# Rafting the East Carson

Source page: https://carsonriverresorts.com/explore/rafting

Put-in 2 minutes away · A six-week season

The put-in is Hangman's Bridge, two minutes down the highway. From there the East Fork runs nineteen miles to the Nevada line with no dam on it, through a canyon no paved road touches. The season is roughly April to early June, it is short, and in a dry year there is no season.

## The season is short, and some years there isn't one

This is the first thing to know and almost nobody says it.

The East Fork is **free-flowing — no dam controls it** — so it runs on
snowmelt and nothing else. That means roughly **April to early June**, and it
means the season is a different length every year.

What the gauge below Markleeville actually recorded:

- **2021** — May averaged **498 cfs**, below the 600 that rafts want. There
  was effectively no season.
- **2023** — May averaged **2,776 cfs**, and **July was still running
  1,328**. Four months.
- **2025** — April 594, May 917, June 464. About six weeks.

Rafts want somewhere between roughly 600 and 4,000 cfs; kayaks will go a
little lower. Flows run highest in the morning, which is snowmelt arriving on
a delay. The gauge is USGS 10308200, and it is the one every outfitter
watches.

**On 29 August 2026 it was reading about 60.**

## The run

**Nineteen miles**, Hangman's Bridge to the take-out above Ruhenstroth Dam,
dropping about 25 feet per mile. **Class II+, with a III in it.** Most people
take two days and camp; one long day is possible.

American Whitewater's own caution is the honest description, and it is worth
reading twice: the rating undersells it in two ways. **The water is very cold**
— it is snowmelt in spring — so a swim is a hypothermia problem, not an
embarrassment. And **the rapids are not hard but they are continuous** in the
early miles, with the current pushing constantly toward one bank or the other,
and those banks are **undercut cliffs** in many places. It asks for steady
maneuvering rather than skill in bursts.

One rapid is named consistently across the sources: **Sidewinder**, roughly
halfway down. Sources disagree about its exact mile and its class, and they
disagree with each other about every other name, so we will not list the rest.

**The take-out is not optional.** Below it sits **Ruhenstroth Dam**, thirty
feet high and breached in a 1997 flood, leaving what a Douglas County fire
official described as an underwater debris field of broken concrete and
rebar. People have drowned there. Get out where the Forest Service says to.

## Permits: almost none, and one nobody mentions

**No float permit. No quota. No launch limit. No group-size cap.** Portable
toilets are not even required, which is unusual — there are toilets at the
put-in, at the take-out, and one about halfway down.

**But the take-out is in Nevada, and Nevada requires an Aquatic Invasive
Species decal on every non-motorized vessel — $6, annual, from NDOW.** Almost
no rafting page mentions it. It is the one thing that can actually bite a
private boater on this run.

**Ignore anything you read about an Alpine County permit system operating
from May to September.** It is on the internet, it is on an outfitter's blog,
and it does not exist.

## Don't filter below Bryant Creek

At about river mile 11, **Bryant Creek brings acid mine drainage into the
East Fork from the Leviathan Mine** — a federal Superfund site where Anaconda
took half a million tons of sulfur out of an open pit between 1953 and 1962.
The water still oxidizes what was left behind.

Take your drinking water from above that confluence.

## Who runs it

**Three outfitters hold Forest Service permits for this run** — these three.

**Tributary Whitewater** — 530.626.7385 — sells a two-day, one-night trip at
$450, and **meets its guests here at nine in the morning.** Their own page:
*"If you stay at the resort, parking while on the river is included, a
$25/vehicle savings."*

**Tahoe Whitewater Tours** — 530-587-5777 — runs it as a full day, four and
a half to five hours on the water, $165.85 adult.

**Current Adventures** — 530-626-3363 — kayak-focused, $425.

For private boaters, two shuttle services work this run: **River Rats,
775-901-6492**, and **Family Shuttle Service, 530-694-2966**. The shuttle is
about 25 miles and 40 minutes each way, which is the real reason to use one.

## The statute drew its line at our bridge

In 1989 California designated this stretch under its own Wild & Scenic Rivers
Act, and the statutory description is exactly the run: *"The East Fork from
the Hangman's Bridge crossing of State Highway Route 89 to the
California-Nevada border."*

That is a **state** designation. The Bureau of Land Management has found three
segments **eligible** for the national system, which is a different and lesser
thing — so if you see this called a National Wild and Scenic River, that is
wrong.

What is true, and unusual: **no dam stands on it between the bridge and
Nevada, and no paved road touches the canyon.** Two rough four-wheel-drive
tracks reach the bank at the hot springs about halfway down, and no vehicle
may cross the river there.

## The hot spring at river mile 8.6

There are stone pools on the bank at about river mile 8.6, and they are the
reason the two-day trip exists.

They are also **unauthorized structures** — built up by the public over years,
periodically dismantled by the Forest Service, and rebuilt again. **As of
September 2026 the pools are open and usable.** What you find depends on what
the river and the last party through have done to them, so treat the soak as
a bonus rather than the plan.

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Carson River Resort · 12399 Highway 89, Markleeville, CA 96120 · (530) 694-2229 · store open 8am to 6pm, every day.
Machine-readable facts, units and policies: https://carsonriverresorts.com/api/agent/index.json