#1 Escalante Creek

There is a creek somewhere in them hills

So I took Thurs and Fri off and decided to head on down to Delta, CO to hit up Escalante Creek. The creek is awesome for numerous reasons, but I personally like it because you are in the middle of the desert and all of a sudden you have this creek coming out of nowhere.

Thursday I left New Castle at 7:00 and got to Grand Junction by 1:30. It was a perfect day for a bike ride, 70 degrees and no wind. I camped at a KOA after deciding that I was too tired to do much more that day. I logged about 85 miles on my bike Thurs. A nice little old lady named Jane gave me five bucks for the cause at the Subway in Parachute. Her husband looked at me like I was a dirty hippy stealing their 401k.

Stopping during the Windy ride

Friday I woke late and got on the road by 8:00 hoping to make it to the Escalante Canyon entrance by noon. I did get there by noon but it was slow going. The wind was none to kind and I averaged about 5mph the whole way.
About 2:00 Ian, Tom, and DK showed up and I hitched a ride into the canyon ( I didn't want to take my trailer through the bounciness of the dirt road). We met up with Jace (hope I am spelling this right), Lauren, Crystal, and Adam and hit the Creek.

Ian at Rib Ripper

The fin at 57' Chevy was covered so we had medium flow and it was good. Every one had great lines and Adam from S.C., Tom, and Myself fired up the Falls. It definitely wasn't near as big as when I ran it last year, when every rock was under water but it was so good. I felt like I boofed the chocolate out of the water my first run.

After the run we set up camp and enjoyed some frosty beverages (thank you Ian and Crystal) and sang happy birthday to crystal who turned 23 that night. Camped under the stars below some gorgeous red sandstone cliffs. What more can you ask for?

Woke up Sat. Morning and hoped Uldis the Latvian would be at the inner gorge area where we picked our boats up. No dice!, but we had to get going and I needed to bike back to Cameo that day so I didn't want to wait around. We put on again with a little more flow which was evident at Waterslide with more water going over the rock in the middle and at the Falls where the left guard rock water covered, previously it was above waterline. Another great run was had by all, this time the creek looked like the Royal Gorge with a constant train of boaters. Adam and myself again ran the falls and it went great. I did roll a few times in the gorge, including the Magnetic wall but managed to roll quick enough to avoid the swim.

Adam stomping the Falls

At this point I would like to give my condolences to WY Austin's AT paddle that slipped off the shore below the falls and broke somewhere along the way to the takeout. Sorry buddy.

Adam gave me a ride to the entrance and I packed up and made it to the J. Robb State Park in record time. The wind was blowing so hard that I seriously averaged about 26mph on the same stretch that I went 5mph the day before. (Lance Armstrong AVERAGES 26mph during the WHOLE Tour de France, in case anyone cared). The scariest part of the trip was going down this hill at 44mph and the wind at that point was a straight cross wind.

The bummer of the trip was my Achilles tendons were so tight the whole time from being an armchair quarterback that they hurt really bad and just when I got outside of Rifle today, my right one popped and I was done for. Had to call my roomie to come get me. Right now I can barely walk but hopefully I will be better to go hit Barrel Springs this Weekend.
All in all though it was a great test run and I logged about 200 miles with over a hundred lbs of gear. Not bad for a lazy bum.

Escalante Creek from Kevin J on Vimeo.

Sorry for missing you Uldis, and thanks to Micheal for donating money to First Descents. thanks to Ian, Tom, DK, Adam, Crystal, Jace, Lauren, and Mariah for a good weekend.
Tom it was STOUT wasn't it?