Whitewater Mecca Returns When the Weather Is Dry : Rafting: California’s four-year drought has brought the rapids back to the Stanislaus River.

While the historic main fork of the Stanislaus River was backing up to fill its limestone gorges in the early 1980s, signs were posted near the Parrotts Ferry Road bridge indicating the birth of the New Melones Reservoir downstream: “Scenic Overlook.”

Overnight, the signs were altered to direct attention upstream and read: “Scenic Drowning. “

It was a symbolic protest by those who had fought, unsuccessfully, to save the river.

“It was the heart and soul of rafting in California,” said Bob Ferguson, who operates Zephyr River Expeditions at Columbia.

It was more than that. There were more than 600 archeological and historical sites between the reservoir and Camp Nine. In this heart of the Mother Lode, thousands of 49ers toiled for gold from Camp Nine down. Only much later did whitewater rafters thrill to the Class III and IV+ rapids, on the high side of river adventure, and that lasted less than 15 years, with a four-year peak after the ‘76-77 drought when the water ran out.

Then it all would be under 200 feet of water, lost for all time. Or so it seemed.

A funny thing about droughts. In taking water away, sometimes they give rivers back. In California’s fourth consecutive dry year, the reservoir has retreated from most of the gorge, and the Stanislaus is reborn.

The flow, controlled by releases from a Pacific Gas and Electric powerhouse above Camp Nine, is 900 cubic feet per second, rated low to moderate but quite adequate for rafting. The limestone is whiter and brighter than ever along the canyon walls, bleached by six or seven years of submersion. Shrubs, wildflowers, grass and small trees are emerging along the banks.

Best of all, Ferguson said, “All the rapids are back to the way they used to be for 6 1/2 miles.”

Rafters remember the Rock Garden, where they had to steer a slalom course. Death Rock, where four Boy Scouts, strapped into their overturned raft, perished in the ‘60s. The Devil’s Staircase. Pantywaist, Bailey’s, Widowmaker, Six Pack and Mother. Cop Rock, where an off-duty policeman stood stranded in the middle, wearing his firearm.

“The last 1 1/2 miles is still muddy and covered up, but it’s dropping four or five inches daily,” Ferguson said. “By August we think the (old) Parrotts Ferry bridge will be exposed.”

The water runs clear and cold, but all is not as it was before. In some sections silt is piled high along the banks, and between the new growth and the trees above the high-water mark, where the limestone changes color, is a zone of dead trees and brush, like a bathtub ring.

“A death line,” says Jim Best, a river guide from Oakland.

Most of California’s good rafting rivers flow through the gold country of the western Sierra. The Stanislaus was the river in the ‘70s. When it was lost, the focus turned to the South Fork of the American.

Until a few rafters rediscovered the Stanislaus late last year, nobody had run it since ’82. When the drought ends and the reservoir refills, it will fade into history again. The American is in no danger of losing its popularity. The Stanislaus is only back for an encore.

“I have to admit I don’t have much hope for this river,” says Kevin Wolf, director of grass roots organizing for Friends of the River, the group that led the fight to save the Stanislaus in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Wolf offers a tongue-in-cheek solution: Leave the reservoir empty in the event of future floods.

“We want the state to have the greatest flood-control reservoir in the world,” he said.

He doesn’t expect anyone to take his suggestion seriously. Meanwhile, rafters who never had a chance to run the Stanislaus are taking advantage. On this day Wolf has organized a group of 11 people, mostly river guides, with two inflatable boats.

“I figure this is the one year for it,” Best said.

Stuart Moore of Columbia said: “I tried to go down five times in the early ‘80s, but every time I got sick or there was a fire or something. This may be my last chance.”

The river’s last chance for permanence was when its defenders went to war with the water lobbies in the late ‘70s. In a landmark case, the State Water Resources Control Board fought--and won--in the U.S. Supreme Court for a state’s right to limit how much water could be stored behind a federal dam, but that only forestalled the inevitable.

The most dedicated activists disappeared into the gorge where rescuers couldn’t find them and chained themselves to rocks and trees, daring the Army Corps of Engineers to drown them with their river.

Mark Dubois drove an eye-bolt into a boulder, chained and padlocked himself to it--he’d already thrown away the key--and waited for the water to rise. Authorities couldn’t find him, but a trusted friend who had promised not to try to save him took a Times reporter there to verify it.

Four others--Rick Spittler, Jeanne Marlow, Michael Pachovas and Bob Metts--followed suit.

Why their zeal?

