Royal Gorge

May 27, 2009-Day 1

This run really blew me away. I've always associated the Royal Gorge with all the big waterfalls on the run like Heath Springs 1 and 2, rattlesnake, and Wabena. But there's so much more to it! It's just the shit in there. Pictured above is the crew of myself, Ryan, and Anthony from Reno, who, really came through with the fireworks. Thanks bro.

Pyrotechnic specialist
After doing it, I'd say you definitely wanna try to go in when the gauge is around 900cfs, which is what we had. Lower goes for sure, but who likes low water? Cody Howard hooked it up with some beta, which was nice because we had none previously. Thanks dude. And of course, none of it would be possible without Sarah, our shuttle technician.

the first gorge

"Once you portage the dam, it's on." Whoever said that was right. The first gorge we came to was sweet, and pretty full on, too. We like, we really really like.

Coming into the fourth drop..

It was good in there

We got through the first gorge and were ecstatic. The nerves had been calmed by getting to run some tough rapids, but, our eyes were opened and it hit us, all at the same time, what we had gotten ourselves into.

Some beautiful sh*t to be gettin into

It's hard to recount all the rapids from this point down to the Heath Falls area. In general, most is good to go but a few portages may be necessary. With a guide, this section would be a breeze since most of it goes and there aren't any huge horizonlines. If not, you'll be scouting quite a bit.

Around 12:30 we decided to lunch at a really cool double drop.

This one wanted to toss you left into the shelf

More bad-ass rapids

I was lovin' the riverbed

After lunch we made our way downstream, unsure of how far much further it was till Heath Springs. It didn't take long to find out. Right around this time a crew of 4 who knew the run caught up with us and gave some very nice demonstrations on how to run the first Heath Falls.

Chris Korbulic

Taylor Robertson

One of the Knight brothers

All those boyz styled it and came out smiling, which, made it pretty hard not to run it. While they got out and began to scout #2 Anthony and I ran #1.

Anthony at the lip

A picture of me? Of course it's out of focus.

Anthony landed a bit flat and took a hard shot to the ribs. Luckily, he was ok but spooky nonetheless. I 45'ed it and came out smiling, although in the future i'll tuck up and go for the full plug. I was stoked, but not stoked enough to even really contemplate Heath #2, so up and outta there we hiked.

Heath #2 from above. It's a real serious drop in a crazy freakin' place. Mucho props to anyone who balls up and drops in.

Heath #2 deposits you into this gorge which is very inaccessible. We just kept walking along the rim until we found a place to drop back in. When we finally did it was down a steep wash and it landed us here..

Our re-entry point

Back on the water, we quickly made our way down through more quality rapids until we finally made it to the footbridge and campsite. We were all pretty tired at this point and the uncertainty of how far it was had been wearing us down mentally. We left the other group at Heath #2 as they were scouting/running it, and before doing so Anthony asked one of them how much further it was to camp. "Oh, five or six miles", he replied. For the record it's only two miles. But so it goes on the Royal Gorge.

view from camp

We were stoked to be here
And then we got to think about Rattlesnake Falls all night.

Day 2 coming up

peace