Verbal Beta in The Crystal Gorge

It seems that the summer boating season has finally ended. All the snow in Colorado has melted and the rivers are running dry. This is a great time of year to wind down and take advantage of the late season favorites.

I went to the Crystal Gorge with my good friend Eric Parker just a couple days after our Clark's Fork Mission. Neither of us had ever run the Crystal Gorge before, so we made sure to get lots of verbal beta.

We met in Marble and started driving the horrendous shuttle ride up the mountain to get to the put in. I was actually impressed with how mellow the shuttle was compared to the runs in the upper drainage (like the North Fork and South Fork of the Crystal).

We finally put on and started scouting our way down the upper part of the creek. It was LOW LOW LOW. We had to scrape over a lot of rocks and such, but we figured it wasn't necessarily such a bad thing considering neither of us had ever been there and our lack of a guide.

We eventually worked our way down to the big daddy rapid of the upper section, Corkscrew/Pinetree Falls. I think I ran it first after an extensive scout and I climbed back up the bank afterward to watch Eric run it.

There is some kind of sketchy broken dam or something right next to this drop on river right, so I was standing on that thing trying to set safety. Eric ended up getting pummeled against a rock in a swirly eddy in Corkscrew but he was able to get it upright and hold it together to style his line through Pinetree. Here's the shots that Eric took of me in Pinetree, unfortunately I didn't get any of him because he ran off with the camera before I could get it from him.




After the beating in Corkscrew, Eric wasn't feeling good about running the Inner Gorge, so after a lot of scouting I decided to drop in solo, while Eric ran ground support from 200 feet above me on the gorge rim.

The entrance to the Inner is a 40 foot waterfall called Zhute Chute. There have been several broken backs here, so it's not to be taken lightly. Luckily I didn't land too flat.

(camera mode accidentally got switched, so the photo is a little blurry)

After Zute Chute, you're incredibly committed to running about 7 more drops deep within the inner gorge. It's pretty intimidating being down in there alone. It made me feel a little better that my ground support crew (Eric) was a very experienced climber, so he could rap in pretty quick if I needed anything. Eric took a couple more pictures of the inner, but the camera setting was still messed up, so they didn't come out very well. I'll put them on here any way.



This was one of my favorite runs in the state (I would say it's tied with Pandora's Box for #1) and I'm so glad I was able to run it just before heading back east. I can't wait to get back out there next summer and run the Crystal Gorge again!

Aspen Trees in Independence Pass, just outside of Aspen CO