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Playspot: USA, California, Orleans, Salmon River , Oak Bottom wave.

What's it like

The wave at Oak Bottom runs from flows as low as 600-ish cfs, but you probably want 1000cfs at least for it to be decent. It just keeps building as the flow increases, becoming more broken, getting progressively stickier and allows more verticality as it builds. At lowish flows there's a pocket on river right that goes right, and a good fold on river left.

There's a great eddy just down on river right and you can usually get yourself back up on river left. Downstream is pretty flat so no real probs if you swim.

How to get there

Oak Bottom wave is on the Cal Salmon river in Northern California up from Sam's Store at Somes Bar, just north of Orleans. To get there, take the right from the main highway 96 towards Forks of Salmon and drive about two miles up the road. Take a right when you see the sign for the Oak Bottom forest area. The wave itself is just downstream from the car park area.

More info

You can get the flow on the main Salmon river on www.dreamflows.com.

Locals

Sam who runs the store is a good source of info.

Info sources

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