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 4.5
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.
