After a late start to my Saturday I arrived at the Sluff Section to find two boats in the river and a huge peanut gallery of people, some geared and some not. Definitely seemed like an entertaining weekend to say the least, and I must confess that I was praying that I still remembered how to boof above the disposal. At least we had 4 eddies to warm-up in after two months of not paddling.
Let's see the breakdown. Glad to see so many people getting after it one last time before the snow falls.
Sorry to disappoint you, Kyle. I'm 719... I spent my weekend at Best Buy pricing new TVs, learning how to make home-made artichoke dip, and going down on my girlfriend so much that my lips chapped to the point of cracking.
Dane P.
__________________
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people - House
After seeing one member of team FOCO BADLY beaten in the runout of the disposal I opted to put in below it. I also walked the wood choked drop (#2 I think?). Even with those two portages the upper section was really fun, and a little burlier than it looked from the road. Those last two drops of the upper were SO $$$. Great to get out on the water one last time with the whole crew.
Anyone else throw some ends in a sleeper hole above the little slide drop? I was glad to dig my way out of that one without a swim.
Long story short - no swims for me, but two portages. Representing the 303 with good sense about my off-the-couch skills.
After the usual crack of noon start we made it to the buisness and proceeded to scout the biggins.
Garbage disposal went like this -
1st run - good but slightly offline (970)
2nd run - better but the runout is squirly. (970)
3rd run - good (not sure, does WY even have area codes)
4th run - to far left, skirt implossion, auto ejection, rough swim and complete yard sale. this person shall remain nameless but I've heard he's having surgery today to repair a broken kneecap and severly bruised his rib. (970/303)
5th run - my turn, shit. thing turn out okay but I'll say i haven't been that gripped for awhile. (970)
Be careful out there folks. While the BigT is roadside it deserves a lot of respect. The channel bed is full of sharp roadblast and general mank that can throttle a person pretty easily.
__________________
The high side of good - Daniel D
Well, I skipped the gnar and the near-gnar and put-in at the big dam and ran to the park. What an amazing section! Like Lawson with fewer and smaller eddies and no flatwater. What a shame it runs so seldom...
Who's boat got left there Sat. night pinned below Garbage? I got there about 10:30 Sunday morning to see it and started trying to pull it off with another guy when the local FD showed up and started throwing a hissy-fit. We all go chewed out for someone else not calling it in to 911 and telling them the person was fine... We had a rope on it and was about to use a come-a-long to pull if off when we all got kicked out of the area by the FD.
Badazws6-
Unfortunately, I think that the guy was thinking more about his trip to the hospital & potential surgery than what the local FD reaction would be the next day. Having spoken to him later that night, I know he was trying to recruit folks to retrieve the boat early the next day & maybe he was hoping that it would find its way ashore and not be a problem. We arrived there around 1pm and realized that given its location, it was much safer to leave the boat there until the the water drops today /tomorrow. Kudos for getting a rope on it- that sucks that the FD made you halt the recovery, and sucks even more that you got chewed out for something that wasn't your fault.
That being said, I guess the lesson here is that it's always a very good idea for someone from the boating party to let local rescue know that a boat is pinned & the swimmer isn't still in the water. I saw 3 rescue trucks coming back down the canyon yesterday morning and they weren't looking too happy about us driving up.
I know boaters take care of their own and couldn't imagine that anyone got "lost" without someone noticing with so many people in the river. So I figured that is what happened. Sorry to hear it was a hospital inducing swim.
I hear golden FD likes to charge people for that type of activity but hopefully that isn't the case for Loveland...
Funny story about the Golden FD (by the way, who's idea was it to put the fire and police station in the middle of the floodplain so they can't get out to help in flood events?). So some guy swam on Lower Clear Creek and his boat took off. It showed up submerged in the play park, search and rescue got called in, yada, yada, yada. We showed up in time to see the cops goin' postal about the situation, $1,000 fine, etc.
Fast forward a couple weeks and I'm walking by the park and see a girl about 14 huddled on a rock in the middle of the river about to cry and her mom throwing a fit on the shore. There was a decent amount of water in there but it wasn't that high. I was about to walk up and wade across the river and bring her back (no joking, it would have been easy at whatever level it was and where she was) when the Fire department showed up. Six guys jumped out and started rigging this elaborate system with three ropes across the river, boogy boards, and all sorts of fancy gear (except for they neglected to send anybody upstream to warn boaters coming down). I was in shock at how ridiculous the whole thing was. When it was all done, they wished them well and never even mentioned anything about compensation.
COUNT
__________________
"The world would be a better place if everyone kayaked."-Brad Ludden (Valhalla)
"You only get one chance to run a drop blind."-DD
Linear Mode
