Day #23, #24 and #25. 6 rivers in 3 days!

All I can say is WOW! What a three day stretch.

It all started Friday when we received word from Ian that Big Thompson was running high and we were invited to come join him. We weren't leaving until 1:00, so Edgar and I got a quick lap on Lower Clear Creek. We ended up doing the Clear Creek run with our friend Lanie. I actually met Lanie back in the fall on the Cheoah river in NC. She was visiting from CO and didn't have anyone to paddle with and joined our group. Here we are paddling together again.....what a small world!

After our quick lap of LCC we headed north of Denver to meet Ian. We arrived at Big Thompson about an hour or so later. Now, before I get into the river I have to preface this river with the a few facts. First, this is a special run because it normally doesn't run or only runs a couple of times a year. Second, this is a Colorado "must run" river. Third, it hasn't run as high as it was running the day we ran it since 2002.

Now the river....................wow. wow. wow. It was non stop ninja fighting action. I have never paddled in so much chaos in my life. Back to back to back to back, etc 5+ foot waves with drops, boulders and holes sprinkled all over for good measures. It was out of control. I think we stopped at about 4 eddys the entire 5.5 mile run......why?.......because there weren't anymore!!!!! It was big, and SO MUCH FUN! We had a group of seven and EVERYONE was basking in the afterglow of the craziness we just experienced. Truly a must run and I am VERY glad we ran it. Although, we did have a bit of a debate later about this run. Some locals said the Big Thompson was class IV or IV+ at the high level we did it at..............."yeah right", I said. Edgar and I both agree it is a V in our book. The run is (as all the runs so far in CO) VERY continuous like nothing.......I repeat NOTHING in the SE that I have paddled and mistakes can compound very quickly. Swimming is not an option. If you do you are going to take a beating and be swimming for while.........with a very real possibly of flush drowning. Superman would be your only hope for getting your gear. Anyways....I digress...............

Saturday, we met nice and early at Brian's house to paddle some more CO rivers that don't run very often. Oh, if I didn't mention it earlier we have been told that this was a spectacular time to come to CO and paddle because of the great snow pack they received this year. Now back to the river.........specifically......The Eagle, Source.............sounds cools right? Well it was. Lot of class IV boogie water and a couple of fun drops (two fat chicks). We have video. I'll try to post it soon. We had a great day until one of our CO friends got pinned in the last big rapid. It was a bit scary. After all the chaos we lost two paddles (the person who was pinned and Edgar). Edgar dropped his paddle as he was trying to get back into the river (after unpinning the boat). Long story short...it is gone. CO steepness is no joke. After a long day of driving and a long day on the river we stopped to get dinner and then drove to camp in Aspen near the rivers we are planning on running tomorrow. Oh, I forgot to mention that at the take out when we arrived some hikers told us that there were a bunch of trees in the river. Because this is a rarely run river we decided to hike up and scout some of the river. We thought the river would eventually meet with the road again before the put in.........especially since the a guide book mentioned "road scouting". Well the river never made it back to the river and Brian, Kevin and I hike the ENTIRE stretch if river!

Sunday after the snow................that's right I said after the snow. IT SNOWED last night!!!! Anyway after the snow the Upper Frying pan was our first river and wow it was fun. Big boulder gardens with pushy water. Very similar to rivers in the SE. Edgar and I finally felt at home. ;) We boofed our way down 5+ miles of beautiful river and had a blast. We quickly packed up, ate lunch and headed over to Castle Creek, which runs into the Slaughter House section of the Roaring River. We planned on paddling them both. When we arrived Brian was greeted by some of his paddling buddies who were nice enough to drive our car down to the take out in exchange for a ride up.....................nice. Castle Creek was very cool as well. It was mostly more fun boulder gardens and class IV boogie water. The first rapid however felt like the longest technical boulder garden rapid EVER! I was literally winded after running it and for the first time that I can remember I had to ask everyone to wait a few minutes for me to catch my breath! lol. There were a couple more technical rapids, but they all went well.
We boogied our way down some class IV read and run rapids and quickly came to the Slaughter House confluence. Slaughter House was a fun class IV boogie water run with two big rapids. The first rapid was Entrance Exam, which everyone passed! lol. The other big rapid was Slaughter House. The Slaughter House rapid is 5 or 6 foot boof on the left that you have to hit to avoid a really nasty hole. We all ran it fine and we were on our way down the river with visions of food and rest in our eyes. We still had about 3 miles or so of class IV boogie water left before the take out and as well as things were going things were about to get epic again. We are all just boofing along down the river when all of the sudden I heard someone yell swimmer! "Us?" I replied. "Yes!" was yelled back at me. I am not sure what happened, but everyone was on top of it and we got the paddle and boat to shore very quickly. Unfortunately, the swimmer was on the other side of the river. Next thing I know one of our paddlers is ferrying across the river with a rope attached to their safety vest. The thought was to avoid a bazillion throws trying to get the rope across the river for the swimmer. Well things went from bad to worse. The rope wasn't long enough or the water pulled it out too much. Well now the rope was pulling the paddler backwards and then upside down and backwards into a rapid. The release of the safety vest didn't release for some reason. I was the only one in their boat and quickly paddled out to try to assist. By the time I got there we had our second swimmer. Long story short (again) we got the person to shore safely and I was off on the longest most epic boat chase of my life! Over a mile of river and countless non-stop rapids later I finally got the boat to shore. I was joined shortly by two other members of our group. We then ferried the boat to the other side of the river and hiked back up to the others.

We were able to get everyone to the right side of the river safely and hike back down to the boats to finish the run. We finished the run without incident and quickly made our way to subway! lol.


I am very worn out as I write this, but looking forward to day #26 and the last week of the Vertical Challenge. So far our team has raised over $1,200 for First Descent and paddled over 25,000 vertical feet.

Tomorrow we are paddling Baily at high water with Ian!!!

Whoo hoo!


Jason