where to paddle, coming from Ontario for a few days.

[Tucker]

Looking for a little help in planning a couple days of paddling. Myself and a friend, I paddle with, are flying into Denver for five days and we are going to doing a couple days of paddling. Our dates are June 20-25. She and i are both good intermediate paddlers. very comfy in class III and IV and fairly confident in class V. We both like to play on waves and run the river as well. We will be renting a car, and most of our gear, so mobility is not a problem.

We are looking for suggestions on
1) where to paddle
2) where to rent gear
3) places to look (sites, boat stores, etc) for kayaking info for the area.

any help would be very much appreciated and if anyone is planning a trip to paddle in Ontario I would be more than happy to make some suggestions or tap you into resorces with all the info you need.

thanks Tucker

[cecil]

Confluence Kayaks in Denver

[ericF]

There are many excellent options for boating that time of the year.

I suggest you consider the Cache la Poudre river as a good destination for at least one or two of your days. The base of the canyon is an hour and a half north of Denver. The Poudre has numerous runs with long stretches of III/IV both above and below the narrows section. Can be busy on the weekends.

The Arkansas is also an excellent choice with the Numbers, Brown's canyon and the Royal Gorge being the more popular runs. Avoid Brown's on the weekend when it is paved with rafts.

Glenwood Springs would be another good base camp for the Colorado, Roaring Fork and Crystal rivers.

I would suggest getting a copy of Colorado Rivers and Creeks vol 2 if possible. It's been out-of-print for some time but rumor has it that you can still buy it directly from the authors.

See:
http://www.kayakingcolorado.com/crc2002.html

The "CRC 2 Buy" item under the site menu has the address and price.

[natebone]

If you're interested, http://www.eddyflower.com has a large collection of Colorado run descriptions