Mark, your right. The winter LVM (#11 I think, about to come out) has a section on a few of us in the Crystal river valley. It has North Fork Crystal, one shot of South Fork Crystal, upper Yule (hike too, mini creeking), and main Yule (the highlight). Huge thanks to Brook Aitken for helping up with the editing and for letting us use his equipment.
As a related point, I'm just interested to know how CO got rated the sickest whitewater state in Kayak magazine. I just got back from WA and they have some absolutely awesome stuff. We only spent three days paddling, but managed to find bigwater class V and easier class V creeks. One point to mention is that they don't have very many class IV runs. It seems to be a few easier Vs, tons of full on V and class III- stuff. Their season is year round, unlike our three+ month season. I'm no expert and I haven't really boated in many states, but I was really suprised that CO is the sickest whitewater state.
That is weird, judging from what I've seen California would most likely be considered the sickest whitewater state, Colorado would probably round out the top five. Is Kayak magazine online, I would like to read what their justification is, mankiest strainer infested whitewater?
As far as the biggest drops in Colorado, Miller's falls at the end of Crystal Gorge is sure fun to look at. As far as I know no-one has ever run it, but it does kinda look marginally runnable considering the incredibly sick shit you see being run by the pro's.
there is a section of gore creek coming into vail that has three large waterfalls. you can check them out from a bridge on I-70. it looks like a 20 footer, 30 footer, and a forty footer with no eddies inbetween. pretty narrow gorge too. they have been run several times.
I thought I remembered reading that West Virginia got the sickest whitewater state. I think you might have read that wrong. Colorado, California, and Idaho were next but not in that order.
West Virginia won the online poll for Kayak Mag!
This was not an "out of thin air proclamation" but rather a poll that was taken online by our visitors and readers. The results were as follows.
26% voted West Virginia
22% voted California
20% for Colorado
16% for Idaho
14% North Carolina
My personal opinion is that is right on the money! Never really boated in Cali but I think people got the right idea overall, maybe Cali should be #1. It all has to do with boating style and the type of runs you want to do and enjoy most. Colorado might not have a long season but if you boated every damn day of it, you still could not even come close to hitting all of the class V in the state! That is why it ranks, but I am as pissed off as the next jonesn' boater about the short season.
Nick Hinds
there is a section of gore creek coming into vail that has three large waterfalls.
Nick,
I've checked this section out and it was definitley at a HIGH flow when I scoped it (last summer, the weekend when the flooding Eagle created a fat sink hole in I-70)...but it looked challenging to say the least. Do know who has run this section? The stretch from the 30 to the 40 footer looks to me to be the gnarliest. If it goes, i'd be interested in taking a second look...maybe at a lower flow.
Evan
Are you guys talking about the drops under the I-70 east bound lanes? Those are only two 20 footers and a 4 footer inbetween, at least the ones I scouted at river level. The first you drive hard left, the second is a small sticky hole in a boat width slot. The third is a straight forward ledge drop with a narrow landing. Hobie ran the bottom two. Or are you talking about something else?
There is a line on Alberta Falls in RMNP - a very fine line, though, and a fast slide above it that has the potential to skip you out so far you would land on shore. But there is a narrow pool and I know a schoolteacher from Boulder who accidentally swam this falls at peak runnoff and was more or less fine afterwards. This doesn't mean it's safely droppable but suggests a boater could paddle away from it without bodily damage if he or she were to treat it like any other sketchy drop.
The hardest part would be controlling your speed from above and airing out the bottom drop of 25-feet and taking something of a calculated hit, though if you were totally flat and the water was up it could even be fluffy. 25-feet doesn't sound like much but there is 50-feet (aprox) of slick-rock granite slide above this that is, IMO, part of the same falls as it's fast all the way to the lip. So that makes it a pretty big drop and a crown jewel descent of micro creek boating IMO. The other CO. boaters who scouted this with me were not as enthusiastic about its runnability as I was but it was low then. Do a google search and you will find numerous pictures of this drop at all water levels. There is also Ribbon Falls in the park which is a 150-foot, 20 degree slide that is worth hiking up to with a boogie board.
hartje ... we hiked to ribbon & above hoping that something on that creek would materialize and make it worth all the effort ... to no avail. ribbon falls isn't so rad (hence your boogie board comment!). there's one drop above it coming outta the lake that could be fun, but there's nothing worth being in your boat for in the mile of water between the two drops ... and the hike was pretty rediculous. you guys already did the worthy stuff on glacier downstream, but from what i recall, the only waterfall on that landed on rubble (?) .... anyway, where you are now is heaven on earth compared to colorado for big clean drops .... you should link up with joey mosquera to hit bridge creek -- he said its running now. you'd like that one ... hope you're doing well!!!
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