Gunnison Funnison

Good evening from Gunnison, Colorado!  I am currently sipping a glass of champagne while surrounded by amazing granite boulder stacks.  This may be our most adventure-accessible campsite yet.  We have, in order of distance: Sport climbing and bouldering (100’ away), mountain biking (500’ away), hiking (500-1000’ away), and a whitewater park ~.5 miles away.

Today was a travel day.  We left our campsite near Black Canyon of the Gunnison this morning partly because we were out of water, and mostly because we decided there was more fun to be had further East.  So far the quaint adventure town of Gunnison is not disappointing!  Specifically, the area we are camped, called Hartman Rocks, is amazing! It has nearly any type of adventure imaginable (including Dirtbiking, ATVing, and offroading, not mentioned above)..  Even better, this is one of the rare campsites where we actually have Verizon and T-mobile coverage onsite!  And it’s free!

Today was pretty mellow, as we mostly just scoped out the areas and activities we wanted to do tomorrow.  Yesterday, however, was a full adventure day.  We took the paddle boards to a nearby reservoir on the Gunnison River at the recommendation of a Ranger at the Black Canyon National Park.  It sounded very benign and fun;  there is a [paid] Ranger-led pontoon boat tour of the Reservoir leading into the mouth of the Black Canyon, but you are welcome to paddle it yourself if you don’t mind hiking a quarter mile with your watercraft.

Since we have inflatable boats, we hiked down to the water.  We were told it would be a nice mellow paddle.  What we were not aware of, however, that after 12:30PM the reservoir dam upstream lets out enough water to generate modest class 2 rapids, and a very strong current.   While this would normally not be an issue if we had river gear, our 13’ SUPs and doggy passengers are more intended for flat water paddling.

We opted to put in anyway, and just walked the dogs around the fastest stretch of moving water.  In fairness, they would have been fine on the boards in the swift water, but we could not get them to stay in the correct positions on the board: they both wanted to ride in the front, which does NOT make a balanced ride!   I should also note that this was the first time we tried out Kayak seats, since I don’t think there would be any way we could stand up through even slight rapids with our current skill level (to be tested further tomorrow at the WW park…).

The paddling was great fun, and we made it through without incident.  We only paddled 1.5 – 2 miles since we wanted to keep a trail within eyesight so we could walk back in case the water was moving to swiftly to paddle upstream.  We are thinking of returning for an overnight trip, and just timing the return paddle with when the dam is not releasing water .

The hardest part of yesterday was the hike out. We trekked about a mile with very heavy paddle boards in very non-ergonomic packs.  The last 232 steps (I counted) up were the hardest.