Middle Kings River... Trip of a Lifetime

After two Upper Cherry runs and a couple chill days, it was time for Pat, Coop, Dylan and I to bite off the crown jewel of the Sierras... the Middle Kings River.

We met up with the Asheville crew that was just taking off the river and got some very encouraging advice, as well as a couple scary peeks into what we were going to be dealing with:

Tommy- "It's the river trip of a lifetime."
John- "Here's a picture of Jules hiking in the snow on Bishop's Pass... ok here's a picture of Jules puking on Bishop's Pass."
Tommy- "There's the rapid where I swam."
Katie- "There's the rapid where I swam and lost my boat."
Jason- "Get ready to punch a thousand holes. It's awwwwwwnnn in there!"
Jules- "There's the rapid where homie compound fractured his arm and swam."

I knew that the Middle Kings represented a milestone that I've been training for since I started creekboating. The specs of this adventure are pretty incredible:

Shuttle- 400 miles down around the southern slope of the Sierras
Hike- 13 miles to putin, over a 12,000 ft. pass, 2 miles up at the takeout
River- 31 miles
Putin Elevation- 8600 ft.
Takeout Elevation- 2200 ft!!

I didn't take any pictures of this trip, so I'm going to refer to Pat Keller's Blog, and Cooper Lambla's Blog to tell the photographic story of the Middle Kings. It was six of the most incredible days of (I think) all of our lives, and I can't wait to go back.

Click below to watch the Middle Kings video.


Peace.
Chris