Sequoia National Park: Kaweah River (HD)

Filmed and edited by Sheety33 during June of 2011.

The Kaweah River in the U.S. state of California flows 32 miles (51 km) westward from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada into the Central Valley. It rises in forks in the southern Sierra Nevada inside Sequoia National Park, the longest of which is the Middle Fork, about 18 miles (29 km) long. Once it exits the 8,000-foot (2,400 m)-deep canyons that make up its headwaters, the river flows into a reservoir called Lake Kaweah, where most of its water is stored for irrigation and flood control. Formerly the river continued southwest to empty into Tulare Lake, the terminal sink of an endorheic basin also including the Tule and Kern Rivers as well as southern distributaries of the Kings. Agricultural development and diversion for irrigation have left most of the Kaweah's lower course dry, as is Tulare Lake.

Snowmelt from the high Sierra Nevada, along the 13,000-foot (4,000 m)-high Great Western Divide, feeds the Kaweah River, which reaches enormous peak flows in the spring and early summer and shrinks to a trickle by late autumn. The river's average flow is around 550 cubic feet per second (16 m3/s), but ranges anywhere from 7,500 cubic feet per second (210 m3/s) to 40 cubic feet per second (1.1 m3/s) in the average year. The snowmelt-season flow is about 2,000 cubic feet per second (57 m3/s) and the summer flow is around 700 cubic feet per second (20 m3/s).

The site of Lake Kaweah, in a broad, arid valley in the foothills, was once inhabited by the Yokut people, who had permanent villages along the river but traveled into the headwaters area in summer. The name "Kaweah" is thought to mean "crow" or "raven cry" in the Yokut language. Eventually, people from the Mono Lake basin began migrating over the Sierra Nevada, settling in the high valleys of the Kaweah's forks. Mineral King on the East Fork of the river was the subject of a silver boom in the 1870s, which soon faded. The majority of the Kaweah drainage basin above the Central Valley became part of Sequoia National Park in 1890, and a road was constructed along parts of the Middle Fork and the Marble Fork. The southeasternmost part of the river's watershed also became part of the park in the 1970s, after a failed proposal to build a massive ski resort, and the Kaweah River is now a popular destination for hiking, fishing and whitewater rafting.

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