Brown's Canyon on the Arkansas

After months of waiting, sixteen long hours of driving, the most pitiful camping in Grand Island, NE (spoiler alert: it's neither grand nor an island), and one obligatory trip to west-coast boating mecca Colorado Kayak Supply (like NOC's store), we finally made it to stellar camping at Hecla Junction.  Our basecamp for the first half of Hoofers Go West 2013 was perfectly situated between Buena Vista and Salida and even more perfectly situated right at a takeout for Brown's Canyon of the Arkansas River.  We even had a couple of fourteeners nearby!

Home Sweet Home

Brown's was scheduled as our first trip of the week; it's a pretty good warm-up class III section, and like many stretches of the Arkansas, it's used as a benchmark for determining a rapid's class.  Brown's also claims to be the most heavily rafted section of river in the US.  Our weekday run was nowhere near an Ocoee "cap day," but I think I might believe the claim anyway.

The first few miles were surprisingly boring.  There were some class II boulder gardens and Wisconsin-style wave trains, and the "canyon" part of the name was completely absent.  Granted, it was a nice slow entry, but after all the Colorado big-water hype, I was expecting a little bit more.  (Our time on the Arkansas was at "low" water - ranging from 600-800cfs.  This flow would be considered happily runnable up in Wisconsin, but it makes me really curious what the water looks like at moderate flow in CO.  Unfortunately, peak river season directly coincides with fire season; the dry, warm, and windy conditions that melt the snow also foster less-savory events.)

Breezing through the Boulder Gardens

One thing that I can't complain about at all was the scenery.  The Ark is in a pretty desert-y area (complete with cacti), and the gorgeous mountains, clear skies, and speed of gear-drying was spectacular.  A few miles into the run, we started getting bigger boulders, steeper walls, and better whitewater.  I think AW lists something like four class IIIs on the run.  We were reading and running almost everything from the boat.
 

Unfortunately, the first rapid in the canyon caught me off my guard.  (Our trip leader called it "Toilet Bowl", but nothing I've seen lists that rapid name for Brown's Canyon).  The drop was simple, but the currents at the bottom were super squirrely, and I neither had prepared with some warm-up rolls nor kept my paddle in the water for a brace.  I tipped, blew my first panicked roll attempt, felt like I was being recirculated in the feature, panicked some more, ran out of air, and swam.  Definitely not my proudest moment.  I am well practiced in the art of swimming whitewater, though, so my boat and I made it in the first eddy below the rapid, and several Hoofers wrangled my paddle into the second eddy.  I may have been the first swimmer of the day, but I was not the last.

Boulders in the Canyon were only about 10-20x the size of these rocks

As we got deeper into the canyon that afternoon, the raft traffic started showing up.  At first it was just a few small (<6 12-person="" ahem="" and="" boats="" bumper-to-bumper="" but="" canyon.="" chute="" come="" conditions="" did="" down="" eddies="" get="" group.="" group="" have="" heart="" in="" interesting="" joy="" large="" managed="" mostly="" nbsp="" next="" of="" one="" our="" p="" plentiful="" reasonably="" so="" the="" through="" to="" trips="" trying="" we="" were="">

The one rapid that we did scout from shore was the biggest of the day (complete with professional photographer): Zoom Flume.  We had been expecting Zoom Flume to be around the corner all morning, and finally found it just downstream of a stern-squirt/goofing off eddy.  (It may have been a good thing we had a post-stern-squirt-swim just upstream).  The rapid had a good number of fun-looking hydraulics, but it was a clean and straight shot down river left.  There were a few interesting lines in our group and a great must-make roll, but we cleared the rapid pretty quickly. 

One of the Zoom Flume Holes

After Zoom Flume, we started speeding the trip up.  The rafts were getting more persistent and the afternoon was starting to pass.  There was one other rapid that seemed large-ish, mostly due to it's continuity.  (In whitewater, there are a bunch of factors that determine the ease of a rapid: how meaty the features are, how tricky/"technical" the line is, what kind of hazards there are, and how long the rapids are, to name a few.)  I was following one of the more novice paddlers through, and though she has a way better roll than me, I tried to catch up when I saw her flip.  She rolled back up, plowed through the next hole, and I plowed through the next hole and flipped.  The water in this rapid was not crazy-swirly, though, and I managed my first post-shoulder-injury combat roll!!  (A combat roll is a roll performed in a rapid, especially when you are not expecting to flip.  I think my last combat roll might have been when I was working on the Ocoee, and this may be the first time I have properly rolled with a paddle.)

After the Hooray-I-Actually-Managed-to-Roll-Rapid, we just had a few wave trains and easy IIs until the takout.  We hiked around a bit, ate a lot, played some Kubb (pronounced "koob," described as viking chess), stargazed, and turned in.

Did I mention that our gear dried in about 15 minutes?  Amazing!!