Kaipo Slips Dec 22-26

After a few hours of sorting logistics in Te Anau and driving to Homer Hut to spend the night, next up was a longer but hopefully more comfortable trip mapping and sampling the enigmatic Kaipo Slips area of the remote Kaipo Valley, only really accessible by aircraft. Fixed-wing charters are no longer allowed to fly into the bush-style airstrip and so a helicopter from Milford was our only option. The weather was clear and calm allowing a relatively direct flight past Mt Pembroke. We were dropped off meters from the hut, unloaded, and the helicopter was gone in minutes, leaving us to the quiet of the valley. 

        Carpark kea

        Uber-plush Kaipo Hut (and below)

I was unaware but in the years since I last went into Kaipo the hut had been more or less rebuilt. I was expecting a spartan affair that was probably not sandfly or rain proof. What we found was one of the most kitted out huts I had ever seen. An extensive collection of utensils, and most notably a stove with wetback that allowed for hot showers! We got our gear settled in and then headed out to to geology in one of the four major slips adjacent to the fault. The slips exposed a bizarre collection of rocks altered, deformed, and faulted in strange ways. 

We had several very productive, very long days mapping three of the prominent slips. The excellent weather and comfort of the hut meant that it was easy to stay out working until 8p or later. Mapping on the tablet with lidar also made a huge difference in enhancing our understanding, accuracy, and efficiency. I collected a few samples from trees to try to date the drowned forests associated with some of the landslides and their downstream sediment pulses.

        Remnants of a drowned forest

        The Wolf River headscarp

On one of the days I went for a solo 2km cross-country mission through the bush to reach the head of the Wolf River, where I had previously flown in to collect uplifted marine shells. I was able to grab a sediment sample that hopefully will yield a well-constrained age for the sediment and allow me to determine uplift rates.

Christmas Day came and went like any other, a long day of work. Overall the trip was very productive and the Kaipo Slips make a lot more sense to me.

Hollyford Valley Dec 19-21

Land into Dunedin hours later than scheduled, stock up on supplies in Dunedin before everything closes, drive to Te Anau. Wake up the next morning and drive to the Hollyford Road end to start fieldwork in the rain. It was a rather frantic start to the field season. The focus of this season would be to collect samples for my student Andre's thermochronology project, which would allow us to better understand the history of uplift and exhumation in the critical strip of land between Fiordland and the Southern Alps. Unfortunately this requires collecting many large samples in remote locations and so needs creative logistic solutions to carry out the fieldwork. The rough plan was to packraft down the Hollyford River, grab samples on both sides of the Hollyford Valley and the Pyke Valley, and somehow hike back out the Hollyford Track with four heavy samples between two of us.

It was cold and rainy when we finally put on to the Hollyford at a very late 4:45p. Andre quickly got the hang of the packraft as we negotiated around plentiful logs and down small riffles. The scenery was stunning between the deep blue-green of the river and the lush bush draping over the banks. The occasional torrential downpours certainly added to the drama. Right as Andre and I were right in the middle of going down one of the more significant riffles a deafening boom of thunder hit. It gave us both an adrenaline rush and felt as if nature was coming to get us!

We did a long, muddy portage around the 500m-long Hollyford Rapid, the only real rapid of consequence on this section of the river. If this was a pleasure trip I would have definitely liked to have run it.

        Hollyford Rapid

This all took a while and the day was getting on. The original plan to paddle to McKerrow Island Hut seemed a little ill-advised (especially with the now continuously torrential rain) and so we exited at the Pyke Confluence (packrafting 20km) and walked over to Lake Alabaster Hut to weather the storm. At Pyke Lodge we were greeted by the friendly hosts, who after we mentioned the packrafting and fieldwork, suggested we stop by for tea tomorrow. This ended up being a crucial connection. It was 9:30p by the time we reached Lake Alabaster Hut which was quite busy with two large groups. With the low latitude mid-summer days it did not finally start to get dark until after 10:30p. The rain raged until the early morning.

We awoke to a very swollen Lake Alabaster. I managed to spectacularly stub my toe on a hut bench, a painful injury that would stay with me for over a month. We took our day trip field gear back down to the Pyke Confluence. The Pyke and Hollyford were well into flood stage! Fortunately this would not make the river much more challenging and would allow us to make much faster progress to Lake McKerrow.  We were able to take a sneak route to bypass the brunt of the Chute Rapid. I enjoyed the interesting exposures of the deltaic deposits in the river banks. We made the 9km to the lake in 45 minutes!

We found an excellent spot to take our first sample on the west side of the lake. We paddled across the strong Hollyford inflow, checked out McKerrow Island Hut briefly, and then paddled to the east shore of the lake. With a little more effort we eventually found a good lithology to sample. We collapsed our boats on the mega-driftwood beach and switched to hiking mode. Some annoying off-trail travel allowed us to intersect the equally annoying Demon Trail back towards the Pyke. The trail was a mess of slippery rocks, 3D root networks, and steep slopes. At the west abutment of the Pyke swingbridge we found the perfect place to grab yet another sample. 

