A Busy Weekend
In the summer of 2006 my cousin Summer got married. She married a wonderful man named Pat, and since then they have had two beautiful children, and they've got a great family and a great life. Of course, that's not why you are reading this. But I will always remember their wedding because I combo'd it and a two day float down central Colorado's uber-popular Pumphouse in one extremely long weekend one weekend that summer. It was a super intense mission but it actually went amazingly well and it was a trip worth remembering.
I started in Denver on Thursday, as my cousin's wedding was on Friday. I had plans to meet my friend Jess Wegert, and a couple of his friends in Kremmling on mid-day Saturday. One wedding and about two and a half hours driving later, I was there, they were there, and we were off. We set out shuttle, which didn't take too long, and launched at the Pumphouse Recreation Site. The first part of this float is flat and meandery through the willows, but the first gorge looms ahead almost the whole time, a narrow gap in the rock wall ahead, dark and sinister.
However, the gorge doesn't boat anywhere near as bad as it looks. There are a number of small rapids in the first couple hundred yards, the larger of which is called "Eye of the Needle", which is formed by a giant boulder in the river that splits the flow on either side. These were all super fun and easy. We were running a little late on time at this point so we pulled into a camp on a flat just downstream. Dinner and campfire on river trips are pretty awesome.
We woke up early the next day because we knew we had a lot of miles to cover. The first gorge peters out in this next section, and you fairly quickly come up on the hot springs on the left. They aren't all that hot, but they are warm and it is fun to enjoy it. There are cliffs on both river left and river right to jump off of. Below here you enter a small park and it's a pretty flat float down to Radium River Access.
After Radium the flats continue and it stays flat as it wanders through the rest of the valley. Another gorge loomed up on us, called the Red Gorge or the Yarmony Gorge, marking a blocking end of the open park. This gorge is probably the highlight of this run, and it was quite a blast. A couple of small rapids come up and we blasted through them, and then stopped for a scout of Yarmony Rapid, which is the biggest drop of the whole stretch. I was in my mini fish cat, and it was kind of an adventure. It was good motivation not to end up on the left side of the river and up against the wall.
There are two or three very small rapids at the end of the canyon, and then it opens up into another large, park-like valley. It's a long flatwater stretch down to Rancho del Rio, and then a couple of long km's and one small rapid until Yarmony Access, which is where we took off. After that, we had to haul ass back to Gunnison, which involved a mad dash to Eagle, and then a mad dash back to Gunnison in the evening.
All photos on this page courtesy Jess Wegert.