Elsa Bailey – pioneering namesake of Bailey Falls

Elsa Bailey was a pioneering kayaker in the early 1960s.  Top: photo of Elsa by Sierra Club kayaker Carl Trost (from “Bail, Bail…”); bottom (from A  Guide to Three Rivers) in 1961 at the Salida, CO, kayak races. She was in the first group to kayak the Rogue River in 1959, and in the first Sierra Club kayaking trip on the Stanislaus River in April 1961 – Bailey Falls on the Stanislaus was named for her. She passed away in 2016, still adventuring at age 103! Here is one obituary, and another.