3) Dean Road to Lake Oroville

Shockingly, the entire West Branch Feather was ignored during the river exploration in the 1980s. This could be because of some of the early ill-fated trips down the Ben and Jerry’s run.  On one of these early trips, the team of Rick Stock, Roland McNutt and Michael Kirwin came upon the Hospital Gorge, a vertical walled in affair, with class V rapids stacked up as far as you can see. Reportedly, Roland said, “Boys, I smell death down in that gorge.” Michael quipped back, “Roland I think your olfactory glands are running overtime.”  Michael’s sense of smell did not prevail, and the group did a rather arduous climb out of the Canyon. After some extensive scouting of the run, Arn Terry and Dave Steindorf made the first successful descent of the run in 1997. They named the rapids in the final gorge for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavors. The geology of this canyon is spectacular, as it cuts back in forth between the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges, each with very different rock types. Serpentine, rose-colored granite with quartz veins, it is all in there. With a bit of work, all of the hardest rapids can be portaged, but you have to know where to get out, otherwise you can get snookered into one of the boxed in gorges. If the reservoir is full, the run is about four miles long with a three mile paddle out to the Nelson Bar Boat Ramp.  If the reservoir is low, you can paddle all the way to take-out. Be advised that there are some stout rapids below the bathtub ring of the reservoir. Other Information Sources: The Best Whitewater in the State of California; Holbeck & Stanley Ben and Jerry's Gorge of the West Branch Feather River \- Darin McQuoid