Garlic Falls

Garlic falls is a lovely, scenic descent couched in the middle of a long, unrelenting approach and exit. If this canyon were near a road it would be one of the highlights of the area, but as it stands its poor pay to play ratio may dissuade most comers.

Park as far down forest road 12S01 as you can get, the map was updated in Fall 2024 but it’s likely that new washouts will have occurred since then. Hike upstream along the road and the Kings River trail. There’s a nice campsite about three miles past the trailhead, under some large pines at a calm spot in the river just before the trail starts to climb up more steeply. Most groups will want to set up camp here to break the trip into multiple days. After the campsite the trail grows less maintained but is usually easy to follow. Continue up until it drops into the Garlic Falls drainage.

R1: Nuisance off of slung rock DCL R2: 230’ Double bolts DCL. R3a: 200’ Double bolts DCR. First stage of large drop, keep an eye out for R3b R3b: 180’ Double bolts in a hollow about 10’ above a notable overhang. There’s only room for one person at this station. The bottom of the drop puts you directly in the flow, so exercise caution in high flows. R4: 140’ fiddlestick off of large tree R5: 200’ double bolts DCR In very low flows, you can sling a tree about 30’ back from the water chute with a 250’ rope and rappel directly in the flow. However, this is not recommended except in late season low flow situations. In high flows, it’s possible that the Kings river is high enough to cover the landing zone. In case it isn’t obvious, swimming in the Kings at high flow is not an option. If need be, you can fiddlestick some boulders about 240’ DCL to land in a dry landing zone. This probably isn’t usually necessary, but it’ll take a high flow scouting trip to say for sure.