Rafting Ruby/Horsethief on the Colorado River

Dates: June 9th – 11th, 2012

Where: Outside of Grand Junction on the Ruby/Horsethief section of the Colorado River ending in West-Water, Utah

Who: Justin, Aaron, Adrienne, Caitlin, Whitney, Hawk, Justin’s parents, Hawk’s Parents, some friends of theirs, a canine,  and Myself. So a good sized rafting crew.

Caitlin’s “best friend from high school” Justin, was about to leave the country for a year and he organized a final raft trip with friends before leaving the soil of the USA. Caitlin and I were excited to join this adventure as rafting is one of the activities that we don’t get to very often.  The put in for the river is just outside of Fruita (at Loma) and after a pretty quick car swap we were off in the early afternoon!

The whole crew at the Black Rocks Campground: 

The river is really calm in this section, which is a problem when the wind picks-up and pushes your Shredder Raft up-river. Let’s just say me and Caitlin had some “bonding” time trying to fight the wind the first day and luckily we prevailed. Photo of Justin and Aaron showing us how to use a shredder properly: 

Caitlin and Pat hanging-out on Al’s boat:

The water was a little low is spots:

We camped the first night at the Cottonwood campgrounds on the river, amply named  due to the massive Cottonwood tree’s that are in this nice campground. Turkey’s were flying through the area and we played with the many toad’s that were jumping all over the place.

Floating the river the next day (we also did some hiking):

Sunday night we arrived at the Black Rocks camping area which is quite unique and full of some spectacular geologic features. The rock is Precambrian schist which would be the oldest exposed rock in that entire area and this area is the only spot along the River outside of Grand Canyon where this old of rock is exposed. Worn smooth from time, it almost looks like a giant water-slide created by maniacs:

Justin hiking around the rocks:

Sunset over the Black Rocks Campground (also picture link to what 3:30AM looks like when the Milky Way makes an appearance):

An incredibly rare sight happened on Caitlin’s and I last day on the river. A Cinnamon Black Bear was on the river’s edge and ran up the steep embankment when we floated past. I was able to snag a couple pictures of it before dropping a paddle into the river and causing chaos for our little shredder boat. We were literally on the boarder of Colorado and Utah and that bear disappeared incredibly fast for such a large animal.

More floating (now we are in Utah):

Caitlin and I got out at the Westwater BLM Ranger station while the rest of the crew continued on to do some rapids the next day. Since we had a few hours before needing to head home (and a convenient NPS parks pass) we checked out the Colorado National Monument which is a beautiful piece of nature tucked right off of I-70.

On the way home we were treated to a PINK SUNSET!

Great trip with old friends and new ones!