Once a year, at the end of June (June 25, this year), Tom Morse leads an innertubing expedition at Cache Creek with the Sierra Singles. This stretch of Cache Creek is used by a couple of commercial whitewater rafting / kyaking operations, who have arranged to have the flow cranked up on summer weekends to provide a thrill for the crowds who ride down on the multi-person inflatables.
This also allows for summer fun for freeloaders who show up with their own boats, or, in our case, inner tubes.
After meeting at 7-bloody-20 AM for check-in, we got our stuff together and carpooled up in the general direction of Sacramento, expecting the clouds to break and the temperature to jump as soon as we got over the hills. Nope... when we got to the mini-mart at 505 and 16, the temperature was barely over 70, and we were getting a bit worried about spending 4 hours or so in the creek.
Up to the take-out point, shuffle cars, gear, and people, and on to the put-in point, which is crowded. At least the big commercial operations have their own parking lots downstream, and run shuttles back and forth, so their customers' cars don't fill up the county lot. Pump up tubes, check gear, one last chance to touch up that sunblock, and...
We meet the water. Turns out it's not too cold, after all! The rafting crowd is gathered on the opposite bank.
(Click for a larger image.)
Our fearless leader is a minimalist. He's also the only one using an actual inner tube, i.e., something that was intended to go inside a truck tire, not made for floating on.
And off we go!
Bye!
I must have had the camera tilted... if the water had really been at this angle, I wouldn't have been messing around with the camera.
Whoops! Collision alert!
Watching the disaster unfold.
Kyakers overboard! Two at once... and this wasn't even rough water!
After lunch, we floated on down to a stretch of rapids with a name: "Mother." As is, "I want my mommy!"? What were those rules, again... oh, yes:
- Never draw to an inside straight.
- Never play poker with a man called "Doc."
- Never float down a place called "Mom's."
As is my custom, I got out and walked around, as did four other people - one before I'd reached the get-out-and-walk point, and the rest of us as a group (and we got a late start on our walk, as one person had tried to walk around on the wrong side, and had to get back, and there was one straggler caught in an eddy upstream). Everybody else floated down.
That's an impressive stretch of water there. Glad I'm not riding it. Oh, and that's our leader starting down for the second time.
Wheeee!
...oops.
Still got a grip on the tube...
...Get back on that horse...
Safe!
By the time the Chicken Patrol reached the post-Mother gathering point, the rest of the group had apparently sailed without us. So, we last four set out by ourselves.
Not long afterward, the current had carried me well ahead of the other three. I slowed down in this calm patch to try to catch sight of them. Wait... what are those dots in the middle?
Yup, there they are, floating through that patch of rapids.
By this time, we're past the take-out points for all the commercial rent-a-raft operations, so, apart from other small groups, we've got the creek to ourselves.
It's a bit far off for photographing, but this family barge has two dogs aboard. Soon afterward, that eager puppy in the bow was out swimming alongside.
One last look back, in the big calm stretch before the take-out point. The last three are back there somewhere....
Actually, it turns out that one of them (a newcomer) had gotten caught in the last patch of overhanging trees, and separated from her tube; as the others rode to her rescue, one of their tubes got punctured, though it was still afloat when they reached the end.
Another adventure completed without serious injuries: a few scrapes, and plenty of bruises from riding over rocks (I'm being rather careful how I sit today), and there was one apparent case of delayed seasickness, but nothing requiring so much as a Band-Aid.
No, I'm not posting photos of my bruises.
This year, I completely avoided being dumped from my tube! (Though one might argue that bypassing Mother was cheating.) I'm learning some of the tricks (this was my third year), and only got into one of the nasty spots where, it seems, everything on the surface gets dragged through a stretch of overhanging trees and then shot through a sideways standing wave (there are several of these).
Later... much later, after a dinner stop in Winters, and the long drive home... I flopped into bed, closed my eyes, and promptly started having flashbacks, complete with sensations of motion. Whooo!
