Leif and Natalie

First off, I should mention that I don't think Natalie has ever NOT won at this event. This is the third annual Glenwood Ender, and Natalie has won the women's class 3 times. It's been a small field for the women's class but this is still pretty impressive. Before I started bragging about how well I did, I just figured I should give some credit where credit was due. Well, now that that's out of the way: I totally won! Hell yeah! Every year, I've moved up a little bit in the rankings. Mostly that's because at the inaugural event Jonny Meyers, Jed Selby, and Conor Flynn were all there to beat me. At the second event, Conor was in Japan, and Jed Selby was too scared to show his face, so only Jonny beat me. This year, Jonny broke his back, but Conor came back from Japan, so it was down to me vs. Conor. I was further aided by the fact that the publicity for the Glenwood Ender didn't really take off this year, so there was a pretty small crowd of com...

I've written a detailed blow by blow account of this trip, but there's also a slideshow, with a few extra photos. Seems like just a few months ago that we were lamenting the low low water across the state of Colorado. Well, time flows in circles I guess, because here we are again in the shoulder season, back in school, with nothing to run. A series of long weekends caught up with Natalie and I, and we found ourselves stuck near home for a weekend, with only one day free to paddle. "Nothing to run" - ha! I laugh in the face of low water. A few years back, Natalie and I drove up from Glenwood Springs to Fort Collins to run the Big South, and during the drive the discharge from the reservoir was turned down to just 20 cfs. We still had a great time, although it was a very long day. Checking the gauges this particular weekend, I noticed that they were letting loose about 50 cfs from the reservoir! Hot dog! We secured a shuttle driver (Natalie Beckman - sorry for ...

As has become usual for our blog, I will include a slideshow first, so that those with short attention spans will be captivated by the pretty pictures. The captions tell most of the story below. Natalie, Conor and I first ran the Black Canyon back in 2007 or 2008. We showed up, found out that our shuttle/guide had backed out, but decided to run it anyway. With the shuttle complications, we didn't get to putin until about 1:00, and although we had a great day on the water, the portage wrecked us. We had no idea where the trail was, and it took forever. We finally limped into camp about an hour after dark, only to find that cave camp was already occupied by some other paddlers. Basically, it was epic, and we all told ourselves the many things we would do differently if we ever came back. Of course, none of us would be coming back until the memory of that heinous portage faded away. Flash forward several years (I can't say exactly how many, because my memory has faded a bit...