Well its been far too long that I’ve lived within a couple of hours from this classic and not been over there to experience it’s majesty. There are not enough beautiful descriptive words to explain how this river makes one feel. A day hanging at Beaver Lake would not be a day wasted. Tuesday I got a couple of days off so Jakub and I called everyone we knew to get a third person to head up to the gorge with. Who knew that everyone would call us back and we’d roll through with a crew of 8 solid kayakers!

The flow was medium and great for leap-frogging our way down. Here was me on the first of many awesome boofs as you make your way deeper in.

Jakub Nemec following suit.

Next up was Corkscrew and Pine Tree Falls. When we rolled up on this I knew today was going to be awesome. Corkscrew was an awesome twisty rapid with a great boof at the top.

Pine Tree was just plain sweet!

Here is Chris Baer also clean lines on Pine Tree.

And Mike Cleaning it up.

While most people would think out of a group of 8 at least one person might not be feeling up for the commitment of the inner Gorge. Not this crew, we all fired up Zute and partied the whole way through the inner gorge. What an awesome place. Here is Jakub on one of the many technical drops within.

Somehow I ended up in front routing through the last drops with good luck. It was great to turn back upstream and look through the steep gorge and see the rest of the crew pick it apart and come through. The last drop served up some good smack down with 2 of 8 people swimming. Here is Casey Tango going deep.

The deep line doesn’t go….

The whole crew was so fired up after finishing this awesome run. It was great. Chris Baer, Todd Greenwood, and I got back here on Thursday too. We didn’t even think to check the gage! It had rained all night and we found out later that the flow for our early morning trip was over 400 cfs. The top was very pushy and the inner Gorge was game on! Again the bottom drops dished out some carnage sending Chris’ boat for an un-manned mission off the lower falls! Pictures from the high water trip will be up soon, plus tons of awesome video will be in Driven 3.

It seems as though the dam operators have it out for me as of lately. Three different rivers in a row, I have driven great distances only to see much less water than I expected, or much lower than stated by the flows page. It started on the Big South July 6th. Long Draw reservoir was saying 220cfs and the graph looked like that was good to go at least for one more day. Andrew and I split 7am the next morning to get there with only 170cfs coming out when we arrived. Disappointing, but everything was still a blast once we got off of weird creek.

The next day we woke up early, ran the Narrows and headed to Bailey. Again, the graph said 550cfs when we checked that morning. We rallied straight there from Fort Collins and by the time we arrived only 350cfs greeted us.

Thinking there is no way my bad luck will continue this way, on Friday I went to go meet Jakub Nemec for an afternoon Lake Creek session. I have heard about people having the water turn way up on them while on this creek and saw the graph that looked more like a heart beat than a release schedule. Of course, Friday was the only day of the week that they didn’t turn the flows back up for the evening sessions! The flows were way too low for paralizer but everything else still went. The wood in Cauldron was a non-issue (and has since been removed) and the rest of the run was clean as can be.

I hope my luck changes so that I can continue what is turning out to be the “Tour of Colorado’s Classics.” Here are the pictures from Bailey and Lake Creek. Enjoy and SYOTR.

Paul Siratovich rounding the bend above SuperMax

Me hitting the manky boof on SuperMax

Me landing on the Pad in the run out

Jakub Nemec on Brains; Lake Creek

Me preparing for takeoff, Brains

Jakub and I got much more than a kiss on this one, Kiss Me, Lake Creek

Here is the second part of my summer web series Driven. This one stays more local here in CO. The intro is Blackrock at 1400cfs, followed by Yule Creek, High Water Gore Canyon, High Water Glenwood, and OBJ race. Just got some new editing software and excited about what I’ll be able to do in the future. I hope you enjoy and please let me know feedback for episode 3.

Driven Episode 2 from ross herr on Vimeo.

Rivers in order are Clear Creek, Yule Creek, Gore Canyon, OBJ

Music is Deadmau5, Santigold, and Kid Cudi

I was able to sneak away from the incoming tourism business for my yearly commute to the Poudre Canyon. Andrew Waters came out of retirement with vengeance and we tackled some awesome runs in two days. Monday morning we left eagle county at 7am with dreams of the Big South’s beautiful views and awesome drops. We routed right through with a great dry hair day, and continued on through Spencer Heights thanks to the crew we met on the river. Thanks again for the shuttle and lines, (Nathan, Frenchie…name I can’t remember here, sorry)

With a goods night rest we decided we had traveled to this canyon too many times only to experience the Big South. So, on down the road we went to a MANKY Colorado classic, The Poudre Narrows. With no guide book, and no directions we decided to just put in from our camp site and figure it out as we went. We decided if we saw a sweet horizon line we should probably scout and when the rapids got smaller we would take out and hitch back up.

The Narrows did not disappoint. I have no clue the names so if you would like to respond with them that would be great. The first small drop looked like a hole, with a bunch of rocks that you didn’t want to hit, and one large one right in the middle. Yes, we knew we reached some beloved colorado road-side-mank. Here is me in said drop…

Andrew Waters givin’er

Next up it got even more nasty, with all major road side hazards you could place in a rapid…

Andrew, battling through the thick of it…

The lower Narrows dished it out too. We paddled right through the rest, continually impressed with how many rocks you could hit in a river. The last rapid after you pass under the highway was a blast! Definitely paddled much harder than we gave it credit for from the road. The Poudre Canyon is a great place and the Front Rangers are very lucky to have such a place so close to suburbia.