Departing Chattanooga TN at 6:30 PM, Matt Wallace, Ben Davis, and I (Adam Goshorn) drove through the night to arrive in the mountains of Colorado the following afternoon. Our arrival gave us just enough daylight to get in a couple of runs on Clear Creek of the Arkansas before dark, the perfect way to shake off 22 hours in the truck. We spent our first night in Colorado camped at the takeout for Clear Creek, under a perfectly clear sky, with highest of expectations for the trip to come.
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Months prior to our departure, the main objectives for our June Colorado trip were mainly focused on doing as many overnighters as we could in a few weeks of bouncing between Colorado classics. High on our list were the Upper Animas, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and hopefully Los Pinos as our finale. However, as our departure date neared it became clear that the record snow pack was delivering high flows around the state and the Gunnison was off the list before we even got started and the status of our other plans were up in the air as well.
We were enjoying ourselves as we camped and boated our way into the Crested Butte area, when things took an unexpectedly negative turn for one member of our group. We had been enjoying the classic creeks of the area for a few days when Ben dislocated his shoulder during a high water run down Oh Be Joyful. Somehow he managed to roll up with one functioning arm and catch an eddy, but found himself on the walled in on the wrong side of the river.  After reducing his dislocation (thanks WFR class!), Matt and I were able to rope him and his gear back across the river safely, although not without a few tense moments as crossed in swift current between class IV rapids.
With Ben unable to boat indefinitely we retreated to Salida for a couple days of playboating in the hole, high water on the Numbers, and trying to figure out what would be next for us. Luckily for him, Ben was able to find a cheap flight back to Tennessee and a ride to the airport as well. Unluckily for Matt and me, our solid group of three was down to two and our plan to convince some of our fiends in the area to join us for some self supported adventures were also unsuccessful. We needed a new plan and after a few beers decided to try to focus on short steep sections that were either “park or huck” or were short enough for us to jog the shuttle. Either way we would get a solid dose of verticality, even though it was clear we would not get to fulfill our goal of doing some self support trips.
We headed out the following morning, meeting up with Boyd Ruppelt and Samantha Brunner we spent the rest of our trip getting shut down on a roughly equal amount of rivers as we actually got to paddle. The road to the South Fork of the Crystal was still snowed in; the road to the North Fork of the Crystal was washed out by high water; the “Tunnel of Love” on Wolf Creek was blocked by wood; the road to East Fork of the San Juan was closed 12 miles away; and the Cascade Creek Slot was flooded and full of wood. However, we did manage to get on North Fork of the South Arkansas, OBJ, Slate, Daisy, Ice Lake Creek, South Mineral, La Plata, South Fork of the Rio Grande, and finished up back at Clear Creek of the Arkansas on the VERY “high side of good”.
Our trip was anything except what we expected as we crossed the country in an attempt to escape the drought in the southeast. We didn’t meet out goals of doing Colorado’s major overnighters, but we did run many classsic and some not-so-classic high quality whitewater. It seems like any trip worth doing contains a high factor of the unknown. After all, the question of the unknown has motivated paddlers since the begining of our sport and will continue to do so. As we drove back east across flat middle America and into another dry summer in the southeast our only regret was not being able to stay longer.
Check out video from our trip… here
 Until Next Time…
Adam Goshorn
