# Has anyone gone further?



## BryanTBurke (Jun 14, 2020)

In the mid-90s I started running segments of the Colorado and its tributaries. By around 2010 I realized I'd run more than half, so I decided to go for it and try to complete the entire watershed, within some limits. Then in 2019 I moved to Washington to be my mom's caregiver, Covid came along, etc. I don't know when I'll be able to finish the job but I have done nearly 2,700 miles so far, not counting any repetitions, and have about 650 to go depending on how and what you count. For now I'm going to focus on transcribing my journals and starting on a book. If I can still boat when my mom passes I'll be able to finish the job in two long seasons, provided there is still any water.

Before I make any rash claims, I'd like knowlegeable people to look over the list and tell me if they know of anyone who has run more of the Colorado Basin. This was all in my own boats, motorless, with a single short exception coming up. I did Westwater, Cataract, and the Canyon in an 18' cataraft. (except Whitmore Wash to South Cove, running as "unpaid crew" on a WRE boat before Pierce Ferry rapid) Most of the other bigger stuff - Yampa, Lodore, Dolores, Salt, etc. - was in a 14' Otter. The bony rivers - Escalante, Gila, Verde, etc. - in a 14' SOAR, and the flatwater either in the SOAR or my 17' Folbot kayak.

*Colorado Basin Project Summary*​The goal: to run the entire runnable Colorado River Basin, including all major tributaries, with the following exemptions.

Rapids over Class IV, and even over III if isolated, consequential, and unportagable.
Tributaries less than 50 miles long and/or ephemeral rivers.
Lakes/impoundments.
Flatwater sections ruined by diversions, development, fences, rip-rap, or otherwise disfigured beyond recognition as natural rivers.
*DONE
Main Colorado*
Pumphouse to Dotsero: 60 miles. Palisade to Loma: 35 miles. Loma – Westwater: 25 miles.
Westwater – Cisco: 17. Cisco – Potash: 62. Potash – Hite: 96. Marble Canyon (dam to Lee’s): 15. Lee’s Ferry to South Cove: 296.

Boulder Dam – Willow Beach: 23. Willow Beach to Topock Gorge: 94. Topock Gorge to London Bridge: 20. London Bridge to Parker Dam: 18. Parker Dam to Lost Lake Resort: 30.
Blythe to Imperial Dam: 76

*Dolores*: 175 Miles, McPhee Dam to the confluence with the Colorado.

*Gunnison*: Pleasure Park to dam above Grand Junction, 73 miles.

*Green:*
Upper Lakes – Split Mountain: 309. Split Mountain to Sand Wash: 103. Sand Wash to Swayse’s Beach: 84. Swayse’s Beach to Green River Town: 12. Green River town to Mineral Bottom: 68.
Mineral Bottom to Confluence: 55
Total: 631

*Yampa*: Complete, 198.5 miles from above Steamboat Springs to the confluence with the Green, except for Cross Mt. Canyon, about 5 miles of V+.

*Salt: Complete, 62 miles. *Upper, 52, Lower, 10.

*Gila: Complete, 221 miles*
Cliff Dwellings to Cliff: 40. Below Cliff to Safford: 110. Forbidden Section, Coolidge to Winkleman: 32. Winkleman to Kelvin: 18.5. Kelvin – Florence Dam: 20
Total: 221. Omitted: Safford to San Carlos Lake. Agricultural extractions make this a tiny, braided agricultural sewer.

*Escalante: Complete, 80 miles. *Calf Creek to the Lake.

*Verde*
US Mines to Deadhorse: 33.5 miles. Beasly to Horseshoe: 60. Bartlett to Box Bar: 8.
Total so far, 101.5, about 40 to go.

*San Juan*
Sand Island to Clay Hills: 84. Yet to do, all above Sand Island plus the Animas.

*White: Complete, 203.5*. Confluence of N and S Forks to confluence with Green.

*Total as of September 26, 2019: 2,696 miles

TO DO*
Colorado River above Palisade: Dotsero to Palisade and above Pumphouse, about 115. Some sections have access issues.
Upper Gunnison, 14 miles.
San Juan River above Sand Creek: 200 miles? Plus Animas: 60
Dirty Devil and Virgin: 150?
Lower Colorado, Lost Lake Resort to Blythe and below Imperial Dam to Yuma : 70. I’m OK with writing this off, it’s basically an irrigation canal at this point.
Verde, Dead Horse to Beasly Flat. Around 40 miles.
Total to go, around 650 to 700.

