I had a nice visit to southern California, taking care of business and visiting with family. I had arranged to meet up with a few local canyoners to tackle a couple canyons in the southern Sierra including what we thought (and turned out to be) a first descent of lower Peppermint Creek. I had looked at maybe doing this canyon, spending a bit of time with Google Earth and topo maps, trying to get a sense of all the drops and possible anchor challenges. As it turned out by coincidence a group was planning to descend it the same weekend. I got in touch and they kindly invited me along. My sister bravely agreed to drop me off on the wrong side of LA at about 3p on a Friday (prime traffic conditions), and we were soon on our way. We found a nice camp spot just above the creek. It was a cool night.
In the morning I awoke to more people to meet. After breakfast we laid out gear, ultimately taking probably three times the gear we needed for the descent. When the sun finally reached us through the trees it allayed my fears of a cold day's canyoning. Nine strong, we strolled along the innocent creek through the forest. After a few minutes walk the wooded creek gave way to slippery granite bedrock and started dropping. Several nice potholes led to one very nice jumpable pothole (above) with the sloping horizonline of Peppermint Falls. I was thrilled to see the small tree I thought I saw on Google Earth to be in fine shape, and we easily rigged a 140ft rappel off of it. This put us right into the middle of the water flow, which though slippery, was great fun.
The top part of the canyon ends abruptly at this falls. To get to the lower and much longer part of the canyon we had to skirt around a block of private property as the landowner's watched on questioningly. This require a bit of bush bashing along the outside of a barbed wire boundary fence. We re-crossed the creek just below their bridge, then continued across a meadow area to the obvious drop in for the lower canyon. With a total vertical drop of 600ft and lots of granite bedrock, I had high hopes for this canyon.
It started slow with some nice pothole chain drops best bypassed on granite slabs. This led to the first rappel in the lower canyon. I found the most perfect knot chock placement for the anchor which was most satisfying. This was followed by two really fun slides (I did about a half dozen times) and another rappel.
Downclimbing through a boulder scrambling section then brought us to the final two stage falls. To get the most bang for our buck on this last falls we chose a rappel which put us on to a ledge with a tiny tree at the lip of the main falls. From here we could rap right through the main flow of the falls, right through a mossy overhanging section. This rappel was easily the highlight of the canyon and I could not help but find a way up and around it to do it a second time.
A short walk brought us to the Kern River. We found a relatively easy place to hike up the hillside on canyon left to a good trail which led us back. We had a solid campfire that night and lots of fun swapping stories. Although we had higher hopes for the canyon, it still was a lot of fun and worth doing. At higher flows the canyon would be much more challenging. Thanks to the team, and to my sister and dad for ferrying me across LA.
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