Marble Fork of the Kaweah V-V+




Welcome to the jungle.


The Kaweah is a crazy place, within minutes you can go from sparse rolling foothills to forest so thick and verdant it's truly a jungle in there. A jungle of poison oak, so thick and vast that like taxes and death, there is an unspoken acceptance of it as part of life.

Earlier in the week we had driven to the top and nearly dropped in, but decided that it would not be a wise move considering the gradient shown on the map. Instead we hiked in three miles to Admiration Point. This trail is shown on the Topographical Map, but not on the map that's handed out at the park entrance, and as such is not well known.

What we saw surprised both of us, the river falls over a series similar to Seven Falls on the South Branch Feather, but in a gorge.

Ben Stookesberry surveys the scene at Admiration Point.


The last of the falls is where the trail from Potwisha ends. "Marble Falls"


The two above Marble Falls, somewhere in the 40-60' range.


Even steeper above...we guessed they were around 30-40' each.


The problem...a gorged out rapid of unknown proportions, obviously quite large.


Zoomed out view of the series, quite a disturbing lack of portage options.


It was an easy choice to head to the Upper Middle Kaweah instead of dropping into the Marble Fork from the top. Still, we knew that we would return, this brief glimpse was too alluring.

The day after our Upper Middle Kaweah trip, Ben hiked in four miles from Potwisha Campground while I rested an injured foot, and he came back with an interesting report.

The trail led to Marble Falls, dropped over some sieved out boulder gardens, and disappeared into three distinct gorges. Each was visible from the trail and contained at least one large drop and several potentially manageable cascades.

We decided to go light and fast, leaving from the trailhead at six, packed for one day. Mr Stookesberry was kind enough to bring his 70 meter rope, which weighs more than the average overnight kit.

Blessed by cooler than normal weather, Ben and I reached Marble Falls a little before nine am.

Admiration Point from river level.


Ideally we would have waited for good lighting, but we knew time was of the essence if we wanted to get off the river before dark. I opted to probe while Ben put in the work for a great angle.

I thought I would have time for a few strokes before the lip of the falls, but from the seal launch to the lip I just had time to get my balance and take one necessary right stroke to correct my angle. I am awake now!


The sun peaks over the ridge line as Ben Stookesberry runs Marble Falls in Sequoia National Forest.


While walking on the trail around a sieved out rapid, I felt a little hesitant about dropping into the foreboding canyon. Once it there would be no easy egress. Ben didn't seem so hesitant though, and following his lead I seal launched into a pool above a portage.

The bedrock was still marble, which was tacky, a relief from other Kaweah fork polished granite. Ben Stookesberry sets up our portage down the middle.


With a relatively fast portage behind us, Ben and I scouted a boulder garden and found a theme for the day. The boulder garden was full of sieves, but didn't have narrow line that looked neither fun nor safe, and a series of quick portages followed, until we stood at the lip of the second canyon.

Apprehensive about what might lie in the canyon, we scouted each drop to make sure we could work our way back upstream if necessary.

Ben Stookesberry runs a small entrance slide.


Another scout & slide followed.


One more set leads to the big horizon we'd glimpsed from the trail.


We kept our upstream escape options in mind, although the last waterfall would be much harder to escape from. Knowing we'd be more or less committing to working our way downstream, Ben Stookesberry runs the final diminutive horizon line.


Whew she sure is big!


As the photograph shows, portage options were looking a little thing too. Rappelling to the base was out of the question, because it landed in a punchbowl, then went right down a canyon into a sieve. Not that I was debating running this hundred plus foot drop anyways.


We then set out to find the best route for us to get around the beast, eventually returning to our kayaks an hour and a half later. We were glad to have found a way around that didn't involve any technical rope work, although we would have to rope our boats seventy feet up a steep scree field, then simply traverse through the poison oak forest and drop through "the green door" a nice, fairly open draw that led down into the heart of the canyon.

Another hour and a half later, we were only too glad to jump in the water and cool off, marveling at the beauty of the canyon and conscious that we might just be getting into an unplanned overnight stay.


It was time to push on again, off we paddled into the third canyon. The bedrock had changed between the canyons, any trance of marble was gone. What we now had was something we'd achieved familiarity with in far Northern California.

Metamorphic bedrock, always a little chunky but fun too. Ben Stookesberry combines sliding, bouncing, and a little bit of water into good times.


From above the gorge looked like it could be full of technical rope work, but to our relief the slides were going quite well.


From Ben's scout we knew there would be a big slide in this canyon. Finishing off the slides we scrambled for an eddy. Out of our boats we only had to walk ten feet to see that, amazingly, it went. The slide certainly was big, but there was no reason it would not go. There was a potential piton in the middle at the top, but after that the slide opened up, curved to the right and banked in that direction too.

Tired from our already long day, I gave it a thumbs up and hopped in my boat. I tried to drive left in entrance, but my bow was still pushed too far center and I took a small piton, but resurfaced upright and took off down the rest of the slide. It was only too apparent that the slide was steeper than it looked from the top, and I was going really fast as I hit what had appeared to be a roller, and launched in the air. Thankfully the slide was banked, and I was flying down the middle of the slide, bracing for impact, landing in a soft splash in the aerated base of the slide.

