Tom Grundy's East Fork Carson River Packraft Page

Sarah hatched a plan for a packraft trip on the East Fork of the Carson River from near Markleeville to near 395 and Gardnerville in Nevada. Since I have a packraft and lots of other gear and am an upright sufferer I got invited along. As the weekend approached so did a major "winter" storm - in mid May. This would mean cold air and rain and possibly snow along with the cold water that was inevitable. It also would result in lower flow levels as the cold and clouds would limit snowmelt unless there was a whole lot of rain to make up for it - it turned out that Saturday was around 12-1100 CFS and Sunday it dropped from 1100 to about 1000 CFS (a week before it was about 1800 to 2100 cfs). I have a drysuit so I figured I'd be fine on the water and hopefully between a warm sleeping bag and hot springs by camp the rest of the time would be ok too.

weather forecast from NOAA - it was a little troubling and not what one would expect for May 18-19

We all were a bit worried about the cold and compensated by packing a lot of fatty foods - bacon, eggs, cheese, coconut oil, cookies... At least we wouldn't starve, although I felt like my raft might be a bit overloaded. Someday I'll have a zipper installed so I can stash gear inside the raft tubes.

one advantage of early starts - nice sunrise views

We Sarah, Kristen, and I left early Saturday morning and drove up to the take out where we met up with the Mark and Dean. There we loaded everything into their truck and drove to the put in where we started inflating and packing the rafts. We had 3 Alpackas of various vintages (mine was the oldest), Sarah's Kokopelli with internal storage, and one inflatable kayak (thanks Kathryn). It took a while to get everything ready to go with a last minute switch between Kirsten and Sarah to allow Booter (the dog genius) to ride in the IK with Sarah. Sometimes that worked well, sometimes not so much.

loading up some rafts

We started out fairly slowly with a number of stops to scout, readjust and reinflate boats (they lose pressure as the air in the tubes cools from the cold water), and to try to convince Booter to get back into the boat. The water was moving right along but it was mostly pretty easy to run - class II, with maybe a few bigger holes or waves but they were pretty avoidable - as long as the pack on your raft didn't move too much or the dog didn't decide to "low side" your boat as you went across a powerful eddy line/boil. If that happened, you flipped and swam. Did I mention the water was cold. I didn't swim and I had a dry suit. One weird thing about a dry suit is if it is in contact with cold water then it can feel like it leaked, but once I took it off I could feel that everything was still dry inside. It looked like there was a bit of a storm headed our way so we tried to keep moving in the hopes that we could set up camp before it started.

Kristen in the Kokopelli raft

Sarah and Booter after a swim

There was one other large group with 3 or more big rafts and some kayaks. They were ahead of us and camped on the right bank. We went past them and pulled out on the left before what was probably the biggest rapid of the run. Mark walked down to the hot springs on this side of the river and it was full, so we set up camp near where we took out. It was a bit of a pain with some pretty severe gusts trying to blow things away or fill them with grit and dust. By then a number of the other group crossed the river and headed down to the hot springs (they had a smaller spring on their side too). By the time I had set up and taken off my dry suit and headed down to the springs I missed the yahoos trying to drive their truck across the river from the far side - fortunately they backed off before they washed downstream. They did stick around and serenade us with country music for quite a while though. The hot spring was quite welcome, especially for those that were still cold from the river. Meanwhile the storm didn't materialize other than a few sprinkles and I was even worried about getting sun burned. We would have camped down here if we had known the people at the springs when we arrived would leave as soon as they did. After the soak we drained and scrubbed the hot spring (mostly getting the algae mats reduced and generally getting rid of floaty things) and then set it to refilling.

my feet in one of the springs

We headed back to camp for an extended dinner of most excellent quesadillas before returning to the hot springs for an evening soak. Sadly things were pretty clouded up before the full moon rose. That night the "storm" hit with a lot of rain and some snow (that didn't stick). We were all snug in our bags though.

cooking dinner quesadillas

The next morning I was in no rush to get up. At one point there was sun shining on the tent and I nearly got up, but then there was more rain. When I finally did get up it seemed like the rain/snow was all finished although the air was crisp and there was a cold wind. I went down for a soak before breakfast and then eggs and bacon and cheese on tortillas to fortify me for the cold water. The rapid we were camped at looked a little interesting. There was a big ledge almost all the way across the river and the water tended to want to go under the edge of it. The obvious path on the middle right had a few rocks poking out above it plus the water in the middle of it pushed up and out towards the ledges on either side and possibly a big rock at the bottom to make things even more interesting. We couldn't see the far far right side but that looked doable. Sarah and I took our empty boats over to the far side and decided to run the far right. It was fine. The others loaded up their boats below this rapid.

the other group heading down past the hot spring

rapid by camp - we ended up running on the far side - sort of out of the view

The river gradient was a little lower and the canyon a little more open for the second day so we were mostly able to just keep running down the river. As the rapids spread out I tended to head for the waves instead of dodging them, although I still avoided bigger holes and undercut banks. This day I kept an extra layer on my legs under my dry suit so I was comfy. I would have been miserable by the end without it as I had a few inches of cold water sloshing around my legs by the end. I checked the gps a few times as we approached the takeout since there was an old dam/waterfall a bit past it. We easily recognized a cliff with graffiti and saw the outhouse at the takeout (I thought it might be obscured by the willows).

the rest of the crew, Kristen, Dean, Sarah, and Mark

Sarah and the dog genius (who is pretty skeptical of this operation)

following the flotilla down a rapid

We took out and Dean and I stayed with the boats while the rest went to pick up the truck at the takout. I tried to clean and dry and pack up things while we waited. It was hard to spread everything out without it getting dirty or blown away by a gust. When they returned we loaded everything up and took off. We didn't go all the way back to Bishop before we realized that we forgot a boat down at the bank. oops. Fortunately it was still there when we returned. Then we headed back home for real aided by a curated playlist and a stop overlooking Mono Lake to admire the sunset. All in all a most excellent trip with much better weather than I expected based on the forecast. I think the bad forecast cut down on the usual crowds a lot, which was worth it in my opinion. I wish there was more water like this close to Bishop.

at the takout - mad props to Mark for no wetsuit survival

Mono Lake overlook near sunset

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