Fundraising

Hello my name is Kevin Jacobi . I am a Fort Collins native with a passion for the rivers. I currently teach seventh grade social studies in New Castle, CO. I chose this area not only based on the new school and the positive community, but for the areas optimal kayaking. Past summers of mine were spent rafting and guiding people through the Cache la Poudre or teaching the eager how to kayak. I decided that this summer I wanted to help others and benefit the outdoors while doing what I truly enjoy.

My goal is to kayak 50 class V stretches of river on a self-supported bike tour across Colorado while raising money for charity. I am trying to raise money for two organizations I feel have worthy causes. First Descents, a non-profit organization located out of Vail, Colorado that aims to help young adults with cancer experience emotional healing through outdoor activities. They offer these courageous people the opportunity to kayak, mountain bike, and other activities. In addition I am raising money for American White Water, an association that promotes river stewardship and conservation while promoting the sport of kayaking.

I decided to do this journey by bicycle, not only to add to the challenge, but as a unique way to see the beauty of the Colorado outdoors. I feel it adds more to the experience by combining the adventure and challenge of biking and kayaking.

I am highly motivated to complete the task at hand. I would like you to help show your support for the above charities by offering a donation. Your contributions will not only go to supporting these charities, but will also motivate me in the completion of my personal challenge.
You can donate either by clicking on one of the links at the top right of the page or you can mail a check made out to one of the organizations to me and I will keep track of the total raised and I can write you a thank you.

Kevin Jacobi
612 River View Dr. #809
New Castle, CO 81647

Thank you

Poudre River Gnarrows Race 2009

One of these four is not like the other, fingers up Gnat

Notice Paul the Kayaker's suit

Ah, there is truly nothing better than this day. Copious amounts of smack talking the week before have led up to this day. Roughly 3 miles of class IV-V continuous boater x. Go fast or go home. Winner gets the much sought after "Buckle" and second place gets you 40oz of malt barely soda.

Me charging Whiteline

Awoody about to give a WY boof on Christian's head

The racers are divided up into heats of four or five boaters who then race at the same time. This race consists of running from about a quarter mile above Upper narrows all the way through Lower Narrows. The top two from each heat make it into the semi-finals. This year we also let the winner of the loser's bracket get entry into the finals. The semi, loser, and finals are boater x but take place on the lower narrows.

The loser's bracket is awesome because it was about ten boaters in boater x style going down the lower narrows at once. In the video you can see me get vertically pinned in that section. I couldn't get far enough left with all of the boaters and came right into the rock pile at the entrance move. Oh well, it just cost me a mustache and a belt buckle.

After two semi finals and the loser's bracket you get the finals made up of five of the fastest boaters around. This year it consisted of Cutch (last year's winner), Christian, Natalie, Marty, and Nathan.L to R: Nathan, Kyle, Natalie, Christian, Marty

With three FoCo racers we were hoping the belt would come back home and for a moment it looked so. Marty came out strong but could not hold off Christian and took a slightly slower line on the left, none the less Marty put on a great show for all of us young bucks and showed what true old man strength is all about. Then he slammed his 40 like he was back in NZ during the college days.Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, the passing of the buckle

Ladies he is single, dirty hippies need not apply

The after party might have been the best yet with New Belgium's finest on tap, and 125lbs of fresh alive and pinching crawdads waiting to be put in a boil. Done up by real New Orleans people. Lil' Wayne would have been proud.

Soon to be a family man Patrick and everyone's favorite buzzard Cmike drinking their booty beers

I think I might fit in a little better now here with this bad boy

Poudre Gnarrows Race 2009 from Kevin J on Vimeo.

More Big South than you can shake a stick at.

Big Southapalooza lives on


I didn't even have to go to flight school for this one

Once the gate opened it was on. I boated the Big South on Tues, Thurs, Sat, Sun, and Wed and will hopefully get on it this Sat again.

Cooler than a polar bear's toenails

Tues and Thurs were nice because there weren't any crowds up there and it was Scott, two others and myself each time. The weekend was congested traffic and we ran in a group of seven each time.

Peter on Starter Fluid. Rev yer engines

Wed was nice again. Just Paul, Frenchy and myself and we finished the whole run in about 3 hours.

Tommy on the Cool World run-out ledge

About to have a clean take off on this flight. Narrow landing strip huh?

