North Fork Stanislaus “Hell’s Kitchen” V-V+




There generally isn’t much flowing in California during the fall months, and this year was no exception. With a four day weekend ahead I met up with Paul Gamache and Alex Wolfgram in Redding and headed for the South Fork Feather, Cherry Creek and NF Stanislaus.

Loading up the car for some kayaking, somewhere in Redding.


I won’t go into details, but off the water this is what most of our trip was all about.
That aside, after a late arrival and hike down Lumsden road we mananged to rally Ben Hawthorn to join us on a two day trip down the Hell’s Kitchen run on the North Fork Stanislaus. Caliproduct has video here and a brief write-up here.

Beautiful sunset sets the scene for the Lumsden hike in.

Sunday morning we set out at a decent pace for the ¾ mile hike-in down the North Fork Stanislaus until the confluence with Highland Creek where we would hopefully have enough water to kayak.
Paul Gamache hiking through some beautiful granite scenery.

We made decent time and here is a downstream view above the confluence with Highland Creek, around 10:30am.

The first thing we noticed was rather low flows, perhaps 250cfs compared with the previous 400cfs that Alex and Ben had last year. This necessitated a lot of portaging, as the majority of the water went under rocks in quite a few places. Most portages were short and quick, but eventually after some clean bedrock drops we reached the first major portage.
Ben Hawthorn, Alex Wolfgram and Paul Gamache below the first major portage, plenty of sieves in here.

Talking about the final drop that has been run at higher flows.

Below here we continued to run good rapids and portage a fair share due to low flows, and eventually arrived at “Psychotic Lover” and portaged after a brief scout. Downriver we made time until “Portage 24” which was still a portage due to low flows and a painful looking landing. It’s named after the first descent, thankfully we didn’t have that many portages under our belt yet, perhaps only 5-8. Within a short amount of time after “Portage 24” we arrived at the whole reason for running the Hell’s Kitchen section at low flows, a fun 20’ waterfall dubbed “Mini Curtain” due to it’s similarity to curtain falls on the Middle Fork Feather. The waterfall is clean but has a tricky IV+ lead-in combined with a sticky ledge after it, as demonstrated by Alex Wolfgram in the aforementioned video.

Alex Wolfgram, focused on cleaning it this time.


Paul Gamache was up next with another clean line down the curtain.


Ben Hawthorn was right behind him with a delicious delayed boof.

To my surprise the vast majority of rapids in Hell’s Kitchen were boulder gardens, not clean granite bedrock drops. Most were long read and run affairs with the occasional portage for mank that would clean up with higher flows. As evening set in we reached the meadow above the Ramsey section and paddled through the gorgeous meadows to our campsite above the first rapid in the Ramseys section.

Camping out on a nice granite slab.


Ah, caveman TV, my favorite station.


Monday morning saw us up at a decent hour and we started off with a quick portage down a rapid that could have used more water, followed by a lot of steep boulder garden read and run. Somewhere in here my memory gets vague, but I seem to remember running this nice drop directly upstream from the third named rapid, “Astrobiologist Creep”.

Paul Gamache on said unnamed ledge drop.


Extra kayak porn, Alex Wolfgram boofing the same drop.

Obviously the next drop was “Astrobiologist Creep” aka "Hourglass Falls" the third named rapid on Hell’s Kitchen.

The boys scouting it up.


After a quick scout I gave it a go and had an ok line getting a little sideways at the bottom but punching through. The climb up the cliff to get a shot of Paul running it was scarier than the rapid, at least for someone as scared of heights as I am.

Paul passes a boat to Alex on the portage for Astro.


While Alex finishes portaging Paul Gamache runs “Astrobiologist Creep”






Within a short distance we came upon another fun bedrock slide, run here by Paul Gamache.


Paul and Alex in the eddy below.


Darin McQuoid


We hit up a lot of read and run after this for quite a ways, eventually we portaged on the right around another large sieve that should have been portaged left. More boulder gardens followed and we got out to scout a drop that at low water was a 5’ slide that went into a rock with a boxed in, recirulating eddy on the right. Paul probed and pitoned at the bottom but managed to get out left, while Ben drove from right to left and still got pushed into the rock at the bottom. Alex was portaging on the left, and I found myself getting lazy. I hopped in my kayak and put-in where Paul did instead of carrying back upstream to get the right to left movement. I ended up pitoning in a similar manner but got pushed into the boxed in eddy that was about 5’ wide and 10’ deep with vertical rocks on all sides, and the water jetting down the slide to block the exit. I was stable and upright so figured no big deal and tried to blast across the jet, only to get blown up against the rock again and flipping upside down. I tried roll attempts on both sides but wasn’t getting anywhere as it surfed me up against the rocks, and eventually while I was trying my fifth roll it surfed me back into the jet of water where I was finally able to roll, but suffered a partially blown skirt. I knew I had to get out quick and started ferrying back across, leaning hard into the rock and disappearing underwater as I made my way across the jet of water. Thankfully I made it out before my boat was fully inundated with water and sinking while I was still in it. A short break followed and we were back into the read and run boulder gardens, eventually getting out on the right to portage a large jumbled mess. This whole run is pretty vague in the memory due to numerous long boulder gardens that we were able to boat scout, but eventually after many rapids and a portage or two we came upon one of the few distinct rapids mixed in a boulder garden. It had a nice 5’ ledge at the top followed by a long multi-move finish.

Here is Paul Gamache on the initial drop.


Paul Gamache on unnamed but fun rapid.


Alex Wolfgram and Ben Hawthorn blue angle the same drop.

It seemed like a fairly short time after this that we started seeing people on the banks and eventually arrived at the popular Sourgrass campground, our take-out.


At low flows I wouldn’t call this run a classic, although I have heard that it is a true classic at higher flows. It’s certainly worth doing at least once in the fall for the scenery, occasional large rapid and quality portages. The Ramseys section offers up a better one day run with more action and notably less portaging, although you do miss out on Mini Curtain. Flows for Hell’s Kitchen are quite an issue, while you can count on having some water you’ll never know how much until you get to the bottom of Highland Creek. You could also go from low to high water overnight. This graph illustrates the issue with highly fluctuating flows from the release.

Shuttle directions are in Holbeck & Stanley’s book “Best Whitewater of California”.

There is video of this run with good flows flows on Oregon Kayaking.