The good news.


My wife and I took a 14 mile float trip down the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We met our guide at 6:00 am at Paradise Park and were driven approximately 35 miles up and down the mountains to the parking lot of Chucker Trail in a four wheel drive van. The last seven miles were very rough. There we were dropped off and hiked a mile down the trail to the canyon where the guides put together the rafts and inflated them.



The Scary News

We were on the water at 10:00 a.m. and fished until noon. We then stopped for lunch and proceeded. About two-thirds of the way down we came to a class five rapid. The guide maneuvered the raft around some rocks and the current took us towards a giant bolder in the middle of the river. The guide wanted to go on the right side of the bolder but couldn't get there. The nose of the raft hit the bolder and for a few seconds we we stuck nose first on the big rock with the guide standing and rowing as hard as he could to get us off the rock and onto the right side. Well the river had other ideas, the back of the raft swung to the left and we went down the wrong side of the bolder sideways!! I was in the back of the raft and my wife was in the front. I sat down in the raft and held on as tight as I could as we went through the rapids. Right before hitting the bottom of the rapids the raft began to tilt sideways. The guide immediately stood up and leaned in the opposite direction. I took his cue and meagerly leaned to my right. My wife, Marsha, was sitting in the front of the boat screaming the whole time as the guide maneuvered us through that scary spot. We hit the bottom of the falls and water came over the top of the raft and we were soaked from head to foot. For a few seconds we thought the raft was going to turn over. We made it through and proceeded to fish until 4:00 pm that afternoon.



The Bad News:

We got up at 4:30 am and left Hotchkiss, Colorado to drive to Paradise Park where we met our guide. We got on the river at 10:00 am and fished to 4:00 pm, but we didn't catch a single fish. My wife hooked one but didn't get it to the boat. Oh well that's fishing. Actually we were really happy that we didn't turn over the raft so we were grateful to be on shore.

Whoa that sounds a little too exciting. How many cfs was the river running at?

Glad y'all came through it with no more than a drenching. Sounds like it got pretty hairy for a minute.
At least you were not catching fish in some dramatic country.

Kirk

Even without catching anything, you got a great fish story!

The river was flowing at around 950 cfs, which is much lower than earlier in the Summer. The river was not even fishable in early June because of the heavy rains in the area.