After a successful run of Brown's Canyon, the Hoofers group decided to up our game a half step and hit the Fractions, a section of the Arkansas just upstream of Buena Vista and just downstream of the somewhat-famous Numbers section. Compared to Brown's, the rapids are more narrow, perhaps more technical, much less-commonly rafted, and much more continuous. Since we had shaken down all of our gear and some of our skills the previous day, we were rarin' to go.
The day started out blazingly hot, but we were closer to the source, and after two rapids, I was ready to put my drytop over my short-sleeved fleecy top. The day's scenery was almost exactly like the non-canyon part of Brown's, with more mountains, more cloud cover, and more time spent staring at the water in search of a good, clean line.
I don't remember running into too many rocks, but the eddies were smaller, and the wave trains were so much fun. Any flatwater we had was probably less than 100m long, and the low-water Arkansas pushed us swiftly through those stretches.
The two sketchy rapids on this section are Frogrock (maybe the river left shore looks sorta like a frog when you're approaching the rapid, cause the rocks in the rapid aren't particularly frog-esque), which has 2 big undercuts and a sieve on river right, and House/Elephant/Table Rock (which may or may not actually be different rapids on this stretch - there was a big rock in the middle of the river, and the rapid's named for the rock), which has a big rock in the middle, a log in one chute, and an undercut wall down the other chute. Frogrock was at too low of a level for this rapid to be an issue for us; only the river left channel was open. One person got a solid whack from the wall at House Rock, but there were no other issues.
We splashed and surfed our way down the river, and paused for bigger/better surf waves when they showed up. One of the things I really respect about Hoofers is how safety-minded and education-based the club is. If you're looking to be pushed, you'll get pushed in a hyper-responsible manner. If you're content working on a small skill set, no current members are going to badger you into getting into something bigger or nastier. And when you go looking for help, the club members are not only great boaters but also darned good instructors.
The Fractions was easily the group's best day on the water, and I think a lot of us fell into an easy rhythm of continuous II/III(?) river running. We didn't have a lot of (any?) rescues, everybody was watching out for everybody else, and we were on and off the water in a reasonable amount of time.
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| House Rock - The undercut wall is behind the boater on the right |
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| Surfin' it up at the BV Play Park where we ended our run |
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