Arroyo Seco Packrafting

Arroyo Seco Packrafting

Nov 10-11, 2024

Eric and Matthew

15 miles biking, 13 miles paddling/hiking

Arroyo Seco is a creek in the Ventana Wilderness in west central California. It contains an interesting slot canyon called the narrows that people sometimes swim and cliff jump in during the summer. Matthew had earlier packrafted into the narrows and encountered an interesting waterfall feature that made him turn around. We decided to return to the area equiped with climbing equipment so we could get around the waterfall and explore the rest of the Arroyo Seco.

There are reports of other people swimming up the Arroyo Seco in summer and climbing around the waterfall. We hadn’t heard of anyone packrafting the Arroyo Seco, but it sounded fun. There is an abandoned forest service road paralleling the canyon to the east, and Matthew had previously scouted this as passable on a bike (though it had many landslides, which is likely why it was abandoned).

Mid November would be a great time to packraft the Arroyo Seco since the water would be at its lowest and rapids would be tame. The Narrows feature is near the bottom of the section we wanted to paddle, and there was a chance that it wouldn’t be passable if we paddled down stream. It’s in a deep slot canyon surrounded by cliffs.

If we paddled down and reached that crux and found it impassable, it would be a lot of work to turn around and go the whole way back up stream. But, if we paddled up stream we’d hit the crux at the beginning of the trip. If it was impassable it would be much easier to bail and not be tempted to do anything dangerous.

This particular creek makes sense to paddle up stream. It is mostly long narrow flat pools of water connected by short steep sections. We could easily paddle the pools and walk the short steep sections. Packrafts are light enough that they are easy to carry.

To make the trip more fun we decided to bring overnight gear and camp out part way. We’d start at the Escondido campground, bike down Indians Road to the Tassajara Creek confluence, then paddle and hike back to the car. We’d then drive around and collect the bikes.

Sunday morning we left San Jose and were packed up by 7:30am. We biked around a gate then followed the rough Indians road. It’s been wiped out by a few landslides, so is definitely no longer passable by cars.

After a few hours and 12 miles of mountain biking we stashed the bikes in the woods and hiked down to the Arroyo Seco.

We each brought water shoes and wet suits in case we had to do any swimming. We inflated the boats, then did a combination of paddling pools and walking in between. Eventually we hit the narrows section. We first dropped our gear at a beach and paddled forward to scout. The narrowest section was just barely wider than the packrafts, and we pushed our way through with our hands on the walls.

The waterfall looked tricky but there was a fixed rope on the side. It looked doable, so we retrieved our gear and returned with harnesses and climbing equipment. I paddled up to the rope, pulled over to the side, then attached my ascender. I wedged the boat on a rock and climbed up the rock with the ascender as a backup and the boat tied to the end of the rope.

At the top I clipped on to a two-bolt anchor, then pulled the boat up and chucked the rope down to Matthew. As Mattew climbed up I rigged up another section of rope to get us off the ledge and farther up stream. Holding that rope I jumped down off the ledge and scrambled up to another bolt, where I tied the rope end. I think when the water gets too high it rips off any rope in this section, which is why there was nothing tied to that bolt.

We both scrambled out of the canyon and then reached easier terrain. The crux was over, so now it looked like the rest of the trip would be easy.

We continued up the creek, paddling the pools and walking the steep or shallow sections. There was one more named feature called Yin Yang pools, which was a neat set of larger deep pools connected by a waterfall. We stopped for lunch shortly after this, then continued on till sunset.

That evening we found a nice spot for the tent on the side and camped out.

From there the stream was too shallow and steep to be paddlable, so we deflated the boats and packed them up. We then hiked up the stream to the Lost Valley Trail, and followed that back up to Escondido campground.

On the drive back we made a short stop at Junipero Serra Peak, and hiked up part way. But it started raining hard and we were short on time, so we decided to turn around and hike back. We drove the long way around to the Arroyo Seco campground, where Indians Road was gated. From there we ran 2.5 miles up the road, retrieved our bikes, and biked back in the rain.

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