A Mid November's Paddle

JB of altitude Paddleboards and I ascended in altitude up the narrow mountain road, a chill started to bite. Ice covered a small lake that we quickly passed by. I knew the flow would be low but it never occurred to me that parts of the river could be frozen. I also knew that we still had over a thousand feet to drop again before we would make it to the river. So the air should warm up a bit more. We were running the class 5 section of Waterton Canyon but I think at this flow it would be more of a 3.

Along side of the South Fork of on the Platte the flow was low, 43 cfs I think. Boneyard the whole way to the confluence. I hardly recognized it. The other 200+ of water was running out of the North Fork. Combined the flow would be good enough for the Waterton section!

We parked the car and started to get our gear ready. I unstrapped my Rogue Tesoro That i could hardly wait to get on the water! I went with a really short fin just to be safe. Once we got on the water i could almost feel the icy chill through my board! it was cold and many of the boulders in the water were covered in ice.

The first part of the run was pretty easy. JB and I found a few good spots to practice eddying out, ferrying. He showed me a few good things he learned from Charlie Mccaurthers whitewater class. I still gotta work on those!

There were a few technical sections coming up! There was a section where river left was blocked of by a tree so you had to shoot right and take a small drop through two rocks. This was my favorite part of the run for sure! With a bit more flow this would have been a good place to get pinned for sure. The sections after that were full of rocks you had to navigate through! We walked back up for a second run at those sections!

After hiking our boards back to the car we drove up the North Fork to scope out some drops! We found a few good ones but the flow was a little low. We are waiting to hit those in spring!!!