Leif's Gnarrows Race Report & Photos

If you have to live and work a normal job in Colorado, Fort Collins is a pretty great place to be. While we don’t have a playpark or even a play feature worth talking about the Cache la Poudre has some of the best river running play and creeking in Colorado. One of my favorite runs in the drainage is the Narrows or lately as we locals call it the Gnarrows. If you live in Fort Collins the Narrows is your backyard creeking run, you can get to it in about 45min from town, it this first section to come in, the last to go out, and might the best roadside run in Colorado. The Gnarrows has it all sweet boofs, a little gnar gnar at most levels, lots of eddies, difficult eddy linkages thru the rapids to build your skills and stroke repertoire, and as of the last three years the Gnarrows race.

I’m not sure when the idea for a race was conceived but three years ago is when it first officially took place. The concept for the “non-race” has always been pretty simple and has entailed a preliminary boater cross heat through the entire run, gentlemen rules applying in the meat, with the top two advancing into the next round and a finals heat in the lowers, again boater cross style. There are no stop watches, only the safety your friends are willing to provide, and typically lots of pre and post smack talk. The winner mainly gets the pride of knowing he beat all his buddy’s, a Gnarrows belt buckle with the past winners engraved on the back, and also gets to call the specifics of next years race.

This year’s the “non-event” went off spectacularly. We had the most participants yet, a few surprising results and post race activities, and had to add a semifinal heat to whittle the competition down to four in the final heat. Wile I was bummed I didn’t come away with the buckle and even more bummed it left the Fort and now resides in Denver I couldn’t have lost to a better guy. Here’s some pics from this years event courtesy of Jeff Burley and Alfie Umbhau.

Leif Embertson