Pulling out the river gear ...

At last.

Got on the river a couple of times this past weekend, finally moving the Summer (in the broad, six-month-long season sense) from the getting-the-gear-out stage to the getting-out-with-gear phase. At last!

(Read about my affection for that Spring ritual of pulling out gear in "Getting in Gear," this month's "San Juandering" column, in the June Inside Outside. )

On Saturday some friends and I took my niece and her husband on a rollicking paddle run through town. The river had peaked that morning, at 5,100 cfs. It was a wet, fast, and rockin' ride -- and my niece's husband's first-ever river trip. A good one, fer sher.

And on Monday, a slice of our river-trip tribe gathered for a duckie trip down a little-run section of our home river, paddling the Animas from Baker's Bridge to Trimble Lane. This lovely, riffly, meandering stretch features big cottonwoods, sweeping views of the redrocked upper Animas Valley and upstream toward Engineer Mountain and surrounding still-snowfielded peaks. We also passed the confluence of Hermosa Creek and the Animas.

Let Summer roll!



Read "Getting in Gear" here.

Check out some pics of the Baker's Bridge to Trimble Lane run on the Animas River here.

The Great Animas River Afternoon Urban Expedition

Alright, it wasn't exactly an expedition. And it wasn't quite "great" maybe in scope or ambition or epic-ness.

But it was just an afternoon, and it was urban, and it was just our everyday downtown Animas River.

And it was "great" in the everyday sense of very much fun.

Yesterday a small gathering of us townies rallied a run through downtown Durango, down the low-flowing Animas, to get out of the heat, away from chores, and onto the river. Even if it was just a 200-cfs trickle. And even if it was just through town.

What at bigger flows is a quick hour-long blast north to south through town -- 29th Street put-in to the old saw mill site -- took us three hours. Lots of float time, but lots of rock maneuvering and narrow chute paddling, too. The low water also gave us a chance to study the bone structure of what are whitewater sections at higher water.

We certainly weren't alone, either. Tubers, anglers, swimmers, sunbathers, beer drinkers, squirt boaters were out there in our downtown playground. And even a forlorn-looking family of four passed by on a big commercial raft, threading the rocks and revelers while their guide earnestly regaled with them with Durango history on their "two-hour whitewater adventure."

That it wasn't. But it was, as we set out to find, good, recharging, time on the water, with friends, right in our own town.

This, too, is a big part of what our kids will remember about their growing up in Duranago -- summers days spent bobbing the Animas in tubes and duckies. And with all the rest of us who love and appreciate our little mountain river through town.

Check out more views of Durango from waterline here:

Launching the 2009 river season: Take me to the river ...

... Drop me in the water.

It wasn't how I planned to launch the river season -- or the Next Big Life Project I'm on. But somehow it was the PERFECT way to launch both:

With a hefty heapin' helpin' of humility.

See, I was cocky. No doubt about it. My buddy Jono was visiting from San Francisco, and for his last day I planned a grand -- and very nearby -- adventure: a canoe float down a stretch of our home-town Animas River. It would be, I assured him, just a two-hour cruise ...

... a two-hour cruise ...

Jono and I have been on several multi-day canoe ventures together, so this one seemed like a leisurely trip -- from Baker's Bridge, at the north end of the grand Animas Valley, down to Trimble Lane, where we usually put in for our canoeing day trips down the valley to town. This stretch is, I had been assured by a kayaking friend of mine (renown for his class- V paddling expeditions, which should've suggested to me that I get a second opinion), a flat-water float through wide, slow, low-water meanders.

It was, he assured me, just a ... two-hour cruise ...

With Spring starting to spring, the river season a'comin', and my paddling pal in town, I decreed that this quick two-hour trip also, then, would be the first run of my life's next Big Project: Over the next few years I will paddle my canoe down the lengths of the San Juan and Animas rivers, as both my 50th Birthday pilgrimage, and also to serve the narrative thread that will run through my next book.

So with all those auspicious beginnings afoot, I knew: It was going to be a great day!

But I was cocky. It was, after all, flat water. (Even if I'd never actually seen this stretch myself ...) And we are experienced paddlers. And it is right close to home. (Even if one of the themes of this book-to-come is the adventures to be had that lie close to home ...) We wouldn't need much, then. Floatbags? Naw. Hell, I'll bring a little token bail bucket. Spare paddle? Ha! Ballast? I'll throw in a couple of bags of gear and a few beers. Dry bags? Well, I'll bring one, but I certainly won't seal it well. And I'll put the rest of our gear -- extra jackets and shells and hats and gloves -- in a day pack and call it good.

After all, it was just a ... two-hour cruise.

For us, it was about a hundred-yard cruise. Paddling anyway. Then we swam. Then we spent an hour running up and down the bank, recovering out boat and gear, and communicating with with comical versions of American Sign Language to our friends who had beached their boats on the far shore so they could gather our various jetsam and flotsam washing up on the other side of the river.

Meanwhile, my beloved canoe sat abandoned and flooded and lodged on a rock (there were a lot of rocks ...) in the middle of the river.

After an hour or so of recover and rescue, I and Jono (whom I, in my cocky "guiding" mode, urged to wear hiking boots and jeans for our mellow, flat-water float) were damn cold. Our "dry bag" was half-full of water and weighed about 50 pounds, full of now-sopping foul-weather gear. Much of the rest of my gear was either redistributed among the still-floating boats or (including our beer) had been sacrificed to the river gods.

We prudently chose to abort.

We humbly chose to abort.

We respectfully chose to abort.

Failure, then? No way. Yes, I still consider that short venture the start of both this year's river season, and of my grand multi-year paddling project. I also, though, now consider it the perfect start to both.

For now I will go into both the right way: With humbleness. And respect. And prepared.

The way one should always go to the river -- whether for a two-hour cruise or a multi-year project.

Our two companions continued on to finish the trip. Meanwhile, Jono and I are determined to tackle this unsuccessful venture again. Hell, maybe we'll make it an annual mission. We could call it the "Annual Baker's Bridge Classic": a triathlon that consists of a hundred-yard paddle, a 20-yard swim, and a three-mile trot along a cobblestone shoreline mostly carrying a 16-foot canoe.

The river will always be the winner.

Check out the pics below. Note that there are no pics of the actual flip, or of my canoe lodged like driftwood in the middle of the river, since my camera was still in the swamped canoe.



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This post also appears on InsideOutsideMag.com. Check it out!