Stony Creek
| Rating: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | Raps:3-4, max ↨160ft
Red Tape:No permit required Shuttle:Required 10 min Vehicle:Passenger | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Condition Reports: | 28 Sep 2019
"Passed thru as entrance to the good stuff downstream. Only suited up halfway. Very cold start: gloomy overcast, 40° temps, and drizzle made for a rel |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Best season: | Jun to Oct
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Regions: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
36.6462, -118.8468
Search nearby locations
Weather forecast
Waterflow
Introduction[edit]
The top of Stony Creek is a semi-popular swimming arrow with beautiful low angled gorge and a really fun slide. Below here, it gets steeper with a short gorge section and a large waterfall that drops into the North Fork, which makes for a fun fairly short technical adventure, or a more exciting approach to the Upper North Fork for an overnight. Combining Stony Creek, Upper North Fork, and Lower North Fork, is surely one of the greatest overnight canyoneering trips in the Sierras, if not the whole country.
Approach[edit]
Leave one car over at Dorst Creek (or far off near Hartland at the exit for Upper or Lower North Fork Kaweah for something substantially more committing and epic).
One may head down from Stony Creek campground to the top of the gorge, though a trail from the store parking lot leads to the creek downstream.
You can hop along the side of the creek to where Woodward Creek comes in from the right and there is a really fun slide. Suit up there and head down, though it's a ways to the first rappel.
Dorst Creek versus Stony Creek (as an approach to the Upper and Lower North Fork trips):
Stony requires a longer rope for the last (confluence) rappel off a tree DCL. Stony has better parking at the store and a bathroom which Dorst start does not. Having done both I feel they are equal in time to reach the confluence. Stony has the feel of Middle Earth in Yosemite with bare granite walls the majority of the creek whereas Dorst is well-forested.
Descent[edit]
The first rappel can be done from some knot or rock chocks on the left, or bypassed easily on the left as well. Some boulder hopping from here, and the creek enters a gorge. The gorge drops into a slot and turns left. Anchoring can be tricky for the final drop down a 30 foot waterfall out of here. It will probably require a much longer rope than 30 feet.
Down from here there is an obvious large waterfall. I think it's about 150 feet, but maybe a touch bigger?
Exit[edit]
Head left up Dorst Creek up to your car.