In the summer of 2009, myself, Greg Watson, and Mason Robinson took a trip to Colorado in celebration of graduating high school. We loaded up my dads truck and set the GPS for Durango. After spending 30 hours in the car with minimal sleep, we arrived. While walking the streets of Durango, we happened to run into Bama Boys Andy Hobson, Danny Flynt, and Cruise Quenelle, who were living out there for the summer. They invited us to go run Vallecito Creek that afternoon, so without even finding camp or unpacking, headed out.
We ended up driving up the South Mineral Creek road to camp, which was a beautiful area and one of my favorite camp sites of the trip.
**side note: While scouting South Mineral Creek, I ran into Derk Slottow. I had talked to Derk on the phone and on Mountainbuzz about kayaking in Colorado and had made some plans to meet up and boat but it ended up not working out. He had just got done scouting it and was heading out but we talked for a little while. Later in the season after I was home, I learned Derk had passed away kayaking on Big South of the Cache la Poudre. This hit me pretty hard, Derk was the first person I ever knew personally who died while kayaking. Rest in peace buddy.
We stayed at South Mineral for a few days and tried to run it several times, but it was a little too low for our preference. Everything looked good except the 20 footer's lip and run in was really shallow and we were worried about getting hung up on the lip and hitting the rock in the landing. The lead in was so shallow we did not think we would be able to get speed to clear the lip.
After getting shut down on South Mineral, we ran the Ice Lake Creek park and huck. This is a sweet and steep quadruple drop stout right down the road from South Mineral. We had a few sketchy lines here but all ended well, you can see it in the video.
The next day, we drove over to Ouray (self proclaimed Switzerland of America, according to the bible) and got a quality quickie on the Uncompahgre River. High water turned this manky section of creek into some full on class V big water. Read and run at its finest, we could not seem to stop doing laps on this one.
On our last lap, a local news reporter took some photos and we got in the local paper a few weeks later.
It took us longer to reach Crested Butte than we thought it would, but we still had time for one run on the creek after a quick scout. This is when we ran into Kevin Jacobi, who would become a good friend of ours. He offered to show us down, so after some intense off-roading, we reached the put in and had a great run on OBJ.
Be Joyful
Kevin Jacobi was doing something a little different this summer. He was touring all around the state of Colorado raising money for kids with cancer. He was touring on a bike, pulling his kayak, gear, and everything he needed on a trailer. He was trying to do 50 different class V runs in one summer. And he did it! Kevin was hitting festivals and raising money, he was on the news several times, and raising money through his blog, and I am not positive how much he ended up raising, but it was substantial, and his journey a real accomplishment.
I busted my nose on the big one
Me tucking up on the big one
Greg airing out a sick boof. Hows your back??
So later that night, we made friends with the group camping next to us in the OBJ campground. Pennsylvania (mostly) crew Mike Konschnick, Robert Murphy, Molly Rogan, Joe Potoczac, Jaclyn Harhart, and Cliff Mallioux became great friends of ours. We paddled with them on Oh Be Joyful the next few days and had some very fun nights camping and hanging out around Crested Butte.
Click this photo to make it bigger
Slate River Valley
Unfortunately on our 4th day at Oh Be Joyful, Mason subluxated his shoulder on Say Cheese, the put in drop. (at lower water when you don't run ankle breaker)
After getting off the river, we drove an hour to Gunnison to the hospital, where he was diagnosed. A fitful night of sleep later, Mason made the tough decision to fly home to recuperate his shoulder.
Greg and I drove Mason to the airport in Denver, where he flew home. Not sure what do do next, we called up Mike, who lives in Ft. Collins and he invited us to crash at his house with the rest of that crew. Arriving there, it was too late to paddle, and that was our first day of the trip not kayaking. When we got there we met Liz Fincher, Mikes girlfriend, who it turns out is from just down the road from our hometown. Later in the summer we got to visit with Mike and Liz again while they were visiting GA.
In the morning, myself, Greg, Mike, And Cliff drove up the Poudre drainage to kayak, well the rest of the crew toured the Fat Tire Brewery...
We got some good boating done on Spencer Heights, Joe Wright Creek, and the Lower Poudre Narrows, all at pretty high water.
Cliff, Greg and I
Greg coming out of Carnito Canyon
Thanks to Mike for shooting these awesome photos
The next few days were a bit of a lazy period, we slept in, hung out, made some really good quesadillas and went boating in the afternoons on some more chill runs in playboats, like Poudre Park and the Bridges section. These are really fun play runs, similar to the Ocoee but a step bigger. Solid class IV playboat runs.
We also ran the North Fork of the Poudre, but it was really low water and without a gauge, it was hard to tell at the put in. While the whitewater was not great, its a really pretty canyon and just another cool place we got to experience out there.
