Remember the Original Run on the Stanislaus River?

January 22, 2009.

O.A.R.S. Founder and President, George Wendt, his son Tyler, Operations Manager, and Steve Markle, resident marketing genius, recently paddled the New Melones Reservoir from Parrot’s Ferry up to the Stanislaus River inflow at Rose Creek. (I know they were up to something… probably plotting a new O.A.R.S. multi-sport trip or some other California whitewater rafting-based adventure.) The inflow at Rose Creek is about 3 miles downriver from the original put-in for the Stanislaus whitewater rafting adventure and just downstream from the major rapids of the day. I’m sure the experience brought up many memories for George. Through the early 1980s this stellar Sierra Nevada run was the lifeblood of O.A.R.S. George established the HQ just up the road, and despite the disheartening loss of this run on ‘The Stan’ to a downriver dam in 1983, the HQ still exists in the same place. O.A.R.S. now runs the Class IV section of the North Fork of the Stanislaus through the Giant Sequoia groves of Calaveras Big Trees State Park.