Arkansas River Whitewater by Moonlight

So today after buying two new tires, I walked around Salida and enjoyed a Saturday afternoon of talking to random interesting folks (and there are a lot of them here). This brought me down to the river kayaking course that runs right through town and has a pedestrian path that follows it.

Here I met Tanya (40's) who was playing with her dog and her neighbors dog. Her neighbor, Kay, was kayaking the rapids and practicing righting the boat from a full flip. They invited me over afterwards for a drink and that when things got interesting...

Kay has a friend that was putting together a big float down the river by moon light party... Kay didn't want to stay up all night and suggested I go in her place. So Tanya's boyfriend, Mark, runs next door and gets me a wetsuit and a PFD. Tanya lends me her croakies and shows me on my gps where the bonfire pre-party is.

I arrived at a green house with stone chimney, as described, and roll up to the group of folks having a bonfire in the back yard. I'm wearing a wetsuit and carrying a helmet and everyone at the fire is wearing preppy casual wear. Yeah, I was at the wrong party at the wrong green house with a stone chimney... But some folks at this party know of the actual party I'm supposed to be going to and point me in the right direction.

Long story short: I went with Jon and Akaska down the Arkansas river flowing at 1800 cubic feet per minute (think one basketball of water is one cubic foot). We put in at Fishermans Bridge (Deb's house) and pulled out at (damn I forget the name, but it was like 11 miles or so). Its called Brown's Canyon. It included at least 10 class 3+ rapids and it was all done by moonlight on a cloudless night. Totally awesome!

We met up with a few other rafts of rafting guides and had a fire on a remote beach mid paddle. Then a few of them decided to jump into the river from a 15 foot cliff. Its 50 degrees tonight, and the water is no more then 60.

Best of all: I didn't have to paddle and Max got to sit this one out.

I have no idea what I'm doing tomorrow but it better include sleeping in. Its 4am now and I've been up since 7am.

All the best,
Mason