Colorado Trip- Day Three

Sunday, June 21st.

I’m going to stop trying to write blog entries in the third person. It’s taking me too long to go back and correct what I’ve written. So from now on, whoever writes the entry will use the first person and then sign the entry. So there.

Woke up very early this morning and watched the sun rise and spread over the mountain tops. We packed up our gear and our lunch and headed out to run Brown’s canyon. We left camp at 9. Already it was sunny and heading into the 70s. Level at 2500. When J ran it last time, it was 1100. J got pulled over for speeding about a mile from the put-it. The cop was a cute redhead, and I think J gave him the secret redhead signal or something, because all he got was a warning. (That, and the cop educated us on the fact that the lifts on the truck make the speedometer off by about 7 mph. J just said “really, I didn’t know that”, even though we already knew our speedometer was correct because of Karen - the GPS). Then some guy pulled over and yelled to the cute cop that there was an accident ahead- some guy on a motorcycle had hit a deer. So the cute redheaded cop had to go. We passed the accident. It was gross. There were twin fawns on the road about 10 yards from the mother. Missy thought they were unborn. I didn’t see any trauma on the stomach of the mother, but I suppose the wound could have been on the side that was on the road. J thinks the driver ended up being ok, because he saw him moving his fingers when he drove back by the scene when setting shuttle.

The river…was AWESOME!!!! I hate to be prosaic, but it’s hard to describe how much fun it was. We put on at 11 and started off with various pockets of boogie water interspersed with flat-but very fast-moving water. Every now and again you’d find a great huge wave. Sometimes, you’d sight in on a great wave down river and by the time you got there, it went flat. That was disappointing! When we got to the narrower canyon-y spots, there were more and more long stretches of huge rolling waves. This is why I wanted to come to Colorado! I love the rollercoaster waves! The level was so high (according to J) that a lot of the boulders he had to dodge on his last trip were underwater. So it was all just super fast and super fun. I was behind J at one point when he completely disappeared into the trough of the wave. I actually thought he had rolled, so I avoided his line.

We met up with some Cats at one point. It was in a narrowing section with holes and gigantic swirling (aerated) whirlpools. J said we should hang back to let them go (as they get caught in holes), but he didn’t leave NEARLY enough space. Poor planning by J, as I’m sure he’d admit if you asked him. J&M got past both cats, but I didn’t have time. It was unpleasant. I didn’t have any experience paddling in the whirlpools, and I couldn’t steer at all. I kept getting pushed into the cat, and got hit on the head with his paddle a couple of times. Then we got knocked together in a constricting spot and my paddle got stuck under his raft. That sucked. Luckily I pulled free before hitting the wave trains and was able to paddle ahead. Stupid cats. (the rafts…not the animals. Hi Max and Bailey- miss you! Wish you were here!)

Around the middle of the run we came to Zoom Flume…a powerful Class IV run through a short canyon. We pulled out and walked down for a look at the whole thing. There was one massive hole in the middle, but it looked like you could steer right to avoid it. While we were scouting, a bunch a rafts came through. Only one got trashed in the hole. It’s occupants were tossed from the raft easily, all but one small child who had been sitting in the middle of the raft holding on (not paddling). He got bounced around a few times in the hole before the river finally let the raft go. As we were walking back to put on, we got to see a couple of kayaks go. They took the lines we saw and made it fine. One guy got knocked over in the swirly currents after the hole, but he rolled up and was able to punch through the rest of the waves. So we put on- J went first and skirted the hole but got knocked about by the water. The cross currents from the water shooting off and back each side of the canyon were crazy. He said he didn’t flip, but the currents did throw him into a stern squirt. Not a common move for the mega-rocker, I imagine. M went second, missed the giant hole, but got knocked over by a cross-wave coming out of a giant wave-trough. Those waves were huge! Missed 2 roll attempts due to backband coming loose, but eventually made it up (whew!). I came last (and a little scared…M took FOREVER to get in her boat, allowing my nervousness to ramp up exponentially. It went so fast!!! I had planned my line to run the middle at the top and then head to the right to avoid the hole when I saw the tent (there was a tent set up where a guy was taking pictures of the rafts). But I barely had time to concentrate on staying upright through the huge entry waves, and before I knew it I was at the hole. It was actually kind of shocking how fast it went. I tipped in the same spot as M. Rolled (class IV combat roll- hell yeah!) right away, and all eddied out to relive the excitement. So fun!

We then went through some more technical wave sections. The presence of the whirlpools and aerated water meant you had to keep full concentration and a ready brace. I like the worry-free waves much better! A little further down, in the middle of some giant rollers again, came across a raft that had dumped all its passengers and they were stranded behind a big rock 15’ from shore but blocked from an easy swim in due to a jet of fast current. J stopped to help, ferrying the rope back and forth and made sure that he was there in case they let go of the rope. Nobody in the rafts wear helmets or cold weather gear. Crazy! That is one thing that’s kind of crazy. We’re paddling in 80 degree weather with our drysuits and gloves on (well, no gloves for J). The water is THAT cold.

The run finished mildly, and after 2.5 hours of pure awesome we were done. J tricked me into thinking the takeout had the same set of stairs that the put-in had. Jerk. Had a nice picnic lunch, beautiful sunny weather and pretty scenery. We headed back to get the dirtbike, and stopped to give a hitchhiker a lift to the put-in. J asked if the high flows were natural, or contrived for FibArk (hoping it was the latter so that the rivers would come down to a less scary level), but we were told it’s all natural. The very warm weather is causing another bout of snowmelt, and the rivers are spiking as a result. We tried to get some advice on other runs that would be III-IV, but sadly our hitchhiker had only moved to CO last fall, and only recently tried kayaking. So he had no advice.

After loading the bike, we headed into Buena Vista to visit CKS again. T got the same booties that M bought, as they turned out to be really comfortable. Then we drove up to look at the numbers section. I’m sure it’s deceptive from our high roadside vantage point, but it didn’t seem all that scary. So we won’t scratch it from the list of possible runs for later in the week.

-Tina