Fluid Kayaks Team

The season in Colorado is starting to slow down a little. It hasn't quite started snowing yet, but it's cold, and it's dry here. Water is about as low as it gets. However, for the truly desperate paddler, there are still a couple runs out there. I've been paddling whatever I can, with my friend Conor and my Girlfriend Natalie. My old buddy Dave Stentiford even came out from Reno and we all did a run down gore. For any other kayakers out there going through a difficult withdrawal process, here's a quick list of spots that you might still be able to paddle.

1: The Big Thompson Gnar Section This run is fed by dam releases a few miles upstream near Estes Park. It's short, but sweet. Even well into the fall, there is often enough water in here to have a great time. Check out the run description that I wrote for eddyflower here.

2: Gore Canyon

This run is a real Colorado classic. Pretty much every paddler that is good enough to do Gore knows all about Gore, but for those few that haven't heard of it, Gore is a fun class IV-V run through a beautiful canyon on the upper Colorado, and runs late in the season due to dam releases.

3: The Glenwood Springs playpark It took years to finally get everything in line to put a playpark in at Glenwood Springs, but it was worth the wait. This is the only park so far that will have water year round. The water won't get much lower than it is right now, and the park is still kickin'. Next spring, when the water gets high again, this should transform into a river wide wave which will be the site of the US Team Trials. I'm very excited to finally have a chance to compete at Team Trials. Also, the park is an almost perfect location. My mom lives just a few blocks away, so I have a place to stay, and the local kayak shop, Glenwood Canyon Kayak, is just up the hill for any last minute gear needs. I look forward to keeping my skills sharp through the so-called "offseason" at the Glenwood park.

4: The Poudre Yeah, it's probably not worth driving any distance to get there, but if you live in Fort Collins, the Poudre is the run of convenience. When Dave was in town, he, Conor, and I all headed up for an ultra low water run. We hit the Narrows, which was a lot of fun in the right mindset, and then fired up the upper part of the seldom-run Poudre Falls. Poudre Falls is actually three closely spaced drops, and the reason that it isn't run often is that the last drop is a killer. It has been run successfully, but it's also taken the life of more than one paddler. At low water, it's a narrow 20 footer into a deep crack with undercut walls on three sides. At high water, it's perhaps ever scarier, with a lot of the water falling into and filling up that same crack. We had a great time on the upper drops, and we were able to get out just above the last drop (literally, about 5 feet from the lip) because of the extremely low water, but we were all highly aware of the consequences.