Blue heron caught in one of the barbed wire fences you have to duck under
Greg and Mike floating through the canyon.
We then went down to Lyons Fest, and watched Tao Berman win the creek race there, and also watched Jordan Poffenburger get pinned badly in the race, but it ended up well. I took footage on Jordans camera, its on a video somewhere.
Later, Jordan, Jake Ament and I ran the the North St. Vrain Proving Grounds section, a fun class IV+ 2 mile stretch of river in an awesome, remote feeling canyon.
Heading back to Ft. Collins, this concluded our week with Mike and crew, as the Pennsylvania folks were heading home, and Greg and I were going to Salida for FibARK.
Fibark is a huge festival in the town of Salida, CO. I spent some time in Salida with my dad and brother mountain biking and kayaking two years prior, so I was familiar with the area. On the way from Ft. Collins to Salida, greg and I made a stop on Boulder to run Upper Boulder canyon, on of the gnarliest, mankiest, sections of creek ever. Its so steep and continous and there is road blast everywhere, it the definition of a mankfest. But it was fun in kind of a sick way.
After getting pulled over for speeding but managing to talk my way out of a ticket, we arrived in Salida at about 2 in the morning and couldn't find free camping/were not willing to look for camping at all. So we attempted to poach some at an RV campground by pulling in that late, and sleeping on the ground. Looking up at the stars that night falling asleep was crazy, it was more stars than I have ever seen. We woke up early to try to avoid having to pay but were slapped with a $30 fee for those 6 hours. Oh well.
Driving into town, who do we see but Kevin Jacobi, pedaling his ass off, kayak on trailer. We met him in town, and went to Clear Creek of the the Arkansas with Texas Ken. Clear creek is a super fun micro creek made up of two gorges with ultra continuous class V- the whole way down. The crystal clear water made this a spectacular run that we lapped twice.
Back in town we saw lots of friends from around the state, Jordan was there, Jake was there, the bama boys were there (boating with bama boys seemed like ages ago) and lots of others from back east as well. We were treated to Lez Zepplin, a lesbian tribute to Led Zepplin, that were really good that night.
Next morning we found Kevin and decided to give Lake Creek a try. Lake creek is one valley over from Clear Creek, and provided the same type of continuos class V- for about 8 miles, but with a few super burly class V+ rapids. This may have been one of my favorites of the trip.
That night, String Cheese Incident played at the festival, Fibark attracts some good music.
Lake Creek
Paralyzer. This is regularly run at about 1/3 of this flow, but I have heard rumors of some super-studs firing this bad boy up at the stout 1200 we were there at. Hot Damn.
This is a hidden pourover hole that is super sticky, hidden at the end of a wavetrain. The hole is similar to woodall shoals on the Chattooga. Mixed lines, but we all made it through okay.
This is a super clean, quarter mile long burl called "not in my backyard" named after the apparently hostile landowners. Hmm. Before we were out of our boats, there was Tecate with lime, and chips and salsa waiting for us. Also an offer to borrow the cabin anytime we wanted, for free.
Greg and Jacobi scouting Tombstone
After this epic day of boating, we headed back to Fibark and watched the float race with some crazy creature crafts, pirate ships, rafts made out of kegs, and other ridiculouness. We also saw our good friends Taylor Cote and Ken Cote, and watched Taylor win 1st place in Jr. Womens freestyle! Way to go!
Sometime during Fibark we watched the Pine Creek race too, unfortunately we were too late to sign up to race. Lots of fun beatdowns and a few swims ensued also which was fun to watch.
Next day, Greg and I were able to borrow a JK Dynamic Duo two person whitewater kayak for a run down the numbers! I do not remember everyones name that was there, but Jud Keiser and Anna Bruno were there, along with Jordan. Greg and I had a blast in this boat, punching 10ft tall waves and huge holes, it was great as long as you kept it straight! Easy to roll too.
At the takeout, a car had run off the road, and almost into the river. Crazy. The guy was alright, thankfully.
On the last day of Fibark, we went with Andy Hobson and Cruise Quenelle to run Pine Creek Rapid on the Ark. This is some huge, fast moving water with a large, retentive hole, right in the middle of it. Some rocks and a funky eddyline make it tricky to work around. We all fired it up though and everyone had great lines!
Me and Greg, in uniform
After Pine Creek, we went and lapped Clear Creek a few more times at a slightly lower level, around 220 cfs. The book rates this level as only 2 stars, pretty low quality, but we had a blast and it felt like plenty of water.
After getting some beta from Demshitz and CKS, Greg and I decided to head over to the Crystal Drainage to run the Devils Punchbowls on the South Fork of the Crystal.