This run is so awesome because it is long and just has so many fun little or big rapids. My favorite place on the run is about 2/3 of the way through Prime Time Gorge. You come through a left slot and just land in this gorged in pool. It feels like a rain forest in there and it is calm and peaceful.

Another day working it like she did

Here are some pics from different runs. I didn't take too many and no video just cause I was enjoying the river, and never really got out of my boat. I will link in Ross' video though from the day we went together if he lets me.Grinding the perfect line on Pin Cushin like I am JP Walker (thats a snowboarder for all you tele snobs)

A little sequence of me staying out of trouble. Unfortunately Scott's camera stopped here and didn't get the finish.

Scarier than Double Trouble

A little something to keep shuttle bunnies from getting bored

We met these crazy Germans at the takeout at 10:30. They had just finish a quick Peterson lap and politely asked if they could "hang out." Since I am completely secure with my sexuality I gave them the thumbs up and next thing you know there are two Germans in the parking lot in speedos. Watch out ladies

#23 Joe Wright

Before the Big South gate opened, I had to get my Joe Wright and Spencers in so I headed up with my ol' roomie Paul. You all know him better as P to the K, Paul the Kayaker or 1/2 of the high fiving tandem. We also went up with his new roomie Crystal, who is a sick boater. Sorry gents, she is currently dating Nick Turner, so unless you have built a few whitewater parks, written a guidebook and started a sweet helmet company, I am guessing your resume ain't good enough. We met up at Teds with Nathan, Frenchy, and Marty.

We got to the put in and I ran Cornholio and put down the sickest line ever, as in I wanted to puke after running it. I have never portaged the drop and it was by far and away my worst line, and really the only bad line I can remember having on that drop. You all can see it in the video.

We then bombed on down into Carnito canyon where I am happy to say I had amazing lines and like playing Operation never came close to touching any walls. That rapid is awesome if you head down right of center working right and hit a boof into a swirling eddy boil, then turn 90 degrees to you left and charge over a great boof flake. It reminds me of a smaller version of the cyclotron boof flake, also featured in the vid. Then hook a left around a rock in the middle and stay off the walls. Fun times. Everyone did great and good times were had by all.

After that it is just tight class IV creeking and hoping you have water so ya don't break yer boat.

Joe Wright from Kevin J on Vimeo.

#22 Upper Boulder Creek

One of the better longer rapids

On the way back from getting Brian's boat from the Source I decided to add this one to the list. Even though it is a pretty straight forward run, it is always a little more tense when you are running a new run and basically solo.

Upper Boulder Canyon is more Colorado short mank, actually mankier than any run I can think of. Flows were even good, right around 400cfs which I believe is a good flow for that run.

The rapid starts at the drop upstream from where I am

In the run-out

I don't really know what to tell you besides this. Don't make it a destination, but if you run the gnar above and below and tag it on to other Boulder runs it is good.

Just a lil' guy

#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

Idaho Springs to Boulder (sort of)

After sitting around in Idaho Springs and only snagging Woods I decided that it was time to head to the Boulder area. I began biking down HY 6 to Golden and I was then going to head over to Boulder on HY93 and meet Brian for some Boulder goods.

This did not happen. I never saw any no biking signs leading into HY6 along the canyon until I was quite a ways into it. I also happened to bike past a cop who made me turn around. Here is were the law did not have my best interests in mind. Instead of letting me bike downhill going almost as fast as traffic, and I was only twenty minutes from exiting the canyon, I was forced to ride back out of the canyon which took 45 minutes and then I was told I needed to go up HY119 to Blackhawk. This was a far more dangerous road, with just as much traffic, if not more and no shoulder. Did I mention that everyone driving up was probably either drunk or a blue hair, thus contributing to to the increased danger.

This route also put me on the road for an extra two hours. Not that safe if you ask me. The best part was that the cop was notified that some bikers were drinking and driving and failed to do anything. I passed them as he was letting them go, and when they drove by me they must have thought I had snitched on them so they yelled some words that hurt my virgin ears at me and then raised their beers. Good work Officer Farva.

I had Brian pick me up in Blackhawk because by the time I would have gotten to Boulder this way it would have been night and I was not to keen on riding on Hy119 anymore.

We decided to go and run the Source of Boulder Creek.