We stopped in to say hello to Murray and partner at the Pyke Lodge where we chatted about geology and the valley over tea and tasty home-baking. To my great joy I did not have to ask and it came out organically: "Would you like us to take your rock samples out on a jetboat and fixed-wing backflight?" YES! They found us a cardboard box and we reinforced it with duct tape. We still had one extra sample to grab the next day and would drop it back. We stayed the night again at Lake Alabaster Hut and plotted our last sample location.

The next morning was particularly beautiful with clear skies and a complete lack of wind that turned the lake into a magnificent mirror. It was our first clear view of the Darrans and Mt Tutuko asserted itself. We chose Grebe Creek as our sample site and so set along the lake shore until we reached the creek. The creek was a typical steep frictionless, bouldery creek that required caution and multiple crossings. Andre was not a fan. It was slow going but we eventually reached a suitable outcrop,  sampled, and headed back to the hut.

        Lake Alabaster Hut, above and below

        Grebe Creek

We dropped off our rock at Pyke Lodge and had some more tea and baking, this time also meeting Bruce the valley's resident hermit. We had a nice chat but we had miles to go. Despite the gracious lack of rocks our packs were still exceptionally heavy and painful to lug along the Hollyford Track despite good trail conditions. Progress was slow, we both were in pain. The swingbridges and Homer Falls broke up the tramp a little bit. We stopped to collapse on the spacious Hidden Falls Hut desk and have a snack. We detoured to Hidden Falls, and then continued our grind to the car park. A quick hovel to check out the Humboldt Falls viewpoint, and then we drove back to Te Anau.

        Hidden Falls

San Jacinto Dec 1

With so much snow around from the Thanksgiving storm, it seemed like a prime opportunity to go play in the snow. Thinking that the local mountains would probably be a mess of poorly skilled drivers, we opted to go up the Palm Springs Tramway instead. Arriving a few minutes before 8a was sufficient to get us on the second gondola to the top (by 3pm it would be a 3.5hr wait!). The scenery up the gondola was impressive as always: seeming more in place in Patagonia than southern California.

Once off the tram, we ambled down the slippery icy switchbacked path to the forest's edge. 2 ft of snow! We went for an out-and-back to Round Valley and had a snack at one of the campsites there. The weather was pleasant enough and the snow conditions were decently firm with some snowshoes underfoot. We saw few people on the way there but on the return we passed many people aiming to summit San Jacinto Peak. Effortwise I feel like we could have easily done it but we hadn't really aimed to spend the whole day out.

No wait to get down the tram, we dropped back down to the low desert. We had a particularly tasty lunch in Palm Springs and then headed back to Riverside. A nice little excursion.

Temecula Gorge Nov 29

An unusually rainy Thanksgiving Day boosted the Santa Margarita River to a 1200cfs peak with a second unforecast peak delaying its decay just long enough for a morning Black Friday run. And cold! There was snow on the San Gabriels, Santa Anas, and San Jacinto like I had never seen. Like my previous run I was unable to find anyone to join me and so ran the 10 mile Temecula Gorge Class IV run solo yet again. It was just after 9a by the time I finally inflated and suited up in the Jack-In-The-Box parking lot in the lingering rain and walked past homeless tents and through dense willows to the river's edge. The Temecula gauge would say 350cfs nearby when I started and 270cfs when I finished, though the flow was noticeably higher than the last time I ran it when the gauge also said 350. The two other times I ran Temecula Gorge were late season February-ish runs where the native cacti and succulents were green, swollen, and happy. This was the first major rain after summer so instead I saw a much less vibrant landscape with plants holding on for dear life. Relatedly, there was considerably more foam in places and I don't think I was imagining that the water appeared extra gross. Also the first waterfall was at a trickle and the second was bone dry, which was new. The left gasket of my drysuit failed spectacularly when I stopped at the first waterfall and so I had a trickle of water working its way into my suit for the rest of the run.

The rapids filled in very nicely at this higher flow and I was able to read-and-run everything from memory. The only quick scout was at the rock ledge rapid near the prominent house sized boulder which previous times I had portaged or sneaked. This time and at this flow I was confident in a line down the center and this turned out to be one of the more enjoyable rapids. I made good work of the major rapids, only getting beached on a rock and flipping in a minor rapid towards the end of the gorge (self rescue was instant). I made it through the 6 mile gorge in an hour and a half, very analogous to my run last time when I was paddling hard to beat sundown. The remaining 4 miles of willows seemed more challenging at this flow and I had a couple near misses and one surprise sweeper that sent me for a swim. I was on high alert after that. I made it to the Sandia Creek parking lot at about 12:15p, only a few minutes after 3 hours. I chatted to a few friendly hikers seeking a ride but they were all headed the other direction so I summoned an Uber and was whisked away after 15 minutes. I was thrilled to get outside and be the only one on the river. I realized the wind was favorable and almost tried to hike up the Box Springs to fit in a paraglide flight but the day was just a little too short by the time I would have been able to mobilize. What an epic Black Friday that would have been: 10 mile Class IV packraft and paragliding in the same day within 45 minutes of my house!