Not only, Wolf says, did the Stanislaus reside in “one of the most beautiful limestone canyons in the world, but this was the only Class III (river) where you could be in the wilderness.”

Jedediah Smith visited the Stanislaus in 1827. Later, John C. Fremont mapped the area for the U.S. government and named the river after a leader of the Miwok Indians in the area: Estanislao--himself named by Spanish missionaries after the Polish saint, Stanislaus. It was a very special place.

For a while, Wolf’s family didn’t understand.

“One of the best things I ever did was to bring my father and brothers and sisters here in the late ‘70s,” he said. “He wasn’t sure what I was doing with all the demonstrations and things.

“We stopped at one place on the river and my father asked, ‘Would all this be under water if the reservoir is filled?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He was quiet for a long time, and after that, when I got arrested for civil disobedience, he understood why I was doing what I was doing.

“A lot of people thought we were foolish in trying to save a river from a dam that was already being built. In a way, we were--but we saved it for a year.”

The plight of the activists chained deep in the gorge became a cause celebre. The water was rising eight feet a day, “too fast for them to change their minds,” Wolf said. “They would have been dead.”

The water lobbies didn’t want martyrs, so the filling stopped. For a while. The river lovers knew it was only a reprieve. Their river was doomed.

The Stanislaus is a “pool and drop” river, in rafting terms, meaning it alternates between stretches of placid, flat water, where rafters can enjoy the scenery, and short bursts of rapids of varying danger and difficulty--mostly Class III, in the middle of the scale, but with a few touching Class IV. Everybody wears life vests. You get wet when you raft the Stan.

“And there’s a chance one of us will fall out today,” Wolf said, giving the obligatory safety briefing to a pair of novices. “When--if--you fall out, keep your feet up and point them downstream.”

That, Wolf explained, saves banging up your knees and helps to fend off rocks.

“Don’t try to grab the boat or get back into the boat unless the guide tells you to,” Wolf added.

That could put everyone else in trouble. A rafter must have faith that you’ll all meet downstream, where it’s calm.

Wolf also made it clear that nobody is just a passenger. Everybody is issued an oar and is expected to use it properly and vigorously on command. The commands are “forward . . . back-paddle . . . stop . . . left turn . . . right turn”--often given during one of Wolf’s descriptive spiels.

For example: “This is the Rock Garden-- forward! It’s wider than before-- stop!-- because the bridge work downstream-- back-paddle!-- formed a dam and backed up-- stop! “

A higher bridge had to be built across the river when the reservoir covered the old one. The broken layers of shale tumbled to the bottom of the riverbed, which wasn’t all bad. There is now a new, exciting and unnamed rapid that wasn’t there before.

Wolf and Ferguson, commanding the other boat, pull out to walk ahead and scout the new rapid for the best way to approach it. They decide on a winding route--to the right of a big rock at the head of the rapid, left of another halfway through, and avoid the knobby boulder at the bottom. Wolf and his party stay to watch as Ferguson takes his crew through, perfectly. Then Wolf does the same.

At Six Pack Rapid, they make the traditional wager on their ability, after passing across the big boulder in the middle, to make a hard left and avoid smacking the high rock wall on the right. Both succeed.

Farther down, near the tributary Rose Creek, formerly a popular halfway picnic spot, Wolf comments: “This used to be all sandy beaches.”

Now it’s destroyed by erosion and deposits of rocks and sediment, but a hike up Rose Creek shows that spring rains have flushed out most of the silt to reveal pools and flat rocks once favored by sunbathers.

Wolf identifies and describes the properties of plant life returning, but there also is a downside. The 15-foot-high diving cliffs are exposed again, but the water below is too shallow with silt for safety. On the opposite side, what some say was California’s largest and oldest fig tree stands dead in the middle of a field of silt, well below the “death line.”

“We used to stop to pick figs here,” Wolf says.

The old Chinese mining camp, under water even last year, is now high and dry, and pieces of rusty mining equipment lie on the banks. The group stops to explore Coral Cave, a cramped and twisting labyrinth of limestone stalactites and stalagmites high up the north bank.

Then, at Cop Rock, the river starts to cloud and the flow slows. This is where river meets reservoir and dies, amid the flotsam in still water as thick as chocolate milk. The rafts must be towed by an outboard motorboat the last two miles to the take-out ramp.

Wolf says, in retrospect: “It’s actually more exciting than it was before, largely because of that new rapid. The other rapids are basically the same.”

But their days are numbered. There are 19 dams on the Stanislaus, existing or under construction.

“This is one of the most dammed rivers in the state,” Wolf said.

Everyone knew exactly what he meant.