This post was basically just a Dennis Miller type rant, sorry.

#20 Woods Creek

I sat around Idaho springs waiting and waiting to run Woods Creek and West Fork of Clear Creek. Finally Ryan was nice enough to wake up early with me and go run Woods before his mid-day raft trip.

We got up to the run and it looked pretty fun to me with a 200' sluice leading into a ten foot pool and then a 5' ledge boof into another 5' ledge boof. This then led into a pretty technical long rapid which started by being far left under a collapsed bridge. The sketchiness increased with some huge nails hanging down over head and sticking up on the left shore.

Once you passed under the bridge you were immediately bouncing through a set of holes and heading river right. Mank was to be found all around. Towards the end all of the water is crashing off a rock wall on the right and making a curling trough. A couple feet down stream is a 8-10' boof. The problem is that a rock is sticking out on the left and you could easily piton into it if driving too hard to the left, and there is a rock in the dead center that looks like it could break your boat if you landed on it, or at least pig nose if you pitoned. So you have to drive left and thread these to obstacles and it is all good.

The big rapid. You can see the rock on river left and the tree branch next to the pine tree on the bottom is covering the view of the other rock.

All in all a very fun run, just short and worthy of a few laps or definitely combine w/ WF of CC which unfortunately we had time to scout (looked good through Z gorge) but not enough time to run.

P.S. This was my 20th run which was kinda my adjusted goal after I realized I wouldn't make 50 this year. New goal is 25, and 30 might even be possible. (50 is possible, and I think easily so, but I will explain why later)

#19 Clear Creek (Blackrock)

Mr. Bill

I met up with Ian and Texas Ken who have seemed to have become regulars on this adventure, at Kermits for a nice long run of Upper Clear Creek, Black Rock, and Lower Clear Creek.

The flow was between 1000cfs to 1050cfs and was awesome. Big water=big waves=big holes=big fun. Everything went perfectly and was fast and pretty clean for this blast rock creek. We got to the Narrows and I soloed Mr. Bill and it was like butter, no margarine, no Parkay, strictly butter. It was not good looking with most of the hole looking sticky and re-circing back into a wall,cave, undercut? The right looked like it could catch you or typewriter you back to the left.

Clear Creek from Kevin J on Vimeo.

We all walked Rigo which looked the same just very, very fast.

Tom Cole was there to do an interview for 9news which is about as famous as I am going to get. I really appreciate tom taking so much time on his day off to support this. Hopefully it helps bring in some donations. I will try to embed the video on here.

Here is the news story in case you were not sitting around the boob tube at ten:




When we got done in Golden it stormed super hard. Some of the hardest rain I can remember.

Frisco to Idaho Springs

Looking back at the west side from the summit

I left Frisco and had to go over Loveland pass because you can't take a bike on I-70 through the Eisenhower and Johnson tunnel. Let me just say that Loveland Pass is long and steep. I will keep it there for all the little ones reading.

East side from the summit

I had to stop about halfway up because they were doing time trial runs for some fancy I will never be able to afford them type of sports cars. This actually was nice because when I got to the top I new that there wasn't going to be any cars coming down so I hauled the proverbial donkey on down the mountain going about 40mph the whole time.

I finally got in one of my pictures

I got onto I-70 at the bottom and made it to Idaho Springs in about thirty minutes. You got to love the downhill. I called up Chad who I met along with Ryan, Chris, Jenny, and Sydney at Crested Butte. It just so happened they had a guide house and I could crash there. They were also having a barley soda party that night. Isn't it nice when everything works out?

#18 Upper Tenmile Creek

I will make this short cause the run is short. A mile of rock dodging with a few holes to watch out for. Continuous Colorado Mank. Thanks to Will for running it with me and letting me stash at his place.

Salida to Frisco

Salida "wildlife"

I was originally going to leave on Sat. but it was raining hard and blowing wind so I just worked the KEEN booth all night and then crashed at Mark's friend's place. Thanks again Mark. I woke up Sunday to a deer across the street and knew it was going to be a good day.

On the way back to Leadville

The ride was just as beautiful going back as it was coming down (except it was uphill). I got into Leadville and was exhausted so I stopped at one of the best restaurants out there and the best Mexican in Colorado: The Grill. I got the stuffed Chicken Sopapilla Especial and it was amazing. If you all know me you know I can eat and I had just ridden 60 miles to boot. This thing put me in a coma. I also recommend the Gold Martguerita.

