Yampa River Warm Springs Rapid at 19000 CFS May 26, 2011

Here is some video of what Warm Springs rapid looked like at 19000 CFS on May 26th 2011. I saw that the river was back up to 19500 CFS this week and thought some of you may want to see what you are in for, so I rushed this out. Sorry about the poor editing and primarily shots of my hands and cooler on my run, the camera will ride on my head next time. At our level, it turns out you probably can't run right enough even if you try. I started too far out from the right bank, got one big lucky wave that threw me back right, but still had a pretty violent ride. There is a big rock on the right bank about 2/3rds of the way down with a lot of water pushing off of it, try to hit it and maybe you will miss the Maytag hole further down on the left. Of course, everything may change for you if the river is higher or lower than this level, so take a careful look. For example, we camped at Big Joe and overnight with a few thousand CFS change, the rapid went from class II to big class III with rapids that could easily flip you. Watch out for all the trees and logs that will be running the rapids with you at this high water level. Best of luck to you, and have a safe trip.
-Wasteland

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• river
• kayak
• water
• rafting
• Yampa

[ProfWasteland]

Update: you can skip most of this painfully slow video, my run starts at about 7:30 and is over by 8:30. This pretty long (1/3rd mile?) rapid is a rocket ride to hell and only took about 50 seconds to run. Note at exactly 8:00 minutes the raft is rapidly accelerated to the rocks on the right- we got stopped on a standing wave and it changed our momentum to the right. If that had not happened I would have run the Maytag hole full-on.