“What the heck is that?” I asked, pointing at a metal contraption I’d never seen before. We were unloading our raft gear by the light of our headlamps in a deserted parking lot. Despite being a professional river guide, I was feeling like a first-timer. I’d already asked about a long black PVC tube (for our poop), and the conspicuous lack of a cooler (insulated dry bag).
“That’s our frame,” Kyle said with eager anticipation. “You have a frame?!” Eyes wide, I stared at the conglomeration of metal, then back at Kyle, “You’re rowing a 10-foot boat?!”
“No,” he said simply, “you are.”
My jaw dropped for a beat. Then a slew of incomprehensible syllables escaped me. Finally, a wide smile settled over my features. “Sick,” I said, nodding.
Three hours before this conversation, I was cowering under a metal awning at Big B’s Orchard in Paonia, Colorado, scarfing gluten-free chicken nuggets. Voice raised above the pounding rain, I paused long enough to ask, “What exactly are we about to do?”
My focus had been singular in the month leading up to our trip through Gunnison Gorge. Survive river season. In the last five minutes: savor nuggets. At no point had my focus been, “learn about the river you said yes to floating.” I had a singular piece of information: the put-in is at the bottom of a one-mile hike. Other than that, I showed up blind.
I never do that. If anything, I’m more of an over-preparer. But after running my backyard rivers all season, a part of me relished the idea of knowing nothing. I had zero expectations. I was ready to fully absorb the unknown.
“We’re about to run the greatest river in the world,” Kyle said with his signature lack of inflection. I quirked an eyebrow questioningly. I didn’t know the length of the river, the class of the river, the crafts we had packed. Nor did I know the terrain, and I barely grasp Kyle’s sense of humor, so I certainly didn’t know how serious he was being. “You’re gonna love it.” That I did believe.
Armed with no further knowledge (but lots of intrigue), we dropped a car at the take-out and carpooled to the put-in. The sun sank as we turned off a nondescript highway and down an unlabeled dirt road. What marvels was the darkness shrouding? What experiences were waiting for us when the sun rose?
The final few miles of the drive were harrowing. Kyle shifted his rig to 4WD and we crawled over road-wide rocks and dropped over terrifying lips into the dark abyss. My excitement accelerated. When we arrived, we shuffled our gear under a picnic shelter to inventory before our first lap down to the river. That’s right. We would be carrying all of our gear down into the black canyon. It never occurred to me we would carrying a rowing frame.
Reading my expression, Kyle confirmed, “Fourteen pounds.” Apparently a guy from Delta, CO makes them in his garage specifically for this stretch of river. “I’m pretty sure the only people who buy them are running the Gunni.” It was easy to strap to a backpack dry bag. Kyle and I each grabbed one oar, and Casey wore dry bags on his back and stomach. Headlamps alight, grinning and giddy, we started our descent. It was 10:17 pm.
I’ve never started a raft trip this way. The flow was different, the gear was new, and I had, without a doubt, never felt the need to pack light. My curiosities spilled out of me at every bend. The anticipation of the unknown was intoxicating. I couldn’t wait to just be in the experience.
Finally, the trail leveled out. Around the final bend, the moonlight illuminated the beach. I dropped my gear and beelined to the water’s edge. Three boats bobbed in the eddy.
I whipped to face Kyle. “Those are 14-foot boats,” I accused. Spinning, I tried to clock details in the dark. “And full-size coolers? How?!” I wondered.
“Mules,” he said plainly, creating space for my ample follow-up questions. Turns out if you don’t want to hike two-mile laps lugging your rafting gear in the dead of night, you can hire a train of mules to do it for you. There’s a 95-pound max for each side of the mule. One mule can hold two coolers. Frames and bladeless oars get strapped to their backs. I huffed a laugh imagining the coalescence of mules and river gear. If that wasn’t wild enough, Kyle then shared, “The reservation system opens at midnight.”