One last bit of aftermath... I've had a new Product Idea! A new sports gadget to sell to those people with way too much money to spend on gadgets! No details here, but maybe next year I'll have a prototype. As it turns out, is has some technical requirements in common with another product idea I've been playing with, so maybe I'll develop the prototypes in tandem.
Actually, I had multiple product ideas. Here's one that isn't for the big-ticket crowd: innertubes with keels! Well, ballast chambers, anyway. Take one perfectly ordinary nylon-sheathed sport tube; add pockets along the bottom; put ballast (e.g., bismuth shot) in the pockets to make the tube float at the desired height for a given degree of inflation and rider weight. This should add stability, as well as helping smaller riders reach the water to paddle.
Hi, I'm trying to take a inner tube trip with some friends tommorrow. Could you tell me where did you guys get in and your pick-up point? If you can, thanks a lot!
NIck
Posted by: Nick | Sunday, 03 July 2005 at 16:42
Guess it's too late for this answer to be useful today, but... we left the retrieval car at Road 41, just past Rumsey (our take-out point), and put in at a county parking lot well upstream - I don't know its name, but it's on the left, beyond the park-like places where people are camping - it's a day-use-only area, with restrooms and creek access.
Posted by: Eric Wilner | Monday, 04 July 2005 at 11:54
Nice trip report and nice photos! Have you been doing amy more river tubing lately?
River Tubing Techniques & Skills - BRT Insights.
Posted by: Bruce | Wednesday, 05 August 2009 at 14:40
Hi -- im planning a trip down cache. how long did it take about? Like in-water time?
Planning on stopping for lunch before "mother" - is there a place there to leave a car to store food in??
Posted by: Katie Vaughn | Thursday, 14 July 2011 at 02:19
It's been a few years, so memory has gotten vague, but...
For the 2008 trip, the timestamps on the photos run from 11:49 to 16:31, so figure 4-5 hours including lunch break, but excluding car-shuffling time. It'll seem like both more and less.
There is a place to park the lunch car; there's sort of a low dam, which is the take-out point for the rent-a-rafts. I don't know the name of the side road (it goes off to the left of the main road, across the creek, before turning into a fire road) -- I thought I had a bookmark on Google Earth, but apparently not.
Posted by: Eric Wilner | Thursday, 14 July 2011 at 08:08
Update: the lunch spot is by the low water bridge on Rayhouse Road: 38°54'34.18"N 122°18'30.24"W.
Posted by: Eric Wilner | Thursday, 14 July 2011 at 08:21
I am looking for truck inner tubes for river floating, Where did you find them?
Posted by: Susan Battersby | Tuesday, 12 June 2018 at 22:32
I think the only genuine truck inner tube on that trip was that brought by Tom, the leader. I don't recall where he got it, but I assume any place that replaces truck tires would have them.
My tube is a River Rat, which I might have bought at Big 5. Probably most big sporting-goods stores carry tubes of this sort in summer.
Been a long time since I did any innertubing. Might do it again next summer (possibly even late this summer), but it'll be in East Tennessee, and likely on a less exciting stream.
Posted by: Eric Wilner | Tuesday, 12 June 2018 at 23:02
thanks, eric, very entertaining writeup & images, you made me want to do this all over again, just like i did about 30 years ago.
your event was about 13 years ago so flowrates may have changed especially in light of recent droughts. IIRC, back in the 80's there was a phone # one could call that would yield recorded data about current and near-future flow rates so that tubers could plan their adventures accordingly. is there a website somewhere now that gives current flow data? thanks
Posted by: chris w | Monday, 18 June 2018 at 15:08
A quick duckduckgo for cache creek flow turns up various sites; no idea how useful any of them are.
Posted by: Eric Wilner | Monday, 18 June 2018 at 15:17
you use duck too? thanks eric, while you were doing that i found dreamflows.com and that may be the best we can do. it does look vaguely consistent with increased outflow on the weekends.
oh, yeh, and i just found this
https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/uv/?site_no=11451800&PARAmeter_cd=00065,00060,62614,00045
Posted by: chris w | Monday, 18 June 2018 at 16:04