Sat - December 4, 2004

South Platte River - Opening the Winter Paddling Season


South Platte River
It was my first winter paddling on South Platte River in 2004/05 season. During last few day all my paddling lakes around Ft Collins got frozen, so South Platte remains the only open water in northern Colorado. Another possibility for winter paddling is to drive almost 4 hours south to Lake Pueblo while I can reach different launching spots on South Platte around Greeley within 1 hour. I know it is possible to find open stretches of North Platte River in Wyoming. I may try it during this winter - less driving than to Pueblo and not going through Denver area is an advantage.

I launched my Sisson Nucleus kayak about 10am at Mitani-Tokuyasu SWA above Kersey, paddled upstream for 1 hour to reach Plumb Ditch Dam, portaged over the dam and paddled another hour upstream to highway 34 double bridge, then I turned around and in about 45 minutes of downstream paddling including dam portage I returned back to my car. A beautiful sunny weather, calm, snow on ground but not as much as in Fort Collins, a little bit of coastal ice, not much wildlife this time: herons, couple of ducks, gees and mergansers, no hunters, and, unfortunately, a typical heavy feedlot aroma in some areas. During first hour of paddling I collected a pretty thick layer of ice on a deck of my kayak. It got warmer later. I noticed several shifts in main river channel since my last paddling in spring. The river above the Plumb Ditch Dam was quite shallow despite of relatively healthy flow.

The river looked nice with snow but the time of day wasn't good for any photography. Nevertheless, I shot a couple of snapshots while portaging the dam. The pictures look pretty bad and boring as expected. So, I tried to apply some artistic filters in Photoshop to make them somewhat more pleasant. I believe that the conversion to black and white using a channel mixer worked OK.

I will try to paddle South Platte River every Saturday during winter, but later I will switch to my Sea Wind canoe to train for WaterTribe Everglades Challenge . I wonder if I find any partners ...

GPS trip odometer: 9.21 miles, moving time 2:44 h stopped time: 0:40 h, moving average 3.4 mph (2.4 mph upstream), max speed 9.1 mph. Average HRM: 129.
River flow: S. Platte @ Kersey: ~750cfs. Air temperature 32-40F.

digital waterproof camera


Posted at 08:46 AM    


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