Confused, I tapped my phone to see if we had service (we did not), and wondered aloud how we would reserve camps. Kyle simply pointed to a metal box on a pole, standing sentry in the middle of the creek’s washout. Inside the metal box was a stack of paper. Apparently, once the clock strikes midnight, groups can write their names down on this sheet of paper to officially claim their desired camps. “But you can’t camp down here?” I clarified. I checked the time again. 10:42 pm. Hell no, I thought. With a snort, I imagined tens of people lining up at this remote box on a pole at midnight like some weirdly improved version of Black Friday. As we began the trek back up to the picnic shelter, tiredness pricked my eyes. I opted for sleep.
Morning one brought more novelty. When we met the mule train. I gawked like a tourist, snapping too many pictures. The creek started to flash from the previous night’s storm. Since Kyle and Casey had allotted four days to run this 14-mile stretch of river (something else I didn’t realize, but brought me incredible joy), we were not in a hurry. We decided to sit and marvel. We made coffee and lounged on our beached raft to watch the muddy water rise. It rose and rose, chocolate milk swirling with the deep emerald of the main stem.
Around us, the beach bustled. We sipped coffee peacefully, watching the landscape change.
“I’ve never seen this before,” Kyle reflected with awe. After a pause, he added thoughtfully, “I’ve also never been cold here before. Weird.” We lounged in the rain in our drysuits. Kyle was clearly delighted by this new experience on a river he knew and loved.
We dragged our boat to higher ground twice to escape the rising waters. By the time Kyle and Casey finished their second cups of coffee, I had finished wandering around the put-in, repeatedly whispering, “Wow, it’s so pretty.” The creek flow had subsided. I’ve never seen a flash flood, and it was as sobering as it was incredible. I was grateful the flow had dropped by the time we shoved off into the unknown. Well. Unknown to me. We didn’t bring a map, and Kyle was mostly mum. Every once in a while, he’d tell me about a rock to watch out for, or a shallow band of cobble to avoid. For the most part, he cuddled the dog, fished and stared at the passing canyon walls. We chatted some, but mostly we were just present.
We picked a sunny boulder for lunch. “I’ve never stopped here before,” Kyle mused. With so few miles to make, we milked it. We lay back on the warm rock and pointed out our favorite striations on the walls above. We snacked, and yapped, and sat still in the silence, soaking it all in.
At camp, we wandered through a scree field, scouting cacti and small plant life. We watched the moon rise, and later, the sun, too. With only two and a half miles on our agenda for day two, we drank our coffee slowly. Who knows what time we shoved off. No one cared. We floated, oh I don’t know, 600 meters before eddying out to explore a side canyon. We hiked to a viewpoint and celebrated the bright green lining the river up canyon. Kyle commented he had always been curious about the canyon across the river from our boats. No formal discussion was needed to agree we would be fulfilling that desire.
All trip, we explored whatever caught our fancy. Serenely, we floated sideways with no urgency but tons of wonder. Playfully, we pivoted through small slots, shipping our oars and bumping off boulders. Meditatively, we sat in camp for hours watching the current. Watching the light. Just breathing and being.
I relished the unknown while Kyle rediscovered the familiar. I was struck by the way we can know a place so intimately, but in a specific context. Kyle runs this river every summer, usually the same weekend. He knows what to expect and loves what he gets. But how wonderful it is to see a place we love in a new way. I laughed at his joyful incredulity each time he noticed differences.
I reflected on my summer guiding my backyard rivers. The Main Salmon swells in the early season. Huge wave trains bury some of my favorite rapids. Rapids like Chittum, tame in August, become necessary scouts at high water. As the mercury rises, the water drops out and the foliage changes. Beaches start to rise from the eddies. These summer evolutions are familiar. Suddenly I was wondering what the hillsides looked like in Autumn. How much does the water drop? What does Growler Rapid look like with no water? How does the light change? Does it feel different?
Landscapes—both new and familiar—reward presence and curiosity. Despite his countless trips on the Gunni, Kyle found fresh wonder in the shifting seasons. His excitement at seeing a familiar river in a new way matched my excitement at seeing it for the first time. His hands-off facilitation style allowed me to continue experiencing the corridor blind, without expectation.
Rivers are never static. No matter how familiar we are with a place, with wonder as our compass, we can find magic to meditate on. The light, the sounds, the feelings. And in return, every bend becomes an opportunity for discovery.