Is This Rancheria or Crown Valley Trailhead?

[Buck Forester]

Ahhhh... there must be some confusion. We are going to attempt the M.F. Kings River to Tehipite Valley in the dead of winter, not the spring. Heck, you can't even go up that canyon in late summer, much less spring. The flows have to be late late fall level, or, if you hit a cold snap, mid-winter. But of course it is unthinkable in the spring. That river is a torrent. You can even hear it from the overlook a couple thousand feet below!

[giantbrookie]

Might phone the district ranger station then ask to have the person on the other end to find out the definitive information so when you phone back you'll get the right info. Might be stable trailhead situation now. However the end of road access in areas east of the Wishon dam have changed a few of times because of logging and cattle grazing going on. In 2000 four of us drove to the end of that road on your map shown northwest of Hoffman Mountain with "restricted access" (blocked at gate at north bend) and I did a crosscountry north of the mountain in a cheater route towards reaching Pearl and then Martha. ...David

I wouldn't call that a "cheater" route. I think that's quite ingenious, actually. In fact, there are commonly many options such as this available in the areas just outside wilderness areas. Depending on who you talk to the USFS folks may not be all that open about the road situation. Often they try to discourage the use of these "unofficial" trailheads, but there are lots of them around. Since the "unofficial ones" go off of the same trunk road for this particular case, it wouldn't take much time to check them out before the hike. If you come to a locked gate, you can always back track to the original. When I hike out of this area this summer (to Geraldines), I'm going to try Rancheria rather than Crown Valley to cut off some elevation gain (also because I intend to loop back to Chain Lakes later in the trip). I'll probably initially snoop out how far I can go toward some of these "unofficial" trailheads first. If none of these give me an advantage over the "standard" Rancheria (owing to being gated off or otherwise obstructed well short of their end) I'll simply use the regular trailhead. I too am planning to eventually use this as a kickoff for Tehipite (either this year or next) and it will come in handy both for reducing elevation gain on the first day and also because my planned loop includes returning via Blackcap Basin and Woodchuck Country, so it makes for a more convenient last day as well.

[SSSdave]

Buck that talk of going in the snow had me wondering haha.

So you are wanting to go in there in the October to mid November period? I just looked at the CDEC full natural flow historic monthly data and it shows the lowest flows on the Kings into Pine Flat occur in October and are about 350 cfs versus 6700 cfs in June. Both the Kings and San Joaquin flows hit their minimums a month later than the more northerly rivers due to their higher snowier alpine areas.

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/repo ... 00510.html

Of course storms often start coming in during October so late September to mid October is probably your best bet. The sun is at such a low altitude even at midday later in the fall that there are likely a lot of shadows way down in that deep canyon.

...David

[Buck Forester]

Hey SSSdave! That's good info, I've been trying to track down cfs flows on the Kings and didn't find that site. We're going to try this over 4-days around February 20th. I'm not sure what the flows are in February, how do you query that site you just gave for October flows? I'd like to see the February flows. I would image Sept-Oct would be the best time to go for lowest flows (and good fishing!), but I would think mid-Feb would be doable, especially during a cold snap, but I am really not sure. I want it to be hardcore and epic for a possible publication submission, but I have a baby on the way so I don't wanna die!

[SSSdave]

Buck, CDEC is a huge labyrinth of terse data and hard to reach web directories of course:

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/lsreports/FNF

The few reports with SUM in the name give yearly monthly acreage flows. I would expect February is almost never a viable choice because the confluence is only about 3k elevation hence well below typical daily freezing levels and subject to rain runoff. Average show 1608 cfs or about 5 times the minimum. So late September may be the wise choice and not anytime after winter storms have started.

...David

[Buck Forester]

It's probably not doable, but we're gonna go scout it this weekend or next. I'll let ya know what we see down at the confluence. Thanks for the data!

[Buck Forester]

Welp, we hiked to the confluence and up the M.F. Kings a ways, but the water was still a little too high. Here's a quick trip report from my partner-in-crime on this adventure, Jake, which he posted on the Summit Post forum.

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Buck Forester and I did a recon trip to the confluence of the Middle Fork and South Fork of the Kings River this weekend (2/4 & 2/5). The South Fork was crossable, although resonably only in one place. I was wearing waders and the water level came to waist level and the current was moderate. Large, slippery boulders made the crossing more difficult.

We then made our way up the Middle Fork approx. 3/4 mile to the first "cliff out" section on the east side of the river. Proceeding beyond that point would have been very difficult given the water flows. We did try to scramble up and over the cliffs, but we balked at some of the exposure and it soon became apparent that we wouldn't get much extra view by continuing anyway so we turned back.

There were lots of cougar and bear tracks in the sand along the M Fork -- very cool.

Also, despite the SEKI website claiming that the winter season gate on HWY 180 is near Yucca Point, we found that they had reverted to the "old" gate closure, which as at the Hume Lake road. A staffer at the visitor center said "sometimes" the road is closed down by Yucca Point and then usually later in the season they closed it at Hume Lake. It pays to call ahead, I guess. We walked from the gate closure, which added 14+ miles RT to our planned hike. The road was entirely snow-free.

Jake

[giantbrookie]

That is a serious adventure. I kind of shiver and such just thinking of it. Certainly forcing the rest of the canyon to Tehipite looks like an undertaking of Muir-ish proportions. I'd guess there would be abundant class 3 and better portions you'd have to deal with, too.

[Buck Forester]

Hey bigbrookie, man, the rivers looked awesome for fishing! I just assumed it would be closed to fishing this time of year, but reading the posted regs at the trailhead I didn't notice any opening/closing dates, just catch-and-release and single hooks limitations. Do you know if it's open or not down there? The water was wonderfully clear, emerald in the pools, and although we didn't see any trout (the pools were deep), it looked incredible for fishing. The amount of bear and cougar tracks were amazing, along with lots of other fresh tracks in the sand.

[giantbrookie]

Hey bigbrookie, man, the rivers looked awesome for fishing! I just assumed it would be closed to fishing this time of year, but reading the posted regs at the trailhead I didn't notice any opening/closing dates, just catch-and-release and single hooks limitations. Do you know if it's open or not down there? The water was wonderfully clear, emerald in the pools, and although we didn't see any trout (the pools were deep), it looked incredible for fishing. The amount of bear and cougar tracks were amazing, along with lots of other fresh tracks in the sand.

I don't know when the season is open or closed for that part of the Kings. I sort of assumed it's far enough upstream that it is closed until the "standard" stream opener (downstream portions of some of the streams have a longer season). However, I don't know for sure not having the regs. in front of me. I believe you can download a pdf with the fishing regs. that has all the seasons plus special regs. section from the Dept. Fish and Game website. I'll bet there are vanishingly few folks that fish that reach of the river. There are probably some browns and rainbows the size of my legs in there. I like hitting remote places but one look at the topo is enough to keep me away from that part of canyon. I will try to put in some time in Tehepite either this season or next, however (by dropping in the easy way).