The South Fork Feather River below the Little Grass Valley Reservoir will be running between October 5th and October 17th.  American Whitewater has been working with South Fork Water and Power to schedule their annual reservoir draw down so that it provides an opportunity for paddlers.  “Working with the folks at South Fork Water and Power has been a pleasure”, according to AW California Stewardship Director Dave Steindorf,  “ they have been completely open to our input in scheduling these flows”.

2007 has been a critically dry year in the Feather Watershed, and with less water to work with it has been a challenge to figure out flow levels and durations that will provide a quality opportunity and are feasible for the utility.  After several discussions with South Fork Water and Power’s staff, it was determined that there is enough water to run flows  at 300 cfs through the 17th  October.

American Whitewater has also been working on the South Fork Feather as part of its “Taking the Search Out of Search and Rescue” safety project.  With a grant from the Butte Fire Safe Council, American Whitewater has created maps that show the major rapids and landmarks for this run.  The maps also show roads and trails out of the canyon in case you need exit the run in case of emergency.  Local search and rescue personnel also have copies of these maps so that when you refer to locations on the river we will all be speaking the same language.

The AW website river pages are also improved, with pictures of the major rapids and a map that shows you their location.  It is a good idea for you, or anyone you know who is doing the run, to familiarize themselves with the names and places of the rapids and landmarks on this run.  

American Whitewater selected this run for this project because it is a relatively new run and the knowledge base and history is very thin.  This run also has the additional safety concern that it is a fairly long run in a very remote area.  The safety issues are also compounded by the fact that these releases occur late in the fall when the days are short.  Understanding that an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” we hope that paddlers will use common sense and get an early start and hopefully go with someone that knows this run.  We hope that the information provided on the AW website and the maps provided as a part of this project will enable paddlers to monitor their progress down the river and if things should go awry, they can use this information to aide themselves and rescue personnel.

If you are interested in developing a GPS profile for the river near you please contact:

Dave Steindorf
dave@amwhitewater.org

Tom O'Keefe
okeefe@amwhitewater.org