Middle Fork of the Kings River: Git U Some

Putting on the Middle Kings without a guide was one of the hardest mental undertakings I've ever faced. It was immediately worth it when we got to the first meadow and looked back up into LeConte Canyon, our get-in. Pat and Dylan here, I think are pretty stoked to be in such an unbelievably beautiful place.


Guac explosion, ya'll want some guac for that sammy? Lunch break, right next to the drop on the cover of the Seven Rivers Expedition video. Tommy's the one firing that shit up on the cover, but after he confessed his swim there this year to us at the take-out, we opted for the PB & J line...high left.


Dylan Bruce, fires it up on Money Drop, one of the bigger drops of River Day 1. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures, due to being focused on making "class V downstream motion" Danny D quote right thar.


Pat, throwing down a skyrocket-worm-tail boof off the top drop of money drop. His line? All about the Benjamin’s.


Dylan mesmerized by the fire, another fire, the river, our crew, and our location deep in the heart of it all.


This picture is dedicated to Billy Murphy. If it wasn't for Billy Murphy, we wouldn't have eaten apples at this campsite, known as "Sik Camp." Pat saw footage (from the boy's trip last summer) of Billy getting beat-down on the good morning rapid of Day 2 on the river. Late in our Day 1 we came to a drop, Pat got out and scouted, and we found camp. Thanks Billy for getting your ass beat for us!!!


Ladies and Gents, the Promised Land...the Promised Land, Ladies and Gents. The view from our campsite at Sik Camp, note the stream gradient drop like a one humped camel as he looks around and realizes he's the only one-humper out of the group, halfway across the Sahara.


Our boats, chilling among the erratics down by the river. Pack it up, put-on and it's on like the beats of Jr. Gong.


Chris-tofer Gragtmans showing us how to style Billy Murphy's Good Morning Rapid. This rapid was an intense way to start an intense day, she's got a real tricky entrance that you hope will set you up somewhere near where Chris is in this freeze-still of an actual moment in time.


Pat in the above-mentioned lead-in. It doesn't look as tricky as is actually is...A, because it's a photo and photos don't do shit for justice of whitewater, especially the Middle Kings. And B, because it's Pat, and Pat makes Niagara Falls look easy.


Dylan and Chris acting like they're cooler than Pecos Bill below the famous "Waterfall Gorge." The night before Pat told us stories of the wise saying that "you just find your self in the waterfall gorge." Needless to say, that is just about the situation we found ourselves in.


The Rick of Pat dropping into "the Werner Paddles Drop." I guess Werner has used pictures of peeps launching this one in a couple of ads before. Any-who, it's a long, complex mam-a-jam-a that'll get yer butt puckered up nice and tight.



Again, Mr. Keller a little over halfway through the same rapid. Niagara Falls...easy.



Here we have Dylan Bruce standing next to this slide for scale. No wait, for scale you should direct your attention to Gragglefunk, he's the really short guy chargin' it through the entrance to this big 'un.


Chris, exiting the same slide way below where you can see in the picture above. Nice line, duder. "Chris Gragtmans would autograph your breasts if you asked him to!" -Quote directed to Daniel Talley by she-who-must-not-be-named.


This picture is dedicated to Nate Elliot. If it weren't for Nate-dawg, again we wouldn't have found our next camp. Pat had saw a picture Nate took of bear claw marks on this log. We stopped here for lunch after a very stressful, walled-in situation we found ourselves in upstream. Pat saw the log and marks and said, "this is camp!" "And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals."


We found this tree, that looks frighteningly similar to the same tree, that they used as a model for making cell phone towers that look like real trees. I hope one day I can get a job to search for the model tree that they will use to replace the next tall ugly thing someone has to build.


Here's a video about our expedition made by Chris Gragtmans and Catalyst Media. I don't know if Catalyst Media made it, or Chris Gragtmans made it, I can't tell. Either way, it puts the pictures and stories into motion...


If you can't view the vidayo, try THIS!


Stay tuned for more pictures and stories of the adventure.