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By Darin McQuoid

With warm weather spiking Dinkey Creek in a major way, Devin, Ryan Knight and myself hit the road to Sacramento to pick up our great friend Ben Stookesberry who was just getting off his Clear H20 Films tour. After checking flows we opted to head out to Fantasy Falls, one of my favorite California wilderness multi-day runs. After spending an extended amount of time figuring out the shuttle (new gate!) we camped at the take-out, drove shuttle earlyish in the morning and were on the water by early afternoon. At 7,000′ the put-in on Highway 4 was cold due to unusual June weather, but we were optimistic the run would be mellow since we had all only seen it at high flows. To our surprise Fantasy Falls still packs a punch, if not more of one, at medium flows. We spent the afternoon running great rapids down to campsite one, where we went to bed early under cloud filled dark skies.

Six in the morning on day two and it started to rain. Being unprepared for rain we threw our sleeping bags into their drybags and put our gear on, getting a brisk 40 degree six thirty am start into the meat of the second gorge. With the cold weather we pushed for a long day two, ran some epic drops and had a sweet day, getting past the third rarely run gorge. Once near the end of our day it warmed up a little and the skies cleared, we enjoyed camping out above the last mandatory portage and looked forward to the classic drops of day two. Fantasy Falls, the namesake for this run on the North Fork Mokelumne is one of my favorite spots in the world, a great set of two waterfalls with epic scenery. The last slide is only a half mile above the lake, and lake boaters often hike up to it in the summer, and at one point had spray painted "show me your ____" on the rock at the base, giving this "California class III" a very fitting name, because the consequence is a swim into a big pool after a scary but forgiving slide. The swim is always a gamble, and we had two out of three swim, the same as a group putting in a few days later. Warm weather came with day three as well, and we camped near Salt Springs Reservoir planning our next mission!

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