Rafting the Upper Colorado
September 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
Even though it’s some of the easier rafting in the area, it didn’t seem right not to raft the Colorado River this week. The Colorado starts at that Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park at La Poudre Pass. It runs 1,450 miles to the Gulf of California. While it was pretty tame with Class II & Class III rapids, it made up for the mild rapids with scenery. It was a gorgeous day to be out on the river.
We decided to do the full day trip with Mad Adventures out of Kremmling, 2 hours from Boulder. $69 covers the trip as well as lunch. Our guide, Jake, was pretty great and it felt a bit more personal than some of the other trips we saw going down the river. We’re definitely going to him for an overnight camping trip with friends next year (with beer this time).
We basically hit the last week they were running trips and as you can see the water was much lower than earlier in the summer. I definitely want to do some rafting trips in June & July next year when the water is running faster.
We passed through a couple of gorgeous canyons along the way. At one point we stopped at a rock jump where my husband did the 25 foot jump. I was the brave photographer.
When I started this week I wasn’t sure how difficult the different classes of rapids were so I stuck with II & III class rapids. I think we could easily do Class IV and it would probably be a little more exciting. You can see how tame this was since I was sitting there taking pictures as we went through a Class II.
Towards the end of the trip we took a small hike to see some dinosaur imprints which were pretty cool. We were joking that this was the part of the trip where they lead us off to harvest our organs, but we made it back intact. 
This was definitely a family friendly trip. I think we’ll take my nephew and nieces on this trip next summer when they come for a visit.
Sometimes we fall into our habits and routines and miss a lot of what is right under our nose where we live. Rafting was a good reminder of how it’s great to break out of that routine. I knew there were rafting trips around but there is really some fantastic rafting around here. You could spend the entire summer exploring different routes and it really isn’t that expensive for a weekend activity. The best part is how good and tired you feel after the rowing and the day of sun on the river. It’s a great summer feeling.
52 To Do 
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