La Plata Falls and the South Fork of the Rio Grande

August 13, 2008

By Boyd Ruppelt

Continuing on our trip with Adam Goshorn and Matt Wallace through southern Colorado we continued south toward Durango in hopes of replacing our broken video camera and fixing Adam’s flat tire. With everything on the way south a bit too high for our tastes we decided to check out a seemingly little known drop called La Plata Falls (Spanish for Silver). So with Adam’s tire fixed and no new video camera we shot over for a quick afternoon run on La Plata.

The thing about this drop that doesn’t seem to show up well in photos is that the entire creek converges and banks 90 degrees the moment it drops off the lip. It banks so hard that it forms a green wall on the river left edge against the slightly overhung wall while completely drying out the riverbed at the lip. Then it crashes on itself, rolling it’s way down the slot falls before slaming over a rock shelf and rocketing out into the runnout pool below. To make things more interesting, a sick whirlpool/terminal eddy thing forms on the river right and the river left exit was blocked by a huge log with only a tiny stream of water flowing over the far side. We decided to just focus on lining up the lip and riding it out and boofing the little stream over the log. This worked out well for me and Matt, but Adam’s line proved a bit more interesting while providing the biggest carnage of the trip. After watching her fears realized through someone else, Sam decided to wait for another day; I guess two out of 3 isn’t bad. Luckily the concerned park ranger who finally determined she couldn’t legally stop us from running it, only saw the good lines before moving on.

From La Plata Falls we continued our way back around the state so Adam and Matt could start their trip back home. After being rejected by Wolf Creek which was WAY too high to be safely run and WAY too much trouble for a blocked (with wood) tunnel of love, we decided to move on and get a sweet high water run of the South Fork of the Rio Grande in the rain. From there it was the end of our whirlwind tour of southern Colorado and we were off to Alamosa to visit our friend Jim Stohlquist before heading back up to Salida for Adam and Matt’s last day in CO. Our trip was half way over, but we felt like we had just gotten to Colorado! enjoy the photos! more to come…

Boyd 🙂