Playspot – Cal Salmon – Dirka Dirka




With the loss of Oak Bottom, everyone’s favorite playspot on the Cal-Salmon all the local boaters were hoping that a good wave would come in somewhere else on the Salmon. The Cal-Salmon was blessed by the ’06 flood with “Dirka Dirka” a wave that everyone agrees is better then Oak Bottom. The bad news is the wave needs high flows, over 6’ on the Salmon gauge (roughly 5,000cfs) and word has it that Dirka improves as flows get higher (epic at 8,000).
It’s likely that Dirka Dirka will never have the long eddy lines that Oak Bottom occasionally had. Dirka Dirka lies about a half mile upstream of Cascade and has no road access, so access consists of paddling from Nordheimer to Cascade at flows above the recommended level. Everything is still just big class IV with a nice sneak around a big hole on Airplane Turn.
Aisha and I hit the wave up with flows around 6.5’ on the gauge and had a great time.
Aisha Hill and the blunt.

Aisha throwing a Helix.

The author with a blunt.

I’m not sure how low this spot goes, but it starts turning into a hole as water goes down. Thanks to a huge snowpack this year it should continue to flow for quite a while.

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