Colorado Creeking

In the last two weeks Colorado creeks have been cranking with high spring run off. I took advantage of it and ran the seldom paddled Class V Woods Creek in a remote area of the Colorado Front Range. In the newly published guide book, Whitewater of the Southern Rockies describes the run as " A crazy little steep creek with a 430 foot per mile gradient". This run has only seen a hand-full of paddlers.

I ran the creek in my Riot Magnum. I broke a paddle blade on the sluice show in the adjacent picture. Since there are no eddies I ran the rest of the class V section with one blade.... a true test of a great creek boat--check-out the sequence photo below. The Magnum was stable and yet responsive even with one blade.

As you can see from both pictures taken by Kalob, a professional kayak photographer and paddler, there is still melting snow pack down to the waters edge and the 14 thousand foot peaks feeding the front range creeks are still fully loaded.

After paddling Woods Creek, some of my Huge Experience kayaking High school buddies including Alex Mohn came out to Colorado to paddle in the Teva Games and FibArk rodeo competitions.I took them down my home town creek-- Bear Creek. This creek was runable only a few days last year but because of the big snow year it has been running for the last two months. The picture below is at "No Fun Falls"