Bryan Burke


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## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

Congratulations for running as much as you have. Wow.

Lots of boating to be done, and I hope I can get around to half of what you've done so far.

I just came across this in my bookmarks and thought of your post. Here's a good guide for a lot of the sections you've yet to run.

org.coloradomesa.edu/~jerry/guide/colorado.html


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## Rick A (Apr 15, 2016)

The owner of Desert Adventures in Boulder City NV Izzy ran from Hoover Dam to the Mexico boarder. She could probably help with info on the Lower Colorado.


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## Electric-Mayhem (Jan 19, 2004)

Cross mountain definitely isn't Class V+... at least at the flows most people run it. Class IV with one rapid that has a big consequence but its very doable. Its definitely hardcore at high flows though. I'd say if you joined a paddle crew of locals its pretty doable for you.

The main sticking points with the Colorado are Gore Canyon and the class 5/6 sections of Glenwood Canyon. Gore is commercially run...so you could consider going on one of those trips. Pumphouse to Baer Ranch is pretty doable too...not sure if you could take out at Hanging Lake to get as much as possible too. Pretty doable to go all the way from Shoshone all the way to Lake Powell in one hit if you wanted...especially with some automotive support and timing it with a Westwater permit. Definitely some "less traveled" sections...but I bet river camping is doable if you kept it small and simple.

One of these years I wanna do the Flaming Gorge to Lake Powell trip on the Green. Not sure I'd go much further then that from a completionist standpoint... but its definitely a cool idea. I know there was a couple that basically did a source of the Green River to where the Colorado basically dries up a few years back including rowing across Flaming Gorge and Lake Powell and Mead. They did an interview with Sam Carter on the River Radius Podcast ( https://theriverradius.simplecast.com/episodes/138-days-on-a-river ). I'm sure they'd love to give pointers about the lower reaches of the Colorado below Lake Mead.

I agree that its super impressive that you have done as much as you have. Makes the rest of the list seem relatively easy to get done.


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## jeffro (Oct 13, 2003)

How about the Little Snake River?


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## azpowell (Aug 14, 2014)

This year I managed to run a continuous section from greenriver utah to Pearce ferry Including all of Lake Powell


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## Joedills (Jun 16, 2018)

Congrats on all those river miles! That's pretty bad ass. There's about 40-50 miles of fun boating above McPhee on the Dolores between the town of Rico and the reservoir, just don't tell anyone.  It can be broken up into 2-3 day trips. There isn't really any camping as it's all private land. Also missing from your list is the San Miguel, the Roaring Fork and all of it's tributaries, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of off the cuff.


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## BryanTBurke (Jun 14, 2020)

Yeah, I've left some off the list, and I've car scouted almost everything left on the To-Do List. I have maps and notes for most of it, it's just a question of finding the time and the water, plus the ever daunting problem of shuttles when it's not a popular segment. I left the Little Snake off, from everything I can learn it's almost never runnable: shallow and braided, fences and weirs, plus land access. But I'd consider it if I had better info, after I get the bigger stuff done. When you have to carry wire cutters on your PFD and drag over diversion dams, it takes some of the fun out. I'd like to do the upper Dolores, San Miguel, Black, San Francisco, and others but I'm going to prioritize the rest of the Colorado, San Juan, and Animas when I can get back on the water. 

Has anyone personally done the Colorado from Lake Granby to Kremmeling? I've heard stories but nothing solid enough to be useful in trip planning.

For those interested, I'd say the hardest segment was the upper Verde, my worst injury was going over a weir into a recirculating log on the White above Buford trying to avoid tresspassing by going ashore (3 out of 4 tendons off my right shoulder), and my favorites were the Upper - upper Green, the Escalante, and the Gila. You can find trip reports for some on my friend Gene's site, paddleon.net.


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## Domar Dave (Feb 4, 2011)

Your quest is very impressive and commendable. You may already know this, but the Kolb brothers of Grand Canyon went from Green River, Wyoming all the way out to the Sea of Cortez in 1911. Colin Fletcher also made it to salt water in 1989. He started up in the Wind River range. Ellsworth Kolb and Fletcher wrote great books about the expeditions.

