Buzzard Creek, CO

[jdeem1977]

Does anyone have any info on this creek and do you think it's actually running based on the gauge on AW?

[offline]

We ran Buzzard Creek last year and I would say it was fun, although I am not in a hurry to do it again. I am not sure I would rate it as high as a class four but the abundance of F U rocks even at high water made it a little bit more exciting. If you run it be careful of a river wide fallen tree about 1/2 way down which can kind of take you by surprise. It sits about 3 inches off the surface of the water (when we ran it) and it kinda hides around a corner until the last minute. I think I sensed it more than saw it.

Thats about all I remember of it, sorry I can't help you more.

[Schizzle]

A buddy and I ran it on Saturday afternoon when Plateau was running about 1,100. I thought I'd give it a 2nd chance since the last time I did it was at half the flow and I thought it sucked.

I have to say that it redeemed itself nicely. At that level it's a sled ride and you really need to be on your eddy catching, tam-grabbing game or you might run some blind corners with wood. I was also running a bobber demo boat with significantly more rocker than the boat I ran it in last year. This helped a lot when dealing with the FU rocks that seemed to be the "low"-light of a low water run.

All the fences I bitched about last year were moved out of the way. Still two river wide trees and a wire. The wire is somewhere in the first half, but even at the higher flows we had it's plenty high off the water to not be dangerous. There's a tree close to the start that has a big, easy-to-catch eddy above it on the left. Someone had broken the branches off of it near the trunk, so we were able to slip under it. We only had to get out of our boats once --> The big, BIG tree is still in there on a blind corner. Someone has marked it well with pink survey tape, but it's kind of an accident waiting to happen IMO. We grabbed some tamarisk just above it and walked around it on the right. When the river stays steep and starts braiding around islands, BE CAREFUL.

Overall, I like sled rides so I thought the run was a blast. At 1,100, it's worth doing and I'd rate it continuous IV-IV+, as one 7-mile bouncy, rapid. As far as flow goes, I stand by my earlier statement in another post that it's about 75% of the flow on Plateau creek. Not a beginning creeker run at these flows. For a visual gauge, on our run the water was completely touching the concrete portion of the take out bridge abutments.