Saginaw Creek

Saginaw Creek is a great way to start the Sierras season. The hike is pretty reasonable and the descent is nice and concentrated, with lots of options for rappelling in the flow, bypassing, or escaping. A few tight and pushy rappels make for some nice excitement. These raps, along with a few strainers and foot-grabbing cracks, mean this route is unsuitable for beginners.

From the pulloff, hike up the ridge left of the drainage. The going is steep, but the bushwhacking is easy, and poison oak is blessedly rare. Once you’ve scrambled up a gully to cross the penultimate cliff band, start contouring along the cliff to the right. We continued up one more band, but saw an excellent trail at this level and regretted our error. This trail will climb up above the level of R1, at which point you can leave the trail and drop into the drainage.

Rappels follow in quick succession with many opportunities to break up the descent. Often it’s possible to get off rope earlier, but longer raps save you some tricky downclimbs. Although a 150' rope might work for everything, a 200' rope gives you more options, and will certainly be needed for the undocumented final few rappels. R0: 100’ tree DCL. Located above the marked start on the map. Scramble up on the rocks above the drop, hang drop to get to the anchor at a buckeye. Watch for strainer at the bottom, it will eat the rope during the pull, and you if you aren’t careful. Probably just skip this one and start at R1. R1: 100’ boulder pinch DCR. Foot grabby crack at bottom R2: 120’ tree DCL. Followed immediately by 30’ bypass downclimb DCR R3: 100’ tree DCR. Stop at slippery ledge, don’t get off rope til you’re on the next anchor R4: 100’? tree DCR. If you can combine these two stages it would be more fun R5: 130’ bolts DCL. Hazardous crack followed by fun rooster tail R6: 120’ bolts DCL. R7: 60’ single bolt DCL, dry R8: Bypassed DCL but probably you should rap it At this point we were running out of daylight and opted to exit the canyon at the marked point. The gorge appears to get more annoying and brambly, and escape less convenient, but there’s what looks like at least three drops remaining. There’s also a nice drop immediately after the parking area that looks like a 200’ would just barely reach.