CO Day Five

Tuesday June 23rd

Woke early again. 6ish. Took dogs on a long walk along the river. Got geared up and ready to go run the Royal Gorge, fastest exit ever. Left camp at 8:15. Returned to camp at 8:30 so I could get the gloves I had forgotten in my playboat. Oops. Long and beautiful drive through the mountains to get to the put-in. Setting shuttle took about 40 minutes: J said he was stuck behind a guy going 45 all the way back. Poor guy. Not much activity on the river, only a few rafts and 2 kayakers. The run started off with a bang, fast moving jostling waves that led into a canyon wall going around a bend. J went first, gave the go-ahead. I went next, and had a blast, but missed J’s eddy and went down to the next one. He followed me and I felt bad for missing his. Then the next thing we saw was T swimming in the rapids. It turned out to be a long, nasty swim. There were no good breaks in the rapids, and no easy eddies. I tried to help T and also to corral her boat, and I failed at both. J eventually got T to the side and also got her boat. I didn’t have my cowtail and so I had no way of towing her boat in.

After resting a bit, and scouting up ahead a ways (at what we thought was Sunshine, but wasn’t), T decided to walk on the train tracks back to the put-in. J and I headed on downriver. First, I got the camera from T, and J carried it in his vest. This factoid is important for later events. The gorge was so fast and furious! I had plenty of opportunities to work on my bracing and paddling away from holes. Thankfully J was always ahead of me finding the holes so I had time to avoid them. The waves were much bigger than in Brown’s Canyon, and a lot pushier, coming from all directions. We walked both Sunshine and Sledgehammer rapids because it was just the 2 of us and we were definitely in a “better-safe-than-sorry” mood. The holes looked huge in both rapids. If we decide to do the gorge again, we’ll probably run both. I bet will end up flipping, but hopefully will be able to roll. J took my picture pointing at the Clark’s hole, the one Heather got stuck in at the end of Sledgehammer. Sounded like good times!

The section where the gorge narrows, under the cool mile-up-in-the-air suspension bridge was super intense. I flipped twice, but was able to roll both times. But I had a blast doing it, and right after the section finished I wanted to do it all over again! We pulled out right before wall slammer, and luckily there was enough water to skirt the danger on the right. The rest of the run was just super fun high waves until we left the gorge. Then it was about ½ hour of just fast moving water. The last drop was a dam that had a slot made for kayaks and rafts. The sign on the river said “Slot 23 feet out”. J went first, and he hugged the sign not even 5 feet out. It really freaked me out. Turns out the sign means that the slot extends 23 feet out, not that you had to figure out exactly where 23 feet was from the river’s edge. Anyone could have interpreted it the way I did.

We finished the run, hucked our boats to the truck and J discovered that the keys were no longer in his vest! It turns out that he hadn’t secured them better when he accepted the camera job. The constant getting out and putting away of the camera meant the keys were susceptible to being lost. Major bummer! We had all the various bike lock keys on that ring, too. The scooter bike lock key was the only copy we have. J used my river knife to break into the back slider panel of the truck, breaking off 2 giant pieces in the process. I only have a tiny nub of a knife left. I was able to crawl in and get the spare key that we had in the console. Whew! However, the spare key for the lock on J’s dirt bike was back at camp. So after stopping to get T, we headed back to camp. J and I had a quick dinner, and then he went back up to get his bike.

After he got back, he gathered up all of our dirty laundry for a trip to the laundromat. Thanks J! T and I read in the camper. It was thunderstorming at this point, and really sounded cool. Kept the temps low, too, in the lower 70s. Numbers tomorrow!

--Missy