This was a bad year for snowpack in California, so we have already been
reduced to running dam-release rivers. But even bad years can be good.
This year we finally boated the Truckee. Nice! Pictures he

http://cacreeks.com/truckee.htm

C__ and D__ brought their young son in a small raft, while R__, T__,
and I paddled inflatable kayaks. We put in just below Boca reservoir,
which added ~200 cfs to the ~350 cfs coming down from Lake Tahoe.

Class 2 rapids started immediately, then tapered off for several miles
of fla****er. At a beautiful mini-gorge, rapids picked up again,
and continued without major fla****er for the remainder of the run.
The I-5 freeway and railroad tracks were usually visible on the left,
although we observed several nice secluded campsites. Around mile 4
the railroad tracks crossed to river right, and I thought there would be
a canyon ahead, but the river continued mild for another mile. Then!
A series of class 4 rapids!!

We stopped to scout the first one, Jaws, which everybody ran fine.
Around the corner is another rapid, Bronco. Some of us scouted right
and some of us scouted left. It turned out the route was on far left,
away from railroad debris. T__ had an close encounter with a rock,
and swam. This was bad because I was taking pictures, instead of
rescuing his boat, which I thought might float all the way to Nevada.
Fortunately D__ and his family chased it down.

T__ caught up with his boat under the bridge at Floriston, which is
where the commercial rafters take out. We wanted to go further,
so we had left our vehicle 2 miles downstream. The section of river
below Floriston is great! Commercial rafters ought to continue to
Farad at least; I'm not sure why they don't. Gradient is 77 FPM,
although most of the rapids are straightforward class 2-3.

We wanted to continue boating until Diversion Dam #1, which removes
a lot of water from the river, but there was no take-out there.
In fact boaters must continue another 7 or 8 miles to Verdi Nevada
before finding a legal take-out. I hope to return next spring
and run that section. It might be big fun at high flows.

"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message
...
This was a bad year for snowpack in California, so we have already been
reduced to running dam-release rivers. But even bad years can be good.
This year we finally boated the Truckee. Nice! Pictures he

http://cacreeks.com/truckee.htm

C__ and D__ brought their young son in a small raft, while R__, T__,
and I paddled inflatable kayaks. We put in just below Boca reservoir,
which added ~200 cfs to the ~350 cfs coming down from Lake Tahoe.

Class 2 rapids started immediately, then tapered off for several miles
of fla****er. At a beautiful mini-gorge, rapids picked up again,
and continued without major fla****er for the remainder of the run.
The I-5 freeway and railroad tracks were usually visible on the left,
although we observed several nice secluded campsites. Around mile 4
the railroad tracks crossed to river right, and I thought there would be
a canyon ahead, but the river continued mild for another mile. Then!
A series of class 4 rapids!!

We stopped to scout the first one, Jaws, which everybody ran fine.
Around the corner is another rapid, Bronco. Some of us scouted right
and some of us scouted left. It turned out the route was on far left,
away from railroad debris. T__ had an close encounter with a rock,
and swam. This was bad because I was taking pictures, instead of
rescuing his boat, which I thought might float all the way to Nevada.
Fortunately D__ and his family chased it down.

T__ caught up with his boat under the bridge at Floriston, which is
where the commercial rafters take out. We wanted to go further,
so we had left our vehicle 2 miles downstream. The section of river
below Floriston is great! Commercial rafters ought to continue to
Farad at least; I'm not sure why they don't. Gradient is 77 FPM,
although most of the rapids are straightforward class 2-3.

We wanted to continue boating until Diversion Dam #1, which removes
a lot of water from the river, but there was no take-out there.
In fact boaters must continue another 7 or 8 miles to Verdi Nevada
before finding a legal take-out. I hope to return next spring
and run that section. It might be big fun at high flows.


Looks great, Bill--very nice shots. What'd you shoot them with?

--
www.mattclara.com

Matt Clara wrote:

Looks great, Bill--very nice shots. What'd you shoot them with?

Point and shoot camera (28-75mm) with Kodak Ultra Color 400,
scanned by a Fuji Frontier lab. The wide angle lens was useful.

A friend of mine gets good results from an old Canon G3 digicam
(bought used on Craigslist) with all the buttons duct-taped over
to keep out water.

Bill Tuthill wrote in :

Matt Clara wrote:

Looks great, Bill--very nice shots. What'd you shoot them with?

Point and shoot camera (28-75mm) with Kodak Ultra Color 400,
scanned by a Fuji Frontier lab. The wide angle lens was useful.

A friend of mine gets good results from an old Canon G3 digicam
(bought used on Craigslist) with all the buttons duct-taped over
to keep out water.

I just bought a Pentax W30. It's supposed to be waterproof to 3 meters for
up to two hours. So far I've only used it once while kayaking. A couple of
days ago I went searching for a geocache that was place on the only island
on my local lake (Cayuga Lake, one of NY's Finger Lakes). It was raining
the entire time and it was real nice knowing that the camera would survive
the wet conditions.

BTW, I will be near the Truckee river in about a week but I'll be in South
Shore Lake Tahoe. I'm hoping to do a bit of kayaking while I'm there but
I'm not sure it'll work out.

John Fereira wrote:

I just bought a Pentax W30. It's supposed to be waterproof to 3 meters for
up to two hours. So far I've only used it once while kayaking. A couple of
days ago I went searching for a geocache that was place on the only island
on my local lake (Cayuga Lake, one of NY's Finger Lakes). It was raining
the entire time and it was real nice knowing that the camera would survive
the wet conditions.

That's a nice digicam! I've seen great results from it and its predecessors.
Pentax is still the King of waterproof cameras.

BTW, I will be near the Truckee river in about a week but I'll be in South
Shore Lake Tahoe. I'm hoping to do a bit of kayaking while I'm there but
I'm not sure it'll work out.

The Truckee below Boca was still runnable yesterday! Amazing for a drought
year. Flow report currently unavailable, though. Good luck.

Bill Tuthill wrote:
John Fereira wrote:
I just bought a Pentax W30. It's supposed to be waterproof to 3 meters for
up to two hours. So far I've only used it once while kayaking. A couple of
days ago I went searching for a geocache that was place on the only island
on my local lake (Cayuga Lake, one of NY's Finger Lakes). It was raining
the entire time and it was real nice knowing that the camera would survive
the wet conditions.

That's a nice digicam! I've seen great results from it and its predecessors.
Pentax is still the King of waterproof cameras.

Picture and film quality, I agree. But waterproof wise, I believe that
Olympus has taken over that crown long ago. The current latest models,
the Olympus 770SW and Pentax W30 have very different levels of
waterproofness. The 770SW is guaranteed to take 10 metres (~30ft), the
W30 only 3 (~10ft). The 770SW predecessor, the 725SW (which I don't
think was released in the U.S.), already was waterproof to 5 metres. The
720SW, which was two models ago, had 3 metres.

The 770SW is also crushproof (can take 100kg/220lbs of pressure), and
works well in freezing conditions. The W30 might win in picture quality,
but not when it comes to sturdiness.

I've been a long time Pentax user, having the P30 and two WR105's. In
the case of the latter I really appreciated their sturdiness and
waterproof housing. Still, now that I went digital, I picked a camera
that could withstand the punishment that I threw at the WR105 and more.
My pick wasn't the W30...

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilkoa t)dse(d o tnl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://kayaker.nl/