Wide eyed, I looked back up at Ben and gave him two thumbs up with a big grin. I marked where I took off and landed in this photo of Ben.


Ben had no hesitation going next, and drove harder left in the entrance, where a pillow pushed him back to the center and away from the roller. Ben Stookesberry, the slide is longer than it looks, he has already dropped about 20'


Ben Stookesberry with a strong finish through the bottom holes.


So fun!


Refreshed from the fun slide, we put our blades in the water and pushed downstream into an incredible amount of portages around sieved out boulder gardens. We got into the grove of it when suddenly the earth dropped away again.


To our delight this portage, although of a similar sized set, only took about twenty minutes. A slide on the left side had lodged in the ravine, creating a nice set of shelves to walk across. Without these the portage would have been henious.

Ben Stookesberry dwarfed by another Marble Fork cascade.


Light was starting to fade as we hauled our boats around countless nasty boulder gardens. I couldn't help but gaze at the left bank dreaming that the diversion would show up around every corner. The diversion continued to elude my wishes, but again and again we portaged around sieves, until suddenly I stepped out of my boat onto smooth granite to scout another big set.

A perfect twenty foot slide into a short pool followed by a thirty foot slide transitioning into a horizontal launch pad. We shook our heads in amazement at the cleanest large drop of the whole Kaweah, hidden between terrible boulder gardens.

Ben Stookesberry takes one last look before embarking down the slide.


Ben Stookesberry about to make a high speed transition.


We cruised across the pool below the slide and embarked on another of what was to be many more portages around sieves and undercuts.

Light fading fast, Ben Stookesberry runs one last piece of bedrock on the Marble Fork.


We grunted through the portages, ran some mank and were exhausted by the time we finally reached the diversion at eight pm. Not too much time to spare!

Ben Stookesberry after washing off in the diversion.


Was the Marble Fork worth doing? The good drops are wonderful, and the in between is equally terrible. It might have the worst portage to fun ratio of any run that I'd return to...yet I would return to it. Probably not every year though, and certainly not for multiple laps! I'd consider it "classic" in the sense of the Middle San Joaquin...a classic mission of hard work through a beautiful place, with a handful of outstanding and singular rapids.

Upper Middle Kaweah V-V+




Best known from it's exposure in SLP's Burning Time 2, the Upper Middle Kaweah had only seen one other descent by the Huckin Huge crew. This is due to the infamous "Rusty's Rampage", a mandatory slide that pushes into a tenuous eddy. On the first descent three paddles were broken while folks tried to escape the eddy. Perhaps this explains why Ben and I couldn't find any compatriots for this mission, and were regaled to a twosome. We knew setting safety would be a rare luxury and lots of work, but didn't want to pass up the opportunity for good flows and cool weather, a key ingredient to hiking in the Kaweah.

The exploratory group came in through the East Fork Kaweah, entering the drainage higher up via a strenuous ten mile hike. While driving to the drainage, Ben Stookesberry and I sussed out some great beta from first descent veteran Taylor Robertson.

Hiking in from the Middle Fork trailhead, and entering the gorge at Panther Creek would put us right above the hardest "best" section of the river and take seven miles out of the hike. Running on somewhat of a schedule and lacking a shuttle, this car to car option fit the bill for our needs.

Ben Stookesberry loads up his boat for a quick overnight.


We planned to hike in, camp at Panther Creek and put in the following morning, hoping to make the push through in one day, but packed and extra nights food just in case...

The hike doesn't offer many views of the river due to thick manzanita and poison oak forests, so we kept out heads down and suffered through until we reached Panther Creek and saw the gorge.

Apparently once dropping in, we'd be "in it to win it"


Panther Creek is host to a beautiul campsite perched on the gorge rim above the Middle Kaweah, and we quickly made up our minds to camp by the fresh water and flat ground that seemed unlikely to be available in the gorge.

Geology major & map master Ben Stookesberry works his magic on the topo.


During the evening we scouted access to the river, which was a set of steep ledges that looked possible but time consuming. Ben declared it to be a "ten minute walk" to the river.

Sleeping perhaps too well, it wasn't an alpine start as we arose at eight and made breakfast. Once packed up we embarked on the steep descent to water level, being forced to rope our boats down several pitches and spend a little more than ten minutes to get below the scour line.

Looks like we should have just sent our boats down Panther Creek...


We geared up and shifted focus to downstream progress, something we'd have to get a lot of to finish in one day.

Ben Stookesberry gets a nice warmup through the first series of rapids.


The second move of the same, seems like perfect flows and already a disturbing lack of portage options. Just like the Hospital Rock section of the Middle Kaweah, the Upper was full of polished, slick granite. Slopes that normally wouldn't cause a problem were too slick to traverse.


Quick scouts helped us make progress through a few more boulder gardens, here is a quick glance back upstream.


Only a few minutes into the run, we were at a rapid that we couldn't quite scout the bottom of, and had no real options but to formulate what was happening from above, on what turned out to be a very friendly route.


