SAKS: Santa Margarita 2023

January 5, 2023
River: Santa Margarita
Flow: 1100cfs
Paddlers: Gavin Rieser (GoPro, edit), Nic Barth, Eric Disque
Song: "Margaritaville" by Sugar in the Gas Tank
Living down in San Diego can be challenging for kayaking. There ARE creeks and rivers, but challenges include overgrown vegetation, access, and narrow flow windows. While access to "the Marg" is easy and the canyon is relatively clean (minus some trees and the occasional shopping cart or such that washes down from Temecula), the boatable flow window is often quite narrow and usually in the evening or middle of the night. Flows will spike dramatically from almost nothing to very high then drop back down to below 200 in 6-12 hours. The good news is it does go at a good flow range if you're motivated and/or skilled enough and seems to get enough ran frequently enough (at least these last two years).
After being teased by many storms, we finally pulled a crew together on a day where all the stars aligned. The challenge we faced was we expected lower flows and it spiked about 400cfs higher than we'd have preferred. While not too hard at our flow, it was still class 5 with some big stuff. One person bowed out at put-in and we ended up with a little carnage along the way. Thankfully we all came out okay and with a new story to tell (of which I'll leave to him to do the telling).
#SAKS,#SuperAwesomeKayakSquad #kayaking #SantaMargarita #margaritaville #SanDiego #socal #sugarinthegastank