Let the Summer Fun Begin

What the ?#%$#@!?!  Can it be?  The unofficial start of summer… Memorial Day Weekend?  Wasn’t it just spring?  Weren’t the O.A.R.S. California whitewater rafting guides just out on their training trips?  Weren’t the California hills just lush green with swaths of orange poppies?

If you need any last minute ideas for the Big Weekend…

Here in Northern California, the three major Mother Lode mountain passes are all open for the season:

• Tioga Pass through Yosemite National Park’s high country (that’s where you’ll find me)
• Sonora Pass, up Hwy 108 and through the Dardenelles, past Kennedy Meadows
• Ebbetts Pass, up Hwy 4, past Calaveras Big Trees State Park and the North Fork Stanislaus River.  This might be the final weekend to raft The Stan on a commercial trip this season!

We’ve got trips lined up for the Merced River, just outside Yosemite Valley.  If you’re thinking about rafting this river this year… now is the ideal time to combine a Merced River trip with a visit into Yosemite Valley – the waterfalls are cranking!

Word from Idaho is they’re experiencing big time snowmelt, with river levels raising to 71,000 cfs (cubic feet per second) on the Main Salmon River and over 7 feet on the Middle Fork Salmon River gage.  This is good news for upcoming trips, as the highest flows will be over before trips begin: the perfect scenario.  The wildly varied weather in Idaho is likely to mellow out now as June approaches leading the warm and then hot summer weather.  The Main and Lower Salmon River canyons will be beautiful with freshly washed sand beaches as the water subsides.

Well, here’s hoping you have a wonderful and l-o-n-g weekend away from the desk and phones, computers and office gossip.  Wherever you find yourself, be safe, drive with caution, be kind to other drivers, breathe deep and appreciate our planet’s natural beauty.

See you on the river!
 

Written by Tracy

Writer, Photographer, former Waterblogged Editor