Pauley, Lavezolla, and NF Yuba

Levels: Pauley and Lavezolla 280 cfs @ Downeville, NF Yuba 1,100 cfs

After leaving the Dinkey Creek area, we drove for many hours north to Downeville to catch the local runs around there. We hit the area late in the afternoon, bought some food and beer at the local grocery store, and headed to the put-in for Pauley and Lavezolla creeks. We barely had enough room to pull off the road let alone sleep on that narrow ridge of a road. Crashing hard, we hit the sack, but not before I threw our only frisbee into the river....I'm still catching some shit for that...

We woke up early with plans of hitting all the local runs in Downeville: Pauly, Lavezolla, and the North Fork of the Yuba. We quickly made our way down Lavezolla, which was nice, not too exciting, not too boring, just nice.

Nick filming John on Lavezolla Creek

Photo Adam Griffin

Next was Pauley Creek, which reminded us of a Cali version of theTellico River, an introduction to creeking. Really neat gorge with some really easy, safe, and fun 10-20 ledges. The first one we ran blind thru a crowd of old schoolers who were scouting/portaging the drop. It was pretty fun watching them go nuts with hand signals trying to give us last minute directions. That was followed by another great ledge of about 20 ft. It was way too low for the drop, which had a rock spiltting the already minimal flow. But we charged off of it with smiles because the portage would have sucked and there was an attractive girl sunbathing with a large set of mammaries, thus named Mammary Falls.

Adam running Mammary Falls, with the processor of the mammories in the foreground Photo by Brian Mills

Brian going head over heels for Mammaries

Photo Adam Griffin

Nick on another random ledge on Pauley Creek

Photo Adam Griffin

Finally was the 7 mile stretch we did on the NF Yuba, putting on at Sierra City we paddled down to a campground on the river. That was another really fun river run that was pretty challenging, but not too bad because everything flowed downstream. It was a little unnerving at first because you couldn't see what was downstream and couldn't stop to scout, so it was just a good guess where to go, and for those following the lead boater, it was more reassuring because you could see whether your man gets beat down or not, and you can then decide whether or not to follow that particular line.

We met up with another eastern boater named Jeff, who was just out wandering around. He was well received because at this point in time, we were already getting on each other's nerves pretty bad and had already heard all of each others' stories three times.