Wrapping things up in Colorado

Well, I am now back on the east coast. My last two months in Colorado were awesome and very busy. I was having enough fun that I didn't have time to sit down and type about all that I had been doing.

The on last few days of July, all the stars aligned just right so that my friend Chris Gorman and I had the wonderful opportunity to paddle the South Fork of the Crystal River. This was THE run I wanted to do this summer after opening my brand new Colorado guidebook for the first time I saw the picture of the clean waterfalls that were to be had. After miles of grueling driving in 4 wheel low, and trying not to bottom out my truck of roll it down the mountain we got as far as we could without ATVs. So at that point it was starting to get dark so we decided to hike our boats and most of our gear the rest of the way up to the Devil's Punchbowls and stash it for the night. After about 40 minutes of hiking our gear up, I came around a turn and low and behold: the falls. What an amazing sight. We scouted the launch and the line on the lower drop, took some pictures, then stashed our gear and headed back to set up camp.

We enjoyed a nice fire, some pasta sides, and some chicken Chris obtained from the Lakota refridgerator. After a few beers I retired to my truck bed and dreamed of the water we would soon be paddling. The hike up wasnt bad in the morning since most of our gear was already at the waterfalls. Once we got there, Chris wasted no time asking some random hikers to shoot video and pictures for us, which they kindly obliged. Getting the boats to the launch and launching in turned out to be quite a task. We had to hold each other's boats right above the entry slide while the other climbed in, then gave a little push and we were on our way. The first drop was a small low angle slide into a 30 foot dead vertical drop into a super deep aquamarine cauldron of snowmelt water. The second drop was a 20 foot 45 degree slide into a 20 foot vertical drop. This one required angling and driving right in order to avoid a shallow, rocky landing on the left.