Westwater Canyon Nov 10

After the tame float of Ruby-Horsethief Keith and I were both ready for a little splashy Class III excitement. Daniel and Calev were equally jazzed. Unfortunately Keith awoke feeling sickly and so our day got off to a slow start. Despite this we still managed to take off at 9a. We heard rumors that sun didn't make it into the canyon this time of year so I dressed extra warm under my drysuit. Thankfully I managed to dress just right for comfort although we had plenty of sun. The first three miles of open canyon brought us to a surprising stretch of Vishnu Schist on river left, then a towering cliff of sandstone on river right. We abruptly crossed a fault and found ourselves in a deepening black rock canyon with towering red walls above. For flatwater the river was moving comfortably which was helping with time. A bald eagle flew low overheard. Everyone was stoked, especially Calev who could barely contain himself.

        At the faulted entrance to Westwater Canyon

A few riffles led to a nice stretch of rapids after. We found these all the be read-and-run and to have fun wave trains to bounce over. We pulled into the awkward scouting spot for Skull Rapid just in time to see another group's kayaker blast through. There was a monstrous hole at the bottom of the rapid but very forgiving room to move from the center to the left throughout the rapid. I thought it was actually one of the easier rapids though the highest on consequence.

        Skull Rapid

The 200ft deep rock rock gorge within the 400ft deep canyon had a few more rapids but began to lose its height. After Last Chance Rapid the river reverted to flatwater, the slowest on either of the two runs we did. We passed a large rincon on river left and passed through a prominent dogleg gateway in the black rock. The basement then disappeared, lining the river with sandstone once again. The sandstone then disappeared into the river over a distance of about a mile and a half.

We made good time to the Cisco boat landing and packed up in good time. It would have been a great trip at this point but we had the unfortunate complication that Heather's car broke down and she was on her way to meet us with a rental. We spent a while figuring out logistics over burgers at Ray's Tavern in Green River. Keith and I would drive on to arrive back in Riverside at 1:30am while Heather and David would stick around Moab to figure out the car. Thanks again to Keith for sorting out river logistics. It was nice to check out a new 42 mile stretch of the Colorado River.

Ruby & Horsethief Canyons Nov 8-9

Lots of driving but I managed to sneak in two new-to-me Colorado River runs in a long weekend. Unusual for this time of year the Colorado here was still flowing at a healthy 4700 cfs. First up was the 25 mile Class I-II Ruby-Horsethief run (which probably should be called the Horsethief-Ruby run since Horsethief Canyon comes first). We drove for broke Thursday, arriving to a dusty roadside camping spot near the UT-CO border at about 2am. Chilly!

We slept as long as we could then drove to the boat launch. We readied ourselves relatively efficiently, the sun a welcome heat source for an otherwise brisk morning. At about 10am we set off, almost immediately having a bald eagle fly low overhead which we took for a good omen. Though even the riffles were very minor the River was consistently moving to our satisfaction such that we easily made the first 3 miles to Rattlesnake Canyon in less than an hour. Being one of the few sidehike options we beaches for a short walk. Keith and I walked about 1.5 miles up to where several forks of the canyon joined while Heather and David lagged behind.

        In Rattlesnake Canyon

We continued on, the canyon walls gradually growing skyward. I spotted a group of 18 bighorn sheep and pulled into the eddy in front of them to watch them for 5 minutes before paddling back into the current. Before too much longer riverside railroad tracks joined our run which would stay with us until the end of the run. At a location called Faultline we stopped for lunch on a cobble bar between two impressive outcrops of a ~100m monocline. Paddling on we continued to make good time. 

Our camp spot was 15 miles in at a place called Black Rock supposedly because the Vishnu schist is exposed at the river which I found hard to believe. Sure enough another monocline appeared just before camp with just enough buckling to barely expose the basement here. The River cuts through the Mesozoic sandstone and shale stratigraphy of the Morrison, Entrada, Kayenta, Wingate, and Chinle to hit its 2 billion year old basement black Vishnu Schist. The Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon is actually greater here with closer to 1.5 billion years of time missing. 