Nested in the heart of the Sierra Nevada, it was no surprise that even with steep gradient, the river maintained a wonderful pool drop character. The pools were just long enough for nice recovery without any flatwater paddling, and the rapids were improving.

Ben Stookesberry boofs deeper into the Upper Middle Kaweah.


Still grinning from the nice boof, Ben and I pulled into an eddy at the top of what appeared to be a significant rapid. From the scout it was obvious that portaging would be quite an undertaking, the rapid was big, a little dangerous and there was a line.

Ben Stookesberry scouts one last time. He is standing level with the top of the rapid.


A technical lead in consisted mostly of dodging holes that fed into sieves, and one final move over a ten foot drop. The key was to get up high on the pillow and maintain enough momentum to not get pushed into the cave behind the drop.

Ben has an exemplary line at the culmination of the rapid.


A longer boulder hopping scout revealed a narrow pinch with a nice long lead in, Ben Stookesberry styling the pinch move.


One of the most amazing things about the Sequoia National Forest and the Kaweah River that flows through it, is the constant change in flora and fauna. This section of the Sierra contains the fastest transition from foothills to the divide, and as such it's only minutes of driving to go from desert scenery to giant Sequoias. Or a few hours kayaking.


We were really enjoying ourselves at this point, soaking in the unique scenery and both secretly dreaming that we had put in below Rusty's Rampage. Right on queue we were out taking a look at the infamous slide.

We both climbed up a monolith to scout the slide, and decided it looked good, although it did also have a big entrance that doesn't get snow in videos. However, the downstream horizon was in question, and Ben embarked on a long extended scout high up the left bank to make sure we could safely make it through the cataracts.

Ben returned to a high overlook where he could set safety and film a unique angle, signaling for me to eddy out between drops to receive more beta. On our initial scout we both agreed the ideal line was a different approach than that made by earlier runs. Everyone had tried to come in on the left, but driving hard and trying to force their way to the right side. The slide banked from right to left, and this obviously didn't work, with the success ratio hovering around 40%. The higher you climb, the higher you fall, in this circumstance back to the left and the subsequent eddy.

We decided to come in on the far left, but nice and slow. In a situation like this angle is more important than momentum (since you couldn't get any up the banked turn) The key would be to wait until past the banked turn and take two strong left side sweep strokes to make sure our bow was pointed to the right in the outflow of the slide.

I came down through the entrance, cruised through the slack water between an eddy on the left and the main flow, and dropping into the slide on the far left, nice and slow, and waited until I was past the temping boof flake to take my left strokes. I took two big left strokes but was in complete whiteout, not sure where I was heading until I hit a fluffy pillow on my left, rolled quickly and was fired up to be floating in the river right eddy. Ben then gave me verbal to run the next mean double drop, and helped me out of my boat to set safety. Climbing around on the polished, sloping granite slabs was much more frightening than running Rusty's Rampage, but safety needed to be set.

Ben Stookesberry lines it up on the left.


As Ben vanished in the bottom I was worried he was going to the left eddy, but he held a strong angle and resurfaced upright on river right.


Ben Stookesberry runs the mean double drop exit of Rusty's Rampage. A picture says a thousand words, and the holes were not nice but no swims.


The river twisted to the right, and after a low angle slide one more horizon blocked exit from the gorge. An extensive scout didn't make us smile, it was a sieve filled, unfriendly finale to the Panther Creek Gorge. A left side sneak move involved a eight foot boof with a narrow landing, followed by what seemed to be a pothole on the right and crack on the left. The crack had most the flow going into it, and lining up a good boof down the center with left angle would be ideal.

Down in the rapid, Ben fired up his headcam and gave the thumbs up. I came down apparently online, but after boofing I found myself surfing the pothole, and Ben came in hot and managed to boof over me, getting some epic footage. I continued to surf in the pocket, knowing a swim would be dire as potholes don't tend to let swimmers go. Eventually I caught a surge and grabbed a crack in the right wall, and managed to pull and push myself downstream, glad to have gotten away with one.

Once out of the Panther Creek Gorge the walls opened up enough to give portage options, although none were needed as we continued into a pleasant surprise.

I think Ben was surprised as I was about this clean waterfall.


More mini gorges awaited us, Ben Stookesberry locked in.


We pushed downstream noting we must be close to the road because there were two fisherman perched above another gorge. We made a quick portage around a dangerous entrance move before dropping into a nice rowdy triple set.

Ben Stookesberry below the triple set, the last rapid of the Upper Middle Kaweah is true representative of its character.


At this point there is a trail up to the trailhead, and this section is occasionally run in conjunction with Hospital Rock, although the quality is not on par with either section minus one or two better rapids.

One of the better rapids below the trailhead and above Buckeye Flat campground.


We had flows of 600-700 on the Middle Kaweah at Three Rivers, and thought it was perfect. Ben thought it would be possible to portage Rusty's Rampage, and while it would not require any technical rope work it would likely be as dangerous as the rapid. On the whole this run is destined to become a classic with the short hike in, locked in gorges and no mandatory portages. Arguably the hardest single day of kayaking in California.


Panther Creek put-in. (The Green marker)