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GORGE SCRAMBLING SECTION

Exciting News! We now have a Gorge Scrambling Group posted on the National Sierra Club website. Link to it by clicking Gorge Scrambling Trail Group.

Click Here to Watch an Archive Gorge Scrambling Video

GORGE SCRAMBLING 2010 OUTINGS

Information pending

SEE OTHER POSSIBLE OUTINGS AND CLICK TO READ DESCRIPTIONS

Trip 1: Cape Horn, North Fork of the American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 2: Silver Dollar Gorge, Duncan Canyon.

Trip 3: Euchre Gorge, North Fork of the American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 4: Euchre Bar on the North Fork of the American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 5: Giant Gap on the North Fork of the American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 6: Italian Bar on the North Fork of the American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 7: The American Eagle Gorge, North Fork American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 8: Mumford to Humbug on the North Fork American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 9: Royal Gorge on the North Fork of the American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

Trip 10: End of the World, Middle Fork of the American River Canyon.

Trip 11: Box Canyon #1, Middle Fork Yuba River.

Trip 12: Gates of the Antipodes, Middle Fork of the Yuba River.

Trip 13: Devils Gate, North Fork of the Middle Fork of the American River Canyon.

Trip 14: Blue Wing, North Fork of the American Wild and Scenic River Canyon.

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About Gorge Scrambling

Gorge Scrambling offers the opportunity to explore remote gorges, historical mining sites, and hike gold rush era trails. These trips are only done in the summer months when the weather is warm and water temperature is tolerable and water flows are low.

The bulk of these outings occur in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada commonly known as the Motherlode, the location of the famous 1849 California gold rush. The miners originally created most of the trails we use. Some were fancy and built as toll roads complete with rockwork to build up the trail. In other instances the trails were created just by the miners' footsteps going into and out of the canyon. Today some of these trails are maintained by government agencies and others are not.

Generally we hike a variety of good to poorly maintained trails down into a canyon. Then we travel down the riverbed where we rock hop and float out the pools to an exit trail. Finally we go back up to the top of the canyon to our shuttle, which we left to wait for us.

Gorge scrambles are generally considered to be a strenuous affair. Youth and endurance are assets on these outings. Trips are rated levels 1 through 4 with levels 2, 3 and 4, representing increasingly difficult trips. As an example level 1 is the easiest and is essentially a gorge rock hop. Level 2 involves a moderate amount of rock scrambling, one or more days in length and an elevation gain of less than 1000 feet on the hike out. As a rule we do only level 2 and level 3 trips.

The easiest trip is the Cape Horn, Stevens Trail to the Iowa Hill Bridge outing. It involves a 3.5 mile hike to the river and rock hopping and floating 2.5 miles to the Iowa Hill Bridge. A much more difficult level 3 trip would be Giant Gap. It requires a hike down into the canyon, 5 miles of rock hopping and floating, plus 1600 feet of elevation gain for the hike out. This trip has often times finished after dark because someone was not in good enough physical condition to complete the trip in a timely manner.

Gorge scramblers must also be good swimmers. If you are not familiar with the difficulty and the requirements of each outing, it is always a good idea to contact the outing leader. Now take time to click on one of the trips numbered 1 to 14 (with 0 being this page) and read the descriptions. You may also want to link to the page we created on gorge scrambling GEAR.

Now that you have some idea what gorge scrambling is about, it's OK to use your imagination and pretend that you are floating down a canyon now! Every trip you make leaves you with a sense of wonder. One trip even inspired a gorge scrambler to write a poem about her experience. You can read it by clicking here: Link to a Poem by Julie Holzer. Others have created web sites and a few links are shown below.