Cache Creek By Tom Riggs

Cache Creek Trip Report

Tom Riggs

We’ll take a Check on Cache Creek

Tom Riggs

Originally I was part of Blair St Denis’s group to run The Salt river in Arizona with a March 12 launch date. The snowpack looked good and the early reports had the stars lining up nicely. Just when you think you have it figured out that Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle rears its head and next thing you know you have passed through a solid wall and it’s too cold on the Apache Reservation to melt snow. That being the case it was time to open the package to “Mr. Phelps” and listen to the self destructing cassette tape to learn of the next mission. Although The Secretary will deny it the plan was to get some much needed sunshine with a trip to Death Valley, skiing where we could on the way, and, oh,did I mention raft something in The Golden State. Mt Ashland fit the bill nicely for the downhill aspect and looking through my 40 year old copy of Cassiday’s and Calhoun’s California Whitewater it looked like Cache creek would not be too far out of the way.

My son Kyle and I dropped out of the Siskiyous and out of the snow heading south through Yreka, Weed, Redding, Red Bluff and hit some pizza joint that received the slow service award from the turtle and snail society of culinary arts of California. I did not realize that when they meant fresh ingredients that they had to go harvest the wheat out of the field and then grind it into flour to make the dough. It was a good strategy to sell more beer. We drove the camper another hour and a half along CA 20 and then CA 16 to get to the Yolo County Regional Park where I had set up camp in December of 2015. Well, it looked like we were going to have the Park all to ourselves; all we had to do was cut through the iron gate and ignore the sign “Park Closed Until further Notice”. I figured they would not notify us so we drove down the highway and found a gravel pit where we could park for the night and listen to the sound of the whitewater across the road.

Since we were traveling light we had the 14 ft bucket boat folded up in the rear seat, the NRS erector set frame bundled and lashed to the front bumper, the oars dismantled and in the sleeping quarters of the camper along with the skis and poles. I still think we had room for a keg in there somewhere. The canned beer would have to get stowed in a soft pack cooler. Yeah, we had PFDs and all that other frivolous stuff except for the Norwegian Bikini Team, which recently beat out their Swedish counterparts. (It’s true, I read it on the internet).

Crap! We left the dynamite at home; how are we going to get through that gate? Our good looks and charm were used up at the Pizza place and we know how that worked out. From the Park gate it looked like it was a quarter mile down to the river. There must be a better way so we drove down the highway about ¼ mile and found the day use entrance open. There was a fisherman path down to the river but it looked to be about ¼ mile from where we would need to rig the raft. Ugh! I cited Cassiday and Calhoun and recalled a low bridge that gets inundated and becomes a riverwide reversal and higher flows and suggested we walk down the adjoining highway road and investigate. Good news! The old low bridge had been replaced by a newer concrete bridge that allows plenty of clearance for boats to pass under. The only problem is the road to the new bridge was in bad shape and access to that section was barred by a locked gate. It would have been a viable put in where boats could be rigged at the water.

Let’s drive down the road and see if we can scout any of the rapids mentioned in California Whitewater just to see if there are any other changes. The Rumsey gage was showing 3050 cfs, which sounds more like a river than a creek to me but no need to get hung up on semantics when there could be trees and rocks to fill that duty when rafting this stretch. “ Whoa, pull over on the shoulder so we can look at that rapid just below the highway bridge where the river divides.” Scouting from the river looked like an exercise in ankle torture, but when there is a hole that looks big from the road you know it will only get uglier as you approach it on foot. We were looking at Rowboat rapid and it was a dirty hole that warranted a rescue boat or crew in case it decided to Maytag unsuspecting missionaries. Perhaps a closer look would reveal a cleaner route or merely scare us off entirely. It seemed like it was getting colder or was it just my feet.

Anyhow we rambled down the highway and pulled into a former Boy Scout Camp that had obviously been taken over by The State and had some old stone building complete with graffiti and port a potties that had more contents on the outside than on the inside. The whole area was covered in mud, indicative of the higher volume the river had experienced earlier in the month (9000) cfs. At the river’s edge was a cut bank and no real eddy. This was noted as mile 5.6 alternate take out in the book. Hmmm.

The highway left the river and we could not see Rock Garden Rapids but decided to turn left to go to Rumsey Bridge thinking that the oncoming fire truck would continue down the highway. Nope, he followed us in lights ablazing, so we scootched over to let him lead the way down the one lane road until he stopped, blocking further passage. The fireman said there was no getting by him and he said we needed to move since an ambulance would soon be coming. Another omen? We backed up into an almond grove and routed ourselves back to the highway and an onlooker correctly directed us to Rumsey bridge, the take out mentioned by Cassiday and Calhoun.

Again a potholed one lane chip sealed road lead us to the spawled concrete bridge with exposed rebar that bore the namesake of Rumsey. What did he do to deserve that? We pulled off near the bridge and tried to spy a route through all of the “no trespassing” signs that might allow a boat to land and carry out to the road. It was obvious that no raft had taken out in years given the overgrowth of shrubs and trees. It might be possible for 6 people to manhandle a raft over the boulders and through the transformers and communication boxes on river right below the bridge but again the bang was not worth the buck.

OK, so no real put in, high water, ugly hole, 4 mile run using Boy Scout Camp, and the ambulance omen. All we needed were a couple of buzzards staring at us and saying “You’ll be sorryeeee”. In football when the defense is just shoving you backwards there is a play called a Quick Kick. We got to third down and called Quick Kick and drove to Death Valley to see a man about a mule. We’ll be back another day.

P.S. we saw a slew of parked river shuttle busses along the highway so there is a commercial season but the logistics must change favorably later in the season. Google Cache Creek river runners for how the pros do it,

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