How Bailey Falls was named - The Stanislaus River Archive

Rob Elliott has spent a lifetime on rivers, from his earliest years, to being a head guide at 16, to managing ARTA, then creating and running AZRA in the Grand Canyon.

Themes: Guides and guiding , River trips , Women's experiences

(Photos: Bailey Falls, Rob Elliott, Elsa Bailey)

My dad, Lou Elliott, and I made a fiberglass kayak for me in 1960 when I was sixteen. We made it that spring, and I remember going with the first people to go down the Stanislaus River, who were Sierra Club kayakers. It was with Bryce Whitmore, it was with Elsa Bailey (after which Bailey Falls was named), and I was on the trip where it was named. When we got to Bailey Falls, it was kind of low water, maybe (twelve) hundred cubic feet per second (so it was a bit rocky).

Elsa went down first, and she smacked the back of her kayak and tore off the last foot of it. It was kind of getting late in the day already, and we were just running it through as a one day trip, the nine miles from Camp Nine (the rapid is at mile two).

I stayed back with Elsa while the others went on. I helped her and we taped her boat all back together. We didn’t have duct tape then. We mixed up a batch of fiberglass right there on the spot and poured in a lot of extra catalyst to flash it and fixed it right there and let it sit in the sun for a bit.

So that’s why it was named Bailey Falls, and off we went to catch up with the rest of the trip.

By Rob Elliott , May 1, 1960