accident here. The river goes over the drop clean, but as it does, the wall of the gorge comes in from the right to squeeze a paddler into a narrow line off the left side of the falls. To add some excitement, the entrance rapid above this drop is true Class V.
Apparently, running the river at much higher water than we had, Stefan got flipped in the rapid above, and rolled up just as he was going off the right side of the falls. Suffering a serious head injury, he had to be helivacced from the canyon. He made a full recovery, but those who were on that trip speak of the incident quite somberly.
Knowing this story, it’s hard not to think of the consequences of a bad line once you’re at the lip of this falls. We could have skipped the entrance rapid and put in just above the falls to run it, but we judged the river level to be too low. It just looked like a thin line to get far enough to the left and away from the wall on the right to be clean; plus, I like how the vertebrae in my back are currently arranged.
On the other hand, I suffered a pang of portager’s lament after leaving this one undone. Maybe next time.
Frenchy’s is the last giant drop in the canyon, but there are plenty more big, bouldery drops after this, as well as some junky stuff to get through. And of course, there’s the final, 20-footer that’s visible at the take out.
Bell stepped up and charged off this – not a mean feat, considering the nasty looking hole and piton at the bottom. He went through clean, though, inspiring Kenny and myself to follow.
It was after 6:00 PM, and we'd done the run in about seven hours.
Kenny’s truck, with Erik’s stash of snow-kept-cold Coor’s inside, was just a few hundred yards downstream. It was over these that we relived the days events with a good bit of relief – and a great feeling of accomplishment for Dewin’ some Shewin’.