Schools out for Summer!
I survived my first year of teaching and wasted no time trying to get to the rivers. On Sat I woke up and hit the road. I got to G-wood and was heading up the bike path when my plans were foiled. the high water closes the bike path and bikes are not allowed to go on I-70 at this point. I rode back down to Grizzly Creek and had to wait for a little over an hour to hitch a ride with some nice Craig fellers who were Cat rafting all day. They took me a few miles over to Bair Ranch were I picked up my bike ride. I had gone about 100 yards before I came to another "Trail closed" sign. This time I didn't want to waste the time waiting so I kept going and only found one spot where the trail had water and I rode through it with no problems.
It was slow going getting to Eagle-Vail where I was hopefully going to meet Lauren and crash on her Futon. It was so slow that i got caught in an awesome rainstorm and decided to camp at Wolcott for the night.
The next morning I was biking into Edwards when I saw a lady with a blue Burn at the EMT station, I yelled "Lauren" and low and behold it was she. Five minutes later, her man Jace showed up and invited me to go run Bailey. How could I refuse such an offer (I was never going to get that close to Bailey on a bike during my trip) so we headed out after picking up Romeo.
Once we got to Bailey we met up with Darren and put on. Flows were about 700 which is a fun level for most of the run.
We all portaged 1st falls and ran the rest in style. The boogie is so good at this level. The next major rapid is Supermax. Jace, Romeo, and Darren decided to walk and I decided to giver er a shot and probably should have given her a little harder. I got rolled in the entrance hole and proceeded to come up in time to roll into the next hole. As I rolled up I saw I could either head for the safety eddy or keep going. I kept going and drove up perfectly like I was supposed to and landed in the next eddy downstream. Things should have gone fine here, but as i was trying to line up to exit the eddy and ferry across the creek I got sucked out the back and went down the rest of the rapid backwards. Don't worry mom everything was fine, besides my disgust at having such a bad line.
The last major rapid comes near the end and that is Deer Creek. This rapid is so much fun and I still don't know what it looks like after running it at least ten times, as I have never scouted it. All I know is there is a hole at the top that can mess your line up and then it is just big fast whitewater that usually is just a white out.
The day ended with some Hog Heaven BBQ which was tasty, but I have to recommend Piggin Out BBQ in Morrison for future Bailey boaters.
I put in about 60 miles on the bike for this stretch.
I will hopefully get some pics up soon.
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