The Rarely Done, North Fork of Daisy Creek

October 7, 2008

By Boyd Ruppelt

Photos

So as a belated report from our trip to Colorado, Me and Samantha Brunner had the pleasure of catching a section that is rarely run on the Upper North Fork of Daisy Creek in Crested Butte, CO. Affectionately known as "the Silly Slides" this section rests hidden away from the hustle and bustle and mass-hucking of the other Crested Butte area creeks, usually under snow until it is too low to run. With the long road/walk up Daisy Pass beyond the normal Daisy Creek put-in, most paddlers look up at the beaver dams not realizing what’s just up the road.

Curious to see for myself what was in the pass, I took off on a fast hike with Samantha Brunner to find out our first day in Colorado. What we found was a fun looking series of slides and waterfalls just appearing out of the snow with plenty of runnable flow. The only problem was an unportageable (or hard-to-portage) snow plug blocking the exit of the run. So after our waterfall adventure with Adam Goshorn and Matt Wallace, we met back up with our Gunny turned Chile friend, Josh Oberleas, for some more good times in Crested Butte.

The enterance was quite epic for the first go as the only way we could figure out to effectively run the first cascade was to slide in off the snow, snowboatin’ style. We carved out a launch pad with our paddles and pre scouted the section to run it one at a time. Before we knew it, we had all fallin in love with this scenic section and it’s cold, crystal clear water! It’s personality is friendlier than it appears and the places that looked shallow and sharp turned out to be well padded and suprisingly deep with the clear, freezing, drinkable, water.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words and video’s worth even more, I’ve attached both for your enjoyment of our final adventure in Colorado, the WHOLE Daisy Creek!

Boyd Ruppelt