Kyburz and South Silver

We arrived in Cali on Friday night and things immediately were off to a rocky start. United The trip certainly started off on a good note as United thought it would be better if Tim tried to kayak without his gear. Things did improve a little though when I picked up my sweet Chevrolet Impala which was to be the shuttle vehicle for the week.

Here's a picture of my sweet Impala:








Here's a picture of the type of riff-raff we had to scrape off the front of the sweet Impala every morning due to its incredible allure:









So Tim ended up sleeping in the impala the first night with only a stinky polypro to keep him warm (don't worry Lydia - he made the Hawaiian tropic girls go home).

Luckily he was able to get his bags the next day and join the rest of us in time for a warm up run down part of the Kyburz section of the South Fork of the American river. Just before putting on we met up with Chris Tulley, Ian Buckley, and Chris Conlin. It was a good run but not really worth taking photos.

South Silver

We drove we up into the hills after the Kyburz run to hit up the South Silver. It averages an amazing 430 feet drop per mile with one mile rated at 600 feet/mile!

It starts off with a 300 yd slide with the self explanatory name of 'Autobahn'.

Pruitt looking a little worried before the Autobahn:

We walked the next two rapids due to nasty looking sieve and a bad undercut. The third drop was 'Boof Boof Slide' (sidenote - the cali boys were about to walk this one until us southeasterners showed them how its done).













The last section was the teacups. Again, its pretty self explanatory. Normally a series of ten foot waterfalls would be enough on their own but these end in a stout class V+ named skyscraper which is immediately followed by another V+ called off ramp. Only Ian and Tulley fired up the teacups that day and both caught a microeddy above the last drop before Skyscraper.

























After their successful runs we all hiked out on river right down to the ice house reservoir.