July 4th, 2025
I used to paddle a canoe. More than one actually, but not all at the same time of course. I had a tandem canoe for rivers that could serve as a whitewater boat. I also had several tandem canoes designed for lakes and I had several different solo canoes. I learned from my outdoor friends that like bicycles, when it comes to canoes, you can never have enough. You really need to live somewhere with a garage or barn big enough to hold all your canoes and bicycles.
I don’t own a garage any more. So I also don’t have any canoes or bicycles. When I decided to go camping as a nomad, I found your storage is limited to what fits in your vehicle or camper. Recently, I purchased an inflatable paddle board. I hope to use that on mountain lakes or ponds for fishing. It can be deflated and rolled up, and now takes that spot in my truck that used to be filled with backpacking gear. I suppose it could be argued that I sacrificed the risk of getting into trouble walking as a solo person out in the middle of nowhere on a trail versus falling off a board in a remote lake filled with ice water.
When I did have canoes, back in the 1980s, I used to do some whitewater canoeing. My favorite river was the Flambeau in Wisconsin along with it’s South Branch. My wife and I got pretty good at reading the river, it’s current, and determining the proper route through Class II and the occasional Class III rapids. You don’t just paddle down a fast river in a straight line. It is more like driving down a highway full of crashed cars. There are shallows, rocks and boulders, downed trees, drops, and sometimes swimming people and half submerged canoes. Once we had to avoid a family of otters, mad because we spoiled their fun in the waves. All those problems are what made it fun, an adrenalin rush.
Once in a while, I still yearn for the noise, waves, roller coaster ride and splash of a fast river. So, I reserved a spot on a whitewater raft trip through Browns Canyon of the Arkansas River. The location is only about a 30 minute drive from my campsite. It is near the small town of Buena Vista (pronounced by the locals like view not bway). My reservation was for 9 a.m., a time of day that in the mountains can still be chilly. The water in the river is also only about 45 degrees, as the previous day, it may have been drippings from an ice field on the side of the Sawatch Mountains.
I was assigned to a raft with a family of 5 from Minnesota. They all chose to be furnished with wet suits by the outfitter. I chose a spray jacket. I don’t like to get too hot when paddling and like to avoid the feeling of being in a straight jacket made of rubber bands. None of the teens of the family wanted to be in the front of the raft, so the father and I sat in the “hold your breach or drown positions”. We got to be the target of all the laughing in each rapid.
When you float through Browns Canyon (National Monument), assuming you are old enough and remember your childhood cartoons, you are reminded of Bedrock and the Flintstones. In the final stretch of the trip, you are squeezed into a narrow jumble of rocks and house sized boulders while you drop over a series of 7 Class II and III rapids. A Class III rapid has the power to knock you out of the raft and in some conditions is dangerous enough to hold you under water long enough to make your vision go gray before it spits you out coughing and hacking in a panic. For this reason, you must sign a waiver before the trip. In reality, your guide is experienced enough to keep you out of that sort of situation. Only about 10% of rafters end up swimming before they get dragged back into the raft by their life preserver straps.
Our guide quickly sized up our paddling skills and realized with the two men in the front, he could afford to place us in an occasional predicament. We spun our way through 360 degrees in one rapid and pinned ourselves against a mid stream boulder he had just told us we had to miss (I knew he called for 2 quick hard strokes to intentionally make that impossible). We high sided, and threw ourselves to that high side and hung on until the current spun us around the boulder. We were all soaked.
Near the end, we were approaching several very large boulders midstream, followed by a house sized rock. I saw what was going to happen. The guide confirmed my belief, when he called out “this rapid is called the toilet bowl”. I discovered later that most guides avoid this feature by paddling to river right, but our guide apparently figured we could handle it. We went just left of the first big boulder before being quickly yanked right and down through a narrow chute formed by a house sized wall of rock and into a funnel best described as the whirlpool you see just after you flush a toilet. We hung for a second, facing upstream, before the suction spun us 180 degrees and shoved us downstream and over a 2 foot drop. We hit quiet water, and I turned to look behind me to see 3 teenagers whose faces appeared as pale as snow. The mother’s eyes were like saucers. I think they were shocked we were all still in the raft.
The 45 minute ride back in a warm bus felt good, and I left a big tip for the guide, feeling he had gone above and beyond.
On the drive back to camp, I ran into Leadville to Buchi Cafe Cubano for a big Cuban sandwich, a place I highly recommend on Harrison Avenue (main street through town). The next morning, I woke with sore shoulders, especially the left, from the aggressive paddling I’d done the previous morning.
The following day, I did the short drive over to the Leadville National Fish Hatchery to hike around the small lakes and ponds. The hatchery is a great place to take children for hikes that aren’t to strenuous (don’t forget you are at 10,000 feet above sea level). They can also view large Rainbow Trout in a small pond in front of the Visitor Center as well as hundreds of small trout in the rearing races. If you wish for more advanced hiking, you can follow the High Line or Rock Creek trails up to the Colorado Trail.
On Thursday, July 3rd, I hunkered down at my campsite to wait out the holiday crowd. In a week or so, I may hitch up and head up to the Flattops Wilderness where I can use the paddle board on Bear Lake.
If you are reading this on the day I posted it, July 4th, remember to go out with family and make some memories.
Memories sing to us. They are the birds whose song never fades.
Starting All Over 