I was a river ranger at Canyonlands at the time and checked in Fletcher's trip before he went through Cataract. He talked my ears off after being so long alone. I hope you write about your adventures sometime.


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## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

Domar Dave said:


> I was a river ranger at Canyonlands at the time and checked in Fletcher's trip before he went through Cataract. He talked my ears off after being so long alone. I hope you write about your adventures sometime.


That must have carried that momentum into writing his guidebooks!


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## BryanTBurke (Jun 14, 2020)

Yeah, there are lots of differences. I've just picked it off a piece here, a piece there. The longest continuous segment I've done was Green River Lakes to Split Mt., and even that was broken into chunks, leapfrogging shuttle vehicles in two to four day segments until the Gates of Lodore. The entire Green took me six trips over the course of sixteen years in three different boats to do the entire Green, and that's just to the confluence with the Colorado! 

There aren't going to be any more pulse flows, so the Colorado dies just across the Mexican border now. 

I hope to get busy on the book this winter, which is why I wrote into Mt. Buzz about the project. I can't find anyone in the history and literature who has done nearly as much of the entire system as I have, but I didn't want to make a claim without peer review. I'll write Tom Martin and a couple of the guide organizations this weekend. Roy Webb has already said he doesn't know of anyone.


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## Roseldo (Aug 27, 2020)

Joedills said:


> Congrats on all those river miles! That's pretty bad ass. There's about 40-50 miles of fun boating above McPhee on the Dolores between the town of Rico and the reservoir, just don't tell anyone.  It can be broken up into 2-3 day trips. There isn't really any camping as it's all private land. Also missing from your list is the San Miguel, the Roaring Fork and all of it's tributaries, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of off the cuff.


I’m pretty sure there is _zero_ boating above the town run on the Dolores.

Like absolutely none whatsoever.

This is a scientific fact.


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## jeffsssmith (Mar 31, 2007)

There’s a lot of river miles on the Gunnison River above Pleasure Park to run. It’s mostly class II and class III not including the Black Canyon.


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## DidNotWinLottery (Mar 6, 2018)

I really like this concept, thanks for posting your progress. Maybe when the labor crisis ends I can work on my list more.


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## morbald (Mar 10, 2014)

Have you considered the San Rafael? There's about 60 miles north of I-70, some of which is quite remote and technical. I'm not sure what it is like from the freeway down to it's confluence with the green. Altogether an impressive project. Good luck with it.


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## the_incident (Apr 20, 2019)

Hi, Bryan. As far as I know, you've got the record. I've got you beat on the Salt, Verde, and Gila, having done all of the Verde, all the wet parts of the Gila, and a bit more of the upper & lower Salt, but you crush me on all the others. You might consider adding the San Francisco and Virgin, but not in a raft. I gave your quest a shout out in my Gila River Elegy book. Good luck on finishing!


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## catraftyak (Feb 25, 2014)

BryanTBurke said:


> In the mid-90s I started running segments of the Colorado and its tributaries. By around 2010 I realized I'd run more than half, so I decided to go for it and try to complete the entire watershed, within some limits. Then in 2019 I moved to Washington to be my mom's caregiver, Covid came along, etc. I don't know when I'll be able to finish the job but I have done nearly 2,700 miles so far, not counting any repetitions, and have about 650 to go depending on how and what you count. For now I'm going to focus on transcribing my journals and starting on a book. If I can still boat when my mom passes I'll be able to finish the job in two long seasons, provided there is still any water.
> 
> Before I make any rash claims, I'd like knowlegeable people to look over the list and tell me if they know of anyone who has run more of the Colorado Basin. This was all in my own boats, motorless, with a single short exception coming up. I did Westwater, Cataract, and the Canyon in an 18' cataraft. (except Whitmore Wash to South Cove, running as "unpaid crew" on a WRE boat before Pierce Ferry rapid) Most of the other bigger stuff - Yampa, Lodore, Dolores, Salt, etc. - was in a 14' Otter. The bony rivers - Escalante, Gila, Verde, etc. - in a 14' SOAR, and the flatwater either in the SOAR or my 17' Folbot kayak.
> 
> ...


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