In my ramblings...

They say pictures can tell 1,000 words, I'll let the pictures do most of the talking. These are all photos I have taken since being out here in Colorado. Enjoy!

I drove to Colorado with m y sister, Sara leaving Harrisonburg, VA around 1 :30 pm heading for Colorado. I started off driving...West Virginia, the first new state. Still pretty familiar territory. I have many memories of driving 64 west to the New River Gorge from Roanoke, driving past Roaring Run and Low Moor. From Harrisonburg driving through West Augusta past the Maury and Goshen Pass. Sam Black Church past Rupert and Ranielle ...Lansing-Edmond Road. Fayetteville. Past WV was still familiar.

I bought a one-way flight to St. Louis spring break of my Senior Year of college, to pick up a black Subaru Outback I had purchased from a wholesale buyer over the internet....yea, i was a bit skeptical but it was all good. Drove it home the same day all the way to WV, massive snow, it drove awesome, stayed at a hotel and drove home the next day.

I digress...Sara started driving in WV or Kentucky and got us a long way. I took over for the latenight shift in Indiana, woke Sara up for the Mississippi. I got us into almost to Kansas, and we napped around 4am for a few hours outside Kansas City, Missouri. We hit the road hard ready for Kansas. Its a blur from there on into Colorado. We made it to Boulder around 6 to surprise Sara's friend Lecia for some dinner at a great India bufette. Delicious real food after 27 hours of driving.

I did some hiking in Rocky Mtn. National Park, some kayaking, and hanging out with friends in the Front Range. I left Sunday afternoon to drive to Aspen where I had my first day of guide training Monday morning. I arrived in Aspen around 11pm and headed east past the town towards Independence Pass. I arrived to at the locked gate and found a pulloff just down the road and called it home for the evening. This would be the nightly routine for the next month.

Dinnertime in the truck. Beans...yumm!

One of my favorite spots was about 12 miles up Castle Creek Rd, at the ghost town Ashcroft. This old mining town sits at about 10,000 feet above sea level. There was still about two feet of snow in the middle of May when I was staying up there. A few nights I would wake up to 3 to 6 inches of snow and frozen condensation in my truck. It was a truly beautiful thing to open the back of my truck and see tons of snow covered peaks.

What I awoke to the next morning at 10,000 feet in May.

Kayakers and surfers sharing the man-made play feature on the Colorado River at Glenwood Springs.

The South African brothers getting their taste of the American booty beer tradition

Free Thursday night bluegrass at Snowmass

Dan's 1982 Audi loaded down after a post work Slaughterhouse run.

Mt. Sporis as seen from the Prince Creek mountain bike trail

The Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake

A beaver pond and a mountain somewhere above the Clear Creek put-in.

Driving over Cottonwood pass from Buena Vista to Crested Butte.

Ian and the mighty Subie going over Cinnamon Pass from Lake City to Silverton.

A snow covered mountain along Keebler Pass from Aspen to Crested Butte.

The Slate River meandering through the valley towards Crested Butte

Aspen trees and snowcovered peaks...it is the Rockies

Mount Crested Butte

A cool view of Mount Sopris

A mule deer fording the Fryingpan


The gold medal trout waters of the Fryingpan River

Gearing up

An unrunnable man-made drop on Castle Creek


Johnny Haddock paddling the upper Fryingpan River

Twin Lakes and Mt. Hope

Raft Guide training

Mount Massive and some other tall snowcovered fourteeners

Iowa Shaft trail

Aspen from Smuggler Mountain

Greg shreddin' it on the Rim Trail

Jeff tearing up some of the well deserved downhill on the Rim Trail

Climbing the ridge line on the Rim Trail

Celebrating Jeff's ability to legally enjoy the delicious taste of carefully fermented hops

A few weeks in Aspen, and all over Colorado

My Lincoln log home

A great tie-down job

Beautiful Crested Butte

Summer may have finally struck Aspen. After toughing out the coldest, snowiest May of my life, flowers and trees are finally blooming and it is only getting down to the 40s and 50s at night out here. Most of my days in May were spent training how to guide a raft down the river. I picked it up pretty quickly and my previous experience in reading water was helpful. Most of the folks I work with have never done much on the water, they are primarily skiing fanatics. I got in a few days of paddling on the Roaring Fork at the end of a day of training. I have also been going down to a man-made play feature on the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs, CO. At these higher levels it becomes an awesome surfable wave 6 to 10 feet tall. I have seen a number of people out surfing surfboards even.
I have had a number of vistors already stop by on their summer paddling tour. I paddled with my buddy from DC Johnny Haddock and his buddies Alex and Will. We had a great run on the upper Fryingpan one day and Castle Creek into the Slaughterhouse section of the Roaring Fork the next day.

Johnny Haddock, typical boulder garden on the Upper Fryingpan

A few days later I took a week off work to hang out with Billy, Brett, and Ian, the rest of my paddling crew from back in the DC area. I met them in Crested Butte and jumped right into it running some of the bigger and better waterfalls in the state, including a 25-footer, and a 20 and 18 footer. They pretty much drove 30 hours straight and got right on one of the hardest and steepest regularly run creek in Colorado, Oh Be Joyful creek. Its a great one. Your third stroke after putting on is off an 18 foot water fall. Then it keeps on going from there. We also paddled the Upper East, and Daisy Creek in the Crested Butte area.

The gang with Mt. Crested Butte in the background

Billy doing some last minute repairs

Scouting Avalanche, OBJ

Ian at Heart Attack, the warm-up drop on Oh Be Joyful

The lead-in to the 25 footer

The 25 footer on OBJ

Typical gradient on Oh Be Joyful

20 footer on Daisy Creek

One of the slides on the Upper East

I left for a day to go visit with Jeff in Salida and paddled the Clear Creek of the Arkansas and the Buena Vista playpark one day. We reunited and decided for something a little more mellow and get in some miles so on the way to Durango, we paddled the Lake Fork of the Gunnison. We then did some pretty wild offroading to get over Cinnamon Pass at 12,640 ft. We cruised into Durango, got some dinner and brews, then drove a little ways out of town and camped at the Colorado trailhead. The next day we paddled the upper Animas, an awesomely beautiful 26 mile run. We had good water and a full day of paddling.

Lake Fork, Gunnison

Upper Animas

Upper Animas scenery

We then headed back towards Aspen and hit the local classics: Upper Fryingpan, Castle Creek and Slaughterhouse on the Fork.
It was great paddling with my good buddies and showing them some cool new runs that are so different from anything back east.
With the recent warm weather the creeks and river around here are reaching their peak. The Roaring Fork has more water in it than it has in more than 10 years. This has provided soe awesome big water kayaking, but the Slaughterhouse section is too high for commercial rafting trips, so work has been slow the last week.
I have started to do some mountain biking the last couple of days now that the trails are open. It has been a very nice change of activities and a great chance to get in some good cardiovascular workouts. There are some really great trails that I can ride to from my house. There is a little bit of everything: steep climbs, clean singletrack, rocky singletrack, and great downhill. All this paddling is making my legs soft.

View of Aspen after a 40 minute bike climb up Smuggler Mountain

Iowa Shaft trail, great singletrack

View all photos from this adventure