The Colorado River: Shoshone Powerplant to Grizzly Creek | Average CFS: 1,440
Saturday, August 24, 2024
This weekend I needed to stay closer to home so I could meet up with a friend in Utah on Sunday afternoon, so Jackson and I had talked about maybe rafting the Shoshone section of the Colorado River on Saturday morning. However, last week on my way home from the Holy Cross Wilderness, I stopped at the Shoshone exit and walked the paved path next to the rapids to check them out since I had never really taken a good look at them before, and I wasn’t sure that I was ready to tackle these rapids in my ducky just yet. During the week I was able to talk Jackson into joining me on a commercial trip instead so we could get a feel for running these rapids with an experienced guide, so we signed up for a Double Shoshone trip with Defiance Rafting Company that would take us through the rapids twice.
I left home early on Saturday and met up with Jackson and his son Ken at Defiance Rafting where we geared up and met our guide Greg, who would be taking us through the rapids this morning with only one other passenger. From their office it was a short drive over to the Shoshone Powerplant where our group carried the raft down the ramp and were the first ones on the river this morning. This was my very first paddle raft trip and it turned out to be a lot of fun running the rapids in this short section of the Colorado River twice. After our river trip was over I stopped in Rifle for an early lunch and was back home just after noon. It certainly wasn’t a bad way to spend the morning!
Obviously, I was busy paddling while we were on the water, so almost all of the photos below were taken by a photographer from Defiance Rafting.
The following two photos were taken with my phone after the rapids had ended. The light and low clouds were looking very nice in Glenwood Canyon this morning.
Here are a couple short video clips of us rafting through some of the rapids.