Colorado '07

This last week has been one to remember. One of the best paddling trips to date. We ran some hard stuff, some easy stuff, and hit up some play parks. Sarted the week off meeting of with london Nick and Stingl in Ft. Collins to run some sections of the Poudre. Hit up Spencer Hights and a juiced level, the rustic section, and the upper and lower Mishiwaka sections. Then drove over to Lawson and did Clear Creek from Lawson down to Idaho Springs, all of that on just Saturday and Sunday!!! Camped up in the mountains that night, and hit up the Lawson play hole on Clear Creek the next morning until early afternoon, then headed south to Beuna Vista to Joe Carroll's pad. Shortly after arriving there, the team Wavesport van shows up at his house and set up camp. It was fun hearing some of the stories some of the pro's had to share....no so far off fetch from some of the dumb shit that we do, suprisingly. We stayed between Granite and the Royal Gorge for the remainder of the week. The Arkansas river was cranked to around 2000 cfs at the numbers, and around 2800 cfs in the gorge, making for great playboat riverun/play runs all week. Huge wavetrains and massive holes in the gorge....a lot of fun! We got disco-d wednesday night with Ben Guska and Joe-c in BV and from then on it was off to Fibark in Salida for the night life and great music! We missed finals due to a cancelation from weather on Saturday night because we had to hit the road on sunday morning...bummer~

John Muir Trail

Hooked up with a buddy i met on my last visit to Colorado down in the Kettle Moraine State Forest trail called John Muir. Named after the pioneer of a lot of public access trails in the state and also founder of the Sierra Club. These are full on mountain bike trails with several different difficulty and length options. There is also a connector trail to the Emma Carlin trails which are the next step up. Steep, and fun! They had some of the 10 mile loop closed due to a lot of rain in the area the last couple of days, so we did what we could twice, maybe about 14 or 15 miles. Halfway through our second loop, down came the rain. It was a fricken blast! Riding out the last few miles of the trail in downpoor that you could hardly see through, wish i had a camera on me, but oh well.

Ocoee

A group of five of us went down to the Ocoee (oh-no-wee) last weekend to get some boating in. According to some of the locals, it was flowing at its highest flow in about two years. The upper and middle sections were running, so we got a chance to check out some of the play features on the olympic course down there. To be honest with you...not that impressed. I have more fun at Wausau! We met some great peeps and did have a pretty darn good time. Ran into some folks that i paddled with at Rock Island in January, one of which took 3rd at Reno this year (jonathan). We drove all night on Friday and got about 2 hours of sleep on saturday morning, so by the end of that day of paddling, we were all pretty pooped. Managed to make time for a beer at the rafting companies little outside bar though. I was a little dissapointed with the river though to be honest. I was hoping for a little bit more challenging rapids and a bit deeper play features...aside from hell hole, which i had the biggest loop of my life in and we finished out sunday on and hit up for a few hours monday morning before heading home. Great weather, and scenery the whole weekend! I will be in Colorado in a week and am really looking forward to it, hopefully i will get some great pics to throw up~peace