South Fork Kaweah River Canyon to Hockett

[DMQ]

Agreed on getting together for an adventure, it would be fun. The riverbed looked the worst of the Kaweah forks for a swim/hike down, mostly boulders with few deep pools. If you haven't done it, the North Fork would be the best section from ~4.5 miles up back down to the TH.

I didn't see the homemade camp sign, but easily could be because I wasn't on the right part of trail at that point.

[limpingcrab]

Ya, I love the North Fork and have fished it from the junction of Stony and Dorst Creeks all the way to the Yucca Creek trailhead and have kayaked the lower section through private property. Still need to explore the Cherry Falls area more than the few visits looking for caves.

The south fork is the Fork I am the least familiar with so it intrigues me. I've only seen from Cedar Creek down while looking for big trees in the Homers Nose Grove but if you guys say the upper section isn't so great it would be cool to go down Horse Creek from the Hockett Lakes area to the East Fork of the Kaweah. Check that out on Google Earth!

IHartMK, any chance you'll share your name on here or in a private message? If you're from Visalia we may have crossed paths and I have Harts on my fathers side of the family.

Talking about the mountains is great!

-Daniel Jeffcoach

[DMQ]

Yeah from what I saw most of the upper south fork was either slides into shallow pools or just a steep rock pile; for example the bear in my TR was standing in the middle of the riverbed. Have you done much on the Middle Kaweah at summer flows? I was thinking about going from Panther Creek down but you'd probably need a rope here and there, unless the pools are deep enough to jump, which is tough to say after only seeing it at higher flows.

Horse Creek does look good, some acquaintances did it earlier this summer and spoke quite highly of it, I do think it needs a rope once or twice if staying in the riverbed.

[iHartMK]

IHartMK, any chance you'll share your name on here or in a private message? If you're from Visalia we may have crossed paths and I have Harts on my fathers side of the family.

Talking about the mountains is great!

-Daniel Jeffcoach

Yeah for sure, my name is William Hart. I live in Visalia between COS and downtown. You can find me on Facebook. Or on Instagram @ Hart_Life Look forward to talking with you

[limpingcrab]

Cool, I don't think we've ever met but it sounds like we should! Not a ton of people into type II mountain fun and I could always go for some nice bushwhacking.

Darin, good to know. Maybe still fun to fish though?
I've tubed (what I grew up doing) or kayaked (just have an IK) everything from Buckeye Flat to the lake except for that long slide into a corner right next to Buckeye Campground but I'd like to at lower flows.
I would love to check out the middle fork up higher whether it needs a rope or not! One of my favorite fishing spots is to bush whack down a little way past Moro Creek and fish up towards Panther Creek until a gorge makes upward progress too difficult. My dream trip is to go from Buck Creek all the way down over a couple days. Here's where I usually stop, though now I've taken up fly fishing.

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Pretty much all of my experience on that river is at pretty low flows playing around in the IK or fishing but it's such a beautiful river, which I'm sure you know since you've been all over the Kaweahs.

PS. I went down to the upper end of Marble Falls after those guys ran it (well, rappelled it) a couple years ago looking for caves and found scraped off kayak plastic on the rocks. That's another section of river that would be fun to canyoneer at low flows with a fishing pole!

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