Fluid Kayaks - Team Blog

For years now, when people ask me about paddling in the winter in Colorado, I tell them that the problem isn't the temperature, it's that there's no water. Well, this year there is a high water release through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and so I put my money where my mouth was and ran it a couple times.

The Black Canyon is a pretty committing experience in the best of conditions. In the winter, the park service closes the 7 mile road to putin, and there is much less daylight. Furthermore, until this month, I had always done the Black as a two day trip, because of the long portage in the middle. However, camping was pretty much a last resort because of the cold weather. And it was high water. All these factors made the run a whole lot more serious than usual. The prudent strategy was to get up at about 4:00 AM to start your day, and expect to finish right around dark.

Despite the high level of commitment, and the danger of any emergency becoming a major emergency, the paddling in the Black is relatively easy. I would compare it to Fremont Canyon in Wyoming. The main dangers are sieves, but they are reasonably easy to avoid. There are a handful of rapids that are indeed pretty difficult, but they are all easily portaged.

Except one set.

Halfway down the run, the river basically pours into a rockpile and doesn't come back out for about a mile. The portage is up and over a lot of large rocks, and it's the one thing that makes this a two day run (or even three days, for some people). The fresh snow on the ground had some strange effects on the portage. I was in there twice, and with a light dusting of snow, not much was different, apart from unpredictable footing. Sometimes the snow was thick enough to give extra traction, and sometimes it was thin enough that it just made everything slippery. On the second trip, we had a little less than a foot of snow, and I think it made the portage a lot easier because it padded the rocks. Every time we came to a downhill, I would sled down on my butt in the snow. It was great, although I had some medical issues that slowed me down (you don't want to know). On both trips, I was slowing down the group during the portage.

On the first trip, I hit a wall of exhaustion trying to keep up with Ben Luck (his grandpa was a mountain goat, and married an olympic runner). So for the second trip, I planned ahead.

That's right. Before leaving Fort Collins, I cooked up a pound and a half of bacon, and brought the whole batch with me down into the canyon. Halfway through the portage there is a nice spot for a fire (it's the usual choice for a campsite). I was highly popular around the fire, trading bacon for whatever else people had brought with them. For myself, I had a perfect bacon sandwich. It was the first bacon sandwich I have ever had, and I found my new favorite food.

After our snack, we finished up the portage by crossing the river two more times and climbing over a whole bunch more rocks. The rapids were just about over at that point. There are two bigger drops, which actually looked a little better at higher water, but nobody felt like rolling the dice in such cold weather.

At the end of the run, there are two takeout options, neither of which is easy. You can either hike up Chukar trail, which is about a mile and is a pretty big climb, or you can paddle the 12 mile Gunnison Gorge. We tried both options, one for each trip. I vastly prefer the trail. In the cold, everything is more serious. I really liked getting off the water early at the trail. During the second trip, when we paddled out, the group got very strung out and it began to get dark. Had we been on the trail, I would have been much less concerned, because you can always hike back down. On the river, if someone is back upstream of you, there's nothing to do but wait for them. Also, it's a lot safer to hike in the dark than it is to paddle in the dark.

However, despite my concerns, both times I went in there, I was accompanied by groups of very solid paddlers. My thanks to Ben Luck, David Spiegel, Fred Norquist, Kurt Braunlich, and Erik Boomer. On the trip that Erik came on, he broke the boat he was borrowing right at putin and had to hike back out and run shuttle for us. He got a ride from a park ranger before he had even gone a mile, and had a way easier day than we did.

So it looks like the Colorado season extends into December. I kept saying that we only had a couple weeks left in the 2011 season, and I think that I was right. As I write this, there's only about 12 hours left in the 2011 season. Have a happy new year out there, and stay safe.

Also, I always try to work in little sponsor product inclusions in my articles, and this time I want to quite blatantly point out that I am wearing Stohlquist gear. Thanks Stohlquist.