South fork / Middle Fork
2-day

This begins with you meeting us at 9:00 at the private Camp Lotus campground. After directing your to your campsite for the night, we shuttle you up to the top of the river canyon, providing you with everything you need to enjoy your trip, including paddles, personal flotation devices (lifejackets), helmets, a safety orientation and professional guides. Here the river starts out with thrills right from the start. After practicing our paddling and getting comfortable in the raft you will have the opportunity to surf a hole at Chile Bar rapid, if you choose, before tackling exciting rapids like Meatgrinder, Triple Threat and culminating in the most challenging and exciting rapid on the river, Trouble Maker. Yet even in this stretch our guides have the ability to utilize the river’s features giving you additional thrills or guide you safely and serenely back home, depending on what you are looking for. Along the way we will stop for a gourmet riverside deli lunch skillfully prepared by your guides. After which you can enjoy the calming stretch through historic gold discovery state park in Coloma and back to camp, where we first meet, between 2:00 and 3:00. Once back at camp, you will have the opportunity to relive your experience by watching a slideshow of photos taken by professional photographers, relax on the grass fields or take a hot shower. Enjoy a gourmet dinner before heading to bed to ready yourself for the next day.

Wake up and enjoy a breakfast, freshly prepared by your guides before readying yourself for the day’s adventure. 

On day two, the Class IV Middle Fork American River is an intermediate whitewater river offering numerous big drops, intricate technical rapids and tons of action.  This is a full day adventure full of whitewater action as well as calm pools that allow you to bask in the breath taking beauty of the 2000 foot deep wilderness river canyon. If all of that isn’t enough the Middle Fork provides the added benefit of its historic significance during the California Gold Rush. You get a bird’s eye view of the canyon as we travel to our put-in. After being fitted with all the necessary rafting equipment and receiving a safety orientation from one of our highly trained guides, we load into our rafts to continue our adventure. It starts off right away with the aptly named “Good Morning” rapid. If you weren’t awake before, you will be after this rapid. After tackling numerous rapids including Kanaka Falls, Bus Crash and the famous “Tunnel Chute” which drops 80 feet through a 14 foot wide chute ending by floating through a man-made tunnel blasted through the mountain during the gold rush, this is an absolutely incredible experience and one of only two rivers in the world where you can raft through a tunnel, we will stop for a gourmet deli lunch freshly prepared by your guide. Next we continue our journey filled with more whitewater action and breathtaking views with another section of Class IV rapids. After completing our rafting adventure, we will re board our shuttle vans and return you to your vehicles where we will say our goodbyes!

Don’t forget to add the Video Package to your reservation so you can relive your adventure and share it with friends.