Truckee River
June 22 and 23, 2002
By Don Jarrell

      Brian Wiese handled the commissary for the weekend as we went up to Silver Creek Campground on Friday, June 21 to secure a campsite, and to generally scout the water flow on various sections of the river.
      Bob Bakewell, Joan Bennett, Bijili Abbey, Don Jarrell and Brian were the paddles for Saturday. We decided not to paddle our normal run from the campground to Donner Creek due to the low water. The release at Tahoe City was listed at less than 100 cfs on Friday. Rather than abuse our boats, we decided to put-in at Boca and take out at Grey Creek. This is a short run of a little over 5 miles. Don and Bijili were tandem, Joan was in a kayak, and Bob and Brian paddled OC-1s. The flow at Farad was less than 500 cfs, and appeared to us to be noticeably lower than what we have previously seen on this section.
      The run starts with a boulder garden that continues for a while. A little below the freeway crossing, the river takes a more significant drop, listed in the literature as a class II rapid by the name of "Unnamed Rapid." We all survived. Shortly below the town of Hirschdale, we stopped for lunch. Nearby was a beaver dam and lodge, but we did not see any beaver.
      The river continues with easy Class I and II rapids until a rapid called, "Junkyard." A couple of years ago on this run, Keith Gale did an interesting spin move on top of a rock near the right shore near the bottom of this rapid. This year, one of our open canoes did a strange maneuver at this same rock. After recovering the paddler, and canoe, we continued uneventfully to the take out.
      Last year at about this time, there was a forest fire that burned through some of this area. The hillside on river right was burned starting just downstream of Hirschdale. However, there was little impact down at river level, until close to the take out. On this lower section, the fire had jumped the river, railroad, and I-80 and burned up the hillsides on river left, as well. The cabin under construction at Grey Creek appears untouched by the fire.
      Dinner that night was a chicken pasta salad. We, of course had some wine with dinner.
      On Sunday morning we were joined by Mike, Jean, and Leeann Baecker. Mike paddles an OC-1 and Jean and Leeann each had a Kopapa. We repeated the run from Boca to Grey Creek. This was their first time on this run. The highlight of this day's trip was a beaver sighting just upstream from Hirschdale. The beaver appeared across the river from us at a stretch break. He splashed and dove, and I thought we had seen the last of him. Then, he re-appeared a little further upstream, slowly swimming upstream.
      A second highlight was the Brown trout a fisherman caught right in front of us during our lunch. We were just below Hirschdale when a fly fisherman caught a trout he estimated at 3.5 pounds. It looked to be about 16 inches in length. We saw several fishermen on the river both days, but this was the only one we saw catching anything.
      Thank you, Brian, for all of your work and helping make this a very enjoyable trip!