Rancheria Creek
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| | Raps:9-13, max ↨180ft
Red Tape:No permit required Shuttle:Required 1hr Vehicle:Passenger Rock type:Granite | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Condition Reports: | 20 Jul 2026
"We did Rancheria Creek and it was actually very good. 10-12 rappels up to 180ft rope length, jumps, slides, hydraulic features, mini caves. Getting ou |
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| Best season: | Late July-Aug
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36.9460, -118.9771
36.9492, -118.9763
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Waterflow
Introduction
Rancheria Creek is a tributary to North Fork of the Kings River, entering just above the start of Upper Jump Trip. It contains one good rappel, and also a lot of other great parts! While not as good as "Jump Trip" itself, Rancheria Creek is as good or better as many of the other area canyons. It's also longer, and depending on flow can be pretty challenging.
Approach
From Black Rock Campground, drive back to the paved road and turn right to head uphill on the paved road. Keep right at the fork and continue on a smaller dirt road until reaching a larger road near the Wishon Reservoir (4WD) or continue up to McKinley Grove Road and turn right to get to Wishon Reservoir the slightly longer way. Turn right and cross the dam. Continue on this road until there is a right fork, and take that fork to the right. Just before crossing Rancheria Creek, there is a small dirt road and parking area. Park here or drive down the dirt road a short distance, and park at the gate, or just past it in this meadow: 36.94923, -118.97634
Descent
The warmup section of the canyon has some downclimbs through and under boulders, and a few short shallow jumps, leading to a couple 10-15 foot cleaner ones, and some interesting features where water carves through the big rocks. At the end is a ~40ft drop into a slot, with a ~15ft drop out. A tree anchor and a 100ft rope length rappel works to descend both.
A more open, boulder hopping section follows, likely with a rappel.
Eventually you reach another section of shallow, curvy snaking gorge. Down canyon left of a waterfall is a grotto with a deep pool (check before jumping of course). Depending on flow, water pushing away from the waterfall into the grotto can make it hard to swim out, so throwing ropes to each other might be necessary. From there, depending on flow, you can climb the slick slabs on down canyon right to get around another couple drops. The last drops of this gorge are short slides, with one bigger fun slide following.
More boulder hopping, with another rappel.
Then you reach the giant rock gorge. Rappel into a cave behind the giant rock, climb under, and rappel out from the cave. Below is a more snaking gorge, with some slide potential, except for a very cool but dangerous looking pothole in the middle of a ~6 foot slide. Below that is a larger drop, that you could rappel, or possibly jump from down canyon left into the very nice pool below.
The next drop has a log in it, and is easily bypassed right, before getting back into the canyon for a clean, 25ft jump from the lip of the falls.
Below there, jumps require some scouting and precise landings, and eventually the gradient gets steeper. Rappel the next big drop from a tree on the left, or downclimb and jump on the right.
The big rappel you see from the road follows. ~135ft from a convenient rock pinch, down canyon left.
Below there is a series of 2-3 rappels in the flow (or you could get out and rappel from trees on the sides).
The canyon mellows from there into a slow, sliding cascade. 1 rappel is at the bottom of this. If you go from a tree way off on the right, it's about 180ft.
Exit
Once in the river, a dramatic gorge lays downstream. The flow here is very heavy, and it's unclear from above if a safe route through it exists. It would require a few rappels, and care to avoid serious deadly water hazards. Dropping in unprepared late in the day after Rancheria Creek is probably not a great idea, without knowing a good route through. However, you can bypass it by climbing up 3-400ft of elevation and around on the left.
Getting out from there still isn't easy. Hiking down the creek is very challenging because of slick rocks and lots of flow. Climbing out down canyon right about 200 ft of elevation and traversing ledge systems back to Black Rock Reservoir is probably a better idea. However, it seems like setting shuttle on the switchback 900ft of elevation up on river right is probably the easiest way out.
Red tape
Beta sites
Trip reports and media
Background
First descent in 2010 by Michelle, Jeff, and Kevin