One of the guys on the Yampa float trip shot some video of some of the boats running Warm Springs Rapid. As is generally the case, the video and the pictures don’t do this place justice. It doesn’t look like a whole lot on film, but that big hole was scary. I just watched the video again and it looks scary as hell to me. Consider that the boat it flipped was 16 feet long and God knows how heavy. Also note the hail coming down. Dave Rich of Fairbanks, Alaska, shot the video with his Fuji E-900 digital camera. The video is used here with his permission.
The next clip is my Uncle Dale. It doesn’t even look like he’s trying and he missed the hole completely.
That big hole out there is named Maytag after the washing machine company. The river was running 23,000 cfs, a 20-year high.
Pikes Peak shot from the dam at Manitou Lake, which is about 7 miles north of Woodland Park, Colo. My photos here turned out pretty noisy because I failed to turn off the auto ISO feature when I switched to manual exposure mode. The camera bumped the ISO to 1600 and I didn’t know it until a couple weeks later. I was pretty bummed because I loved the light and the reflection on the lake. I mean, how many times am I gonna be able to shoot Pikes Peak in such cool light? Lesson learned, I guess.
When I saw the gaping maw of the hole near the bottom of Warm Springs rapid, it occurred to me that I might be better off not being in any boat that had even a slight chance of going in there.
When the two park rangers recommended we portage two of the boats, watching the carnage from the shore became even more attractive.
When the second boat down the rapid flipped in the hole and the upside-down raft and its captain disappeared around the bend, I knew I would be walking around the beast.
It was day three of rafting the Yampa River in northwestern Colorado. I had taken a brief swim in the chilly, brown water the day before and didn’t want to repeat that experience.
We launched from Deerlodge Park on the eastern tip of Dinosaur National Monument into a river barely contained in its banks. The silty water was the color of heavily creamed coffee and carried trash, lumber, brush, and whole trees even. And dead animals: goats, cows, deer, etc. We had 18 people in 8 boats and would be out five days and four nights, May 21-25.
We spent a day and half in the Deerlodge campground rigging boats and running the shuttle under glorious skies and temperatures in the 70s and 80s. We left the comfy weather and luxurious pit toilets behind when we hit the river.
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