Seeing as how I could barely move I had to find some where to sleep close by. I didn't know if there was camping around so I spent the night on the back loading area of the forest service building. Some people came by later at night and super early in the morning but I was not hassled even though I was worried the cops were going to get called. Not a good nights sleep.

To the right of Climax Mine

I woke up the next day and headed to The Proving Grounds for some breakfast. It is a little coffee shop and I got a some great coffee and a chocolate croissant and a turkey and jack croissant and all were delicious.


I then began to climb Fremont Pass which ends at the Climax mine. I hadn't been up that way in a while and it is starting to get cleaned up nicely. Besides the mine the area is typical Colorado scenery, meaning typical for us for everyone else it is amazing. You have to feel lucky living here, don't take it for granted. This was also the first truly blue sky day I could remember in a while. Didn't see a cloud until late afternoon.

Actual Picture of the Colorado Sky

I came down and got on the bike path along Copper and scouted Upper Tenmile on my way to Frisco. Short blurb to be done in the next post.

Coming down from Fremont Pass

#17 Lake Creek

Typical Lake Creek scenery

The next day after running Clear Creek, Clay, Greg and myself decided to head on up to Lake Creek and giver her a go. All I can say is that this was one of my favorite runs so far and I put it near the top of my list. That is without running the bottom four even. Now I won't give Jahvea the satisfaction of saying it is better than the Big South, but it is pretty damn good. It is definitely amazing as it opens up and you can see huge fourteeners all around. It is also nice because it is longer than most creeks and you are not done after a mile of boating which makes for a great day.

It was running at about 1000cfs which is pretty high, so we didn't run the bottom four which probably would have made it even better. The water was fast and we had no idea where we were going. I like runs like that that where you don't know what lies around the corner and you have to have good scouting and catch eddies. It really ups the stress and I feel makes you paddle better.

We got to tombstone and everything went fine and were then on the look out for NIMBY. Once we got to NIMBY we were greeted by a group who as I asked if we could scout on their land, had Tecate and limes waiting for us before we were even out of our boats. I think we need to rename the rapid. The owner then offered to let me use the cabin when I wanted. So if you want to hang out at NIMBY give me a call. The house overlooks the start of the rapid and is absolutely beautiful.

Big right boof on NIMBY

NIMBY is a long rapid with a boulder garden entrance for about 100yds and then crashes into a wall at a 90 degree left turn. You have to stay off the wall then make a 90 degree cut back through a narrow slot which is guarded by a boil you need to punch over. At this level it was a decent sized boil and backed up into a nasty looking hole/cave?. You then go down the slot and can either go right which has a good boof or left which is a tricky wave/hole punch to thread some rocks and then a smaller boof. We couldn't see what the bottom of the big boof looked like so we all went to the left and it went fine.

Clay pop-tarting his way through Toaster

The next big rapid is Toaster and I don't know what it looked like but it went pretty easy on this day. You have some boogie lead in with a strong curler to the right which can push you into the right shore or I am guessing at other times some wood. You need to turn 90 degrees to the left here and then you have to come through a narrow slot without getting pushed up into the wall on the right. Pretty easy.

The guide book is right on with its description of a monster hole that is hard to notice. I was in the lead for this section and we were worried about dropping into the big four at this point when all of a sudden I was looking down into a huge hole. I remembered that you were supposed to be left and tried to get there but just ended up gutting it down the middle and all of the meat. I took a big stroke and leaned forward and rode a stern squirt for about ten feet like I was poppin wheelies. Greg came through and got side surfed and i was worried he wasn't going to get out. He did and Clay went right and it was all gravy. I did here from a good boater that the next day this hole caused a swim.

Don't you wish you got brains like that?

Soon after we had some awesome boogie and then took out to scout and it was a good thing because around the corner was Brains the lead in to the bottom 4. I have a big head but not big enough for those brains. We then went and looked at Paralyzer. I think it gets its name because if you look at it at 1000cfs you don't move for a while, and if you ran it a good possibility that it is the last you run. One thing was not paralyzed at that point and that was my bowels which indicated it was time to end the run there.

If you are not regular this works better than ex-lax

P.S. I hear some of you like to run the bottom four at that level and big ups to you.