Dan McCain and Jeff Compton are endeavoring to become the first to raft the entire 29 mile stretch of the Middle Fork of the Kings River in California. This feat was first attempted in the 90’s, but the group ended up walking the whole stretch and classified it as “un-raftable.”
Now, close to 20 years later, Dan, Jeff and a group of safety kayakers are making a fresh attempt.
Darin McQuoid, world renowned extreme kayaker, describes the Middle Fork of the King River as the pinnacle of expedition kayaking in the United States. He says, “Everything about this run (from Le Conte Canyon to Yucca Point) is epic. It has an eight hour, one way shuttle, fourteen mile hike over 12000′ Bishop Pass, and forty miles of world class whitewater dropping 7000 vertical feet.”
After a lot of research and planning, Dan and Jeff have coordinated an approximately 5-7 day expedition, assisted on the entrance shuttle by a packhorse or mule, and after running the Garlic Falls section, meet a shuttle at the takeout.
They have outfitted their AIRE raft with a GoPro mounting system to ensure a lot of epic footage and insight into the technical nature of some of the nation’s largest waterfalls, difficult boulder gardens and trickiest whitewater.
This expedition promises to be a heart-pounding, adrenaline filled voyage!!
You can follow the team’s progress via their SPOT tracker link here:
Stay tuned for updates and the forthcoming footage!!