#21 The Source

Hellums Falls: We put in right below this

Once again, maybe it is because the source was a new run for me, but I thought it was super dooper double looper fun. Brian and I put on about with about 330cfs and I thought this was a pretty good flow. It lives up to the guidebook description of a knife fight in a phonebooth type of kayaking. It was just the two of us and we had never done the run so it was high speed read and run, a.k.a. good stuff that dreams are made of.

Some beautiful state flowers

Everything went fast, almost too fast to remember. I have no idea what deforestation rapid looks like and vaguely remember slot machine. It was just boof keep your boat straight, boof keep your boat straight.

It actually was hard to keep an eye in Brian because if I looked behind me for more than a nano second I would hit a rock and get off line, so be heads up on this one.

At this point I need to point out a cardinal rule of boating: The river gods are ALWAYS listening and if you disrespect them in any way they make you repent.

Before we put on we were talking about maybe running Upper Boulder Creek and Eldo after words. I didn't know how much time we would have, but Brian reassured me that "This run will only take 10 minutes." Famous last words

As I came around a corner I saw Brian upside down, and at the next corner I came around to see Brian standing on the right shore. I continued down after the boat and to find an eddy (few and far) and caught the most amazing eddy above Dead Hiker Falls on the left.

Another fallen soldier at dead hiker falls

After deciding that it wouldn't be wise to cross here I finished the run and hiked back up to Brian. Unfortunately we didn't have a pin kit with us and we could not get the boat out that day. Brian had also lost his paddle probably never to be seen again.


By the time we got the truck back and drove to Boulder it was getting dark so we had to postpone UBC and Eldo, cause the run didn't take 10 minutes.



We came back on Thursday and z-dragged that boat right on out of there. Flows were about half (170cfs) of what they were when we ran it so that helped. It was then time to hit UBC, unfortunately Brian couldn't participate in this one for obvious reasons.

Poor little magnum

First time I have had to use a Z-drag, pretty fun. The eddy I caught is the eddy on the left of the boat, except it wasn't there that day, it was micro next to the rocks on the shore in the pic.

Flows were high enough to move river bed. This rock was in Brian's Boat when we got it out

For a minute we thought the boat was good then we discovered the right chine had been seperated for about 20 inches