Independence Pass - between Aspen and Buena Vista
Panoramic Shot
We got lost as all hell driving over there that night and slept in an Ingles parking lot in Carbondale. We had planned to meet Jordan and his dad, Ned over there, and they would ride up with us in our truck, since they had a small car, and we had to negotiate about 2 miles of intense offroading to get there. Unfortunately we failed to meet up due to no cell service, so they went to OBJ. Jordan sorry you missed out on the punchbowls ball.
After making our way through Marble (pop 85) we drove all 12 miles of that road to the punchbowls. After hiking up and scouting, we chilled for an hour or 2 collecting ourselves and taking in the scenery.
Ice land bridge
Devils Punchbowls, back to back 30 footers clean as can be
Hiking up to the Punchbowls
Crystal Mill Falls
The punchbowls were at high water, but they looked good to go, so we geared up and hiked our boats up there.
Punchbowls from the top
Me plugging it up
Me at the lip
I had a clean line off the second drop as well, but thats when things went a little awry. The pool below the falls at that level is very fast moving water, which, 100 yard downstream drops into the hell-of-all-mank super steep non-stop gnar. Well I had scouted it out and everything and picked out an eddy to catch, but I was not super worried about catching one. Well i went past the eddy i picked out, and was forced to catch a different one. The eddy I caught was next to a steeper, scree filled slope that looked unappealing to my eye to try to climb up with my boat. I knew there was an eddy downstream next to the footbridge so I figured I would just catch that one and not have to hike as far. Well as I was peeling into that eddy (the one below) i caught some branches to my face and caught it very low. I started to flush out the back, and grabbed desperatly for the branches, rocks, bank anything. I knew it was the last chance eddy.
This is the eddy I was going for, that I washed out of.
As I washed out of the eddy and under the bridge I knew I was in for an ass whipping. I knew i screwed up big time. I whipped my boat around forwards, desperately hoping to see an eddy I had not seen before. But there was not one, only fast moving water into the steep unrunnable stuff I didn't even bother to scout.
This is what I was coming up on to run, blind
I went into survival mode at that point, I was not even thinking. I was trying everything in my power to stay upright, eyes scanning for an eddy. I decided at one point to try to drive my boat hard into shore and try to grab onto a boulder. As I drove toward shore, my bow deflected off a rock and sent me backwards. As turned sideways and saw a perfect looking eddy, but before i could react I was swept into the hole, shown below.
Very very bad sticky hole.
I immediatly windowshaded, and rolled up but was violently flipped back over and ragdolled underwater. I popped my skirt and hoped for the best. I resurfaced on the cliff wall, and propelled myself onto the logjam shown in the picture. I could feel my feet being pulled underneath it, but managed to climb on top. i watched my boat get recirculated for about 45 seconds before it finally washed out, downstream out of site.
Good thing I did not swim or boat over this drop, right below where I got out.
Greg was setting safety in between the two drops, and when he saw me go around the corner, started making his way down there, but it took a while. I blasted on my whistle but he did not hear it. When he got down there he set up an anchor and threw me a rope. I clipped into my rescue vest, dived as far out as I could, and greg pulling on the rope. I was safe on the other shore in no time. This was one of the closest calls I have had paddling, and I do feel very lucky. One, that that hole stopped me in the first place. Two, that I was not recirculated in the hole, and that it popped my up on the cliff wall next to the logjam. Three, that Greg and I had recently had swiftwater rescue and knew what to do immediately.
I learned a few lessons from this too. Most importantly, never give up a good eddy above something you do not want to run. Also, when in a situation where your running drop above a drop you do not want to run, scout out an eddy you want, a second chance eddy, a last chance eddy, and a last chance last chance eddy and know which is which. My problem was that i saw plentiful eddies, but didn't look hard enough to know what to do when i missed the one I wanted. Always set good safety. We were rolling in a group of two, so were forced to set safety at one place or another.
Well my boat was long gone, as was my paddle, and brand new pin kit, and creeking shoes. But, shit happens, you just got to deal with it and accept it sometimes, so I did not let it get to me.
Greg still wanted to run the drop, so I set safety and took some pictures. he got a little messed up in the leading and went over vert, but it was all good and he styled the second drop.
G - Dub at the lip
A bit over vert
Styling the bottom drop
I was pretty shaken up after that day, but we drove to Clear Creek in Golden, CO that night and camped. We got up in the morning and I paddled the back-up Magnum down this fun creek and got my confidence back. We had been in Colorado 28 days or so and done pretty much everything (and way more) than we had planned on. We were on the front range, and not wanting to drive 4 hours back the other way to get to water, decided to head on home, back to Georgia.
hope you guys enjoyed this write up, it is a bit overdue but all is well.
peace
- Clay
1st slide drop after teacups 
Edgar boofing a smaller fun double drop