We pulled into our assigned camp Black Rock 5 with a comfortable amount of daylight left. After unloading my packraft and pitching my tent, Keith and I went for a short hike to try to scramble up the the canyon rim. We picked up a good trail used by people and bighorn sheep alike which got us to the rim in about 20 minutes. We continued along to the prow at the corner of Moore Canyon for a commanding view before heading back down to camp. We ran into the same group of sheep on the way up and down which held us with only mild interest. After an early dinner we all turned in to bed in short order, tired and too cold to have a reason to stay awake.

        Looking down from the Moore Canyon prow

Thankfully I slept warmer than the previous night. We had a somewhat leisurely morning, only needing to paddle 10 miles before 2pm on a river that generously kept moving. Within about a mile the river left its window into its black basement and cut back through the sedimentary layers.

Shortly we arrived at McDonald Creek where I had a pictograph side hike marked so we got out of the boats and hiked across slickrock benches to a prominent alcove. The pictographs were about the least impressive I’ve ever seen- a faded red and a faded white figurine next to each other- but the alcove and sandstone detail was quite nice.

Back on the river the canyon began to widen and the walls abated. A few more long sweeping bends and we were at the Westwater put-in/Ruby takeout. Keith hitched a ride to close the first of three shuttle runs. Daniel and Caleb eventually showed up to help complete the other two. I made a long lived fire at our riverside camp. Ruby-Horsethief has some nice scenic moments (especially the geological ones) and it was one of the most steadily moving Class I-II runs I’ve been on which was overall relaxing. Kudos to Keith for arranging the permits.

Box Springs Paragliding Nov 3

One of my main motivations for getting into paragliding was to have another way to explore and recreate in my backyard, the Box Springs Mountain Park. I have accumulated 50 flights and so am starting to feel comfortable branching out to where I can evaluate flying sites on my own. I have a great big open field in front of my house that is flat and mowed clear of weeds that makes an excellent and highly convenient landing site for me. The challenge I knew would be finding a good launch site. I needed a large enough space that could be cleared of weeds, not too steep or rocky, and facing the correct way so that I could launch into the wind. I had been scouting all around the hills while out on trail runs over the last several months. I’ve spotted many potential launches but almost all of them had poorly placed boulders in the runout area which I’d be concerned to run into. Also most of these launches were well off trails which meant extra annoyance of wading through sock destroying foxtails. I had a rare weekend day at home with few tasks at hand and so went for a morning run to Table peak. I spotted several potentially good launches along the way but then near the top it appeared, the best launch I had seen yet. It faced the right way, was sizable, would give me 1200’ descent, and seemed to have a good flight path down to the field. As a bonus it had easy trail access. A concern was the abrupt cliff it ended at! I’d need to be committed by the time I got to the edge. Excited, I went about my day with plans to hike up with a rake and gear in the afternoon with the hope that I could clear the launch and the winds would be favorable.

I hiked up to my launch in about 40 minutes. Windy! I killed time taking a nice clearing while I hoped the wind calmed as sunset approached. I raked for a solid hour by which point I thought the wind calmed enough that it was worth attempting a launch. I unfurled and strapped in. I puffed up the wing to create an even wall and then fought the wind a little to keep the wing on the ground. Everything ready, I gave it a slight tug, it leaped overhead, inflated mostly evenly, I turned as the last wing tip cleared, took no more than three steps and was propelled skyward in an abrupt updraft. A smooth launch. Instant joy! After the boost off launch the air was silky smooth. I beelined for the Two Trees trail to make sure I had enough clearance to get to the LZ but ended up maintaining height better than I thought. I followed the trail down it’s ridge to the pointy hill at the end and then switch backed adjacent to the field. On final approach I got a little nervous at my height relative to the low fence separating the two fields and so opted to turn to land in the further field. I had a smooth landing with all smiles. A short walk brought me to my driveway where I could fold my gear back up. It was only about an 8 min flight but was probably the most satisfying flight of the 50 I have logged. And I could certainly see the potential for a longer flight in conditions with more thermals. I’m really hoping to get a local flight in per week. It’s really helped me have a positive outlook knowing I have this in my backyard now.

Lower Kern Oct 20

Just a quick trip to the Kern with Keith. We met up with a Ben, Matt, and Geno to run Miracle to Democrat (12 miles) on the Lower Kern at 850 cfs. Thanks to releases from Lake Isabella there is boating in October! I had run this once before with Keith when we added on the extra Jungle Run. I think flow was a little higher last time. I enjoyed the quick stops at the several riverside hot springs, the few fun rapids, and the water turtles I saw. A bonus was not flipping, even with my surfing attempts. I was tempted to run the Class V Royal Flush but no one else was interested and Geno successfully talked me out of it. The wind picked up at the flatwater at the end, which was a little grueling and got me hungry for dinner. Thanks to Keith for driving. It was good to get out of town for fun after all the work traveling I'd been doing.

         Remington Hot Springs