Sweat drips down from inside my helmet and burns my eyes. My hands are full. With stinging eyes, I continue lowering my kayak with my throw rope. I am unable to let go to wipe away the stinging sweat. I am precariously perched on a small granite ledge above an unrunnable rapid, and I am using an anorexic shrub oak bush as my lone anchor. I am hot, tired, sweaty, thirsty, hungry, and focused. Here we are, Becky, Land and I, in this deep sheer-walled granite gorge with no end in sight. Committed.

Our own grandiose thinking had suckered us into this desperate situation. We had grossly underestimated what we would find in the Dinkey Creek Gorge. Even the name made it sound easy and an easy target for mocking. The brief write-up of it in the guidebook was written by folks we didn’t know, and we assumed they were ‘old school’. We didn’t venture so far as to call ourselves ‘new school’, but we did think of our little gang as more modern and willing to check it out and perhaps willing to run more than the authors had. After a previous week of paddling throughout the Sierra Nevadas, we had talked ourselves into a descent of Dinkey Creek. We were all drawn to the ‘unknowness’ of this run, and intrigued by the ‘extemeness’ of its description.

It has been a long time since I have undertaken such a descent with so little information. Dinkey Creek is a place of mystery, as well as opportunity for learning. None of us had ever met or knew of anyone who had paddled a section of this creek. It is only a 6-mile run; so how hard could it really be? How long would that really take? Well, we put-in two days ago and we are still in here stuffed in the bottom of this gorge. We have all grossly underestimated the time required to complete this descent, as well as underestimating the difficulty of the whitewater. None of us has eaten a full meal in the last two days. We have run out of iodine tablets for purifying water. And it looks like we will be out here another night.

As I rappel down the cliffside following our kayaks, I notice that I am clinging on to a poison oak shrub to gain my balance. I simply acknowledge this, and I am unable to do anything about it in my precarious and compromised position. I continue with the task at hand, portaging this section of unrunnable cataracts and falls. My legs and arms quiver from the down climb and rappel. I rest at the bottom of the steep descent on a smooth granite slab at the base of the last falls. A cool mist sprays into my face, and the river roars and pulses in my ears.

"We had started clean and psyched, and now we are getting tired and a bit sloppy... "

In this section the river’s water flows around, underneath and over massive granite boulders in a jumbled mess of sieves, caves, waterfalls, and slides. A few individual sections look good to go, although just on the outer edge, but it is the continuous nature of one move leading into the next that makes the section just off the scale of what is possible. Deep down in here in this committed dinkey little canyon, we all think longer and harder about what we choose to run due to the inaccessibility if things were to go wrong. As the days have crept by our fatigue levels have increased while our paddling prowess has decreased. We had started clean and psyched, and now we are getting tired and a bit sloppy. Caution and respect becomes our mantra to make it through this gorge.

As we finish off this big portage, we are swimming in a soup of emotions. Swirling around us are feelings of fatigue, relief, fear, admiration, waning excitement, and a growing sense of accomplishment. We split up our second to last energy bar three-ways, saving our last one for dinner tonight. We definitely won’t make it out of here by nightfall. We focus back down on now, here, and of what lies just downstream below the next horizonline. Our appreciation of Dinkey Creek Gorge grows, as does our sense of humility. We are tiredly inspired.

One last respectable rapid stands between us and a promising spot for tonight’s rest. A quick scout reveals a closely spaced three-tiered staircase drop. The steps are big when looked at as a whole, but individually the line is there. We all see it. We plan and plot thoroughly ‘till we are satisfied and until the vision of ourselves running the rapid is perfectly clear in each of our minds. Having broken it down and then put it all back together, we get back into our boats with the line in mind.