Sound of rebound
Sierra Nevada rivers running high, along with rafters’ hopes
EL PORTAL, Mariposa County — The roar of the river snaking west from Yosemite deep into Merced Canyon grew faint in recent years, quieting rapids that once earned fearful monikers like Nightmare Island and the Percolator.
But last week, as rafting guide Maggie Crocker stood at the bottom of a gorge, the scent of pine trees ripe with spring, her voice was barely audible above the thun-
der of the current.
“If you can’t hear what I’m saying, just keep paddling,” she told her crew before launching a boat from a rocky shore into the Merced River, which was beginning to flood upstream. “The water is pretty big right now, and we’re going to have to work effectively as a team.”
In a stark sign of California’s dramatic recovery from drought, the whitewater season has returned to the Sierra Nevada this year with a literal splash. After five dry years depleted rivers and cut down paddle time, a wet winter and massive snowpack are expected to wring more water out of the mountains than any time in modern history.
Last week, California’s chief water supply forecaster, David Rizzardo, projected that statewide runoff would be 231 percent of average for the water year, from October through September — the most since record-keeping began in the 1930s and surpassing even the banner yield of 1982-83.
Rafting outfitters from the Yuba River to the Kern hope the bounty means boating well into August, maybe even September, making up for years of lost trips and missed paychecks.
“We were ending in early July, if we could make it that far,” said Crocker, 29, who started as a guide at Zephyr Whitewater Expeditions during the last big water season in 2011. “We’re pretty excited about having more consistent flows again.”
Like many rafters, Crocker was forced to take time off during the drought. She left for two years, though not entirely because of the weather. She also broke her leg, which she called a conveniently timed inconvenience.
One of her fellow guides on the trip last week, Cody Wright, 28, decided to move to Portland, Ore., when California’s river scene bottomed out. Another, Eric Cubbler, 25, was hired just this spring in anticipation of a turnaround.
This year’s season began in early April, with plenty of interest that has continued to build. Among those wanting to seize the much-hyped whitewater were Oanh Hutson of San Diego and her twin sister, Yen Pham of San Antonio. Despite their inexperience, the two showed little fear last week as they bounced up and down on the thrashing Merced, even as the three expert rafters aboard spoke of the big drops to come.
The roughest patch, the veterans said, would be Ned’s Gulch, a series of high waves and low pockets that has a reputation as a boat-flipper.
“I had heard that there was a lot of water this year,” Hutson said. “I wasn’t scared.”
The Merced River is different from many Sierra rivers. The 145-mile water course, which starts on the granite slopes of 13,114-foot Mount Lyell before plunging through glacially sculpted Yosemite Valley, encounters no dams in the high country. That means its flow is entirely at the mercy of Mother Nature.
Rivers with dams enjoy controlled water releases, which in some places — like on the popularly floated Tuolumne River and the South Fork of the American River to the north — helped the rafting industry survive the drought, if only by extending the season for a month or so.
By contrast, the Merced River was but a trickle by summer in dry years, as was the unimpaired upper section of the Kings River to the south, where Zephyr Whitewater Expeditions also runs rafting trips. The outfitter had to shut down its operation there for three years.
“Fortunately, all of our mortgages are paid, and we didn’t need to buy any new equipment,” said Bob Ferguson, who has run Zephyr since 1973.
But many rivers with dams also didn’t fare well during the drought. The Sierra’s southernmost Kern River had little commercial rafting in 2014 and 2015, and the 52-year-old Kern River Festival near Lake Isabella, a popular slalom kayaking contest, had to be put on hiatus for a year in 2015.
“The economy here rises and falls with the level of the river,” said Tom Moore, who has coowned Sierra South Paddle Sports in Kernville (Kern County) for 32 years. “We had to switch over to tubes, and that’s what we survived on.”
Moore said this year is shaping up to be perhaps the best he’s seen. The outlook is similar to the north, and it’s not just rafters relishing the rebound.
As Crocker’s boat sped through the steep-walled canyon, she noted an uptick in gold panning along the river, as modern-day prospectors looked to heavy runoff to wash heavy metals into the water. In another area, river otters had been spotted enjoying the flows.
Eventually, the raft approached Ned’s Gulch. Crocker, who steered with a set of long, wooden oars at the rear of the boat, called for her crew to paddle hard as the river quickly shifted, from clear rolling water to a sea of white.
“You can’t go left, you can’t go right, you can’t go down the middle,” she said.
Crocker went right. And with waves crashing over the front of the boat, slapping Wright and Cubbler in the face, the raft skipped to the left side of the passage as it dropped down a staircase of rapids.
The legendary section was quickly past, allowing the doused rafters to dry beneath the warm spring sun. For Crocker, it was a routine, and one she may repeat for months.
“We still have a lot of snow” to melt, she said. “We’re going to get a good long summer.”
“The economy here rises and falls with the level of the (Kern) river. We had to switch over to tubes, and that’s what we survived on.” Tom Moore, co-owner of Sierra South Paddle Sports in Kernville