Yampa River Trip

 Randy at the put-in

Over the past few years, a group of us have done a spring rafting trip together. We've run the John Day twice, the Owyhee, and now the Yampa. The Yampa River flows through Dinosaur National Monument in NW Colorado, not far from Utah. The river flows into the Green River, and is the only undammed major tributary of the Colorado River.

We were able to get a "low use" permit for a May 3 put-in. This permit meant that we were the only group of people allowed to launch that day, so we didn't need to have assigned campsites. We still had to follow some rules - no layovers, no lunch stops at campsites, and we could only stay in posted campsites - but we could go at our own pace.

As is customary, I took "groover duty" for the trip. This has its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, I don't have to help out in the kitchen. On the minus side, I have to set up first when we get to camp and I am the last packed when we leave. I've learned to pack so that it's easy to put the groover in at the last minute so I can pack everything else while I'm waiting. There is one more plus - since I'm going to be waiting for people anyway, I can sleep late and still get on the river with everyone else.

The drive to the Yampa took 2 days. The first day, we drove from the Seattle area to Twin Falls, Idaho, with a brief stop in Boise to buy spare lifejackets (we hadn't realized we needed a spare for each raft, and we had only brought 2 spares in total). On the second day, we stopped in Heber, Utah for lunch at an interesting restaurant run by a man who was born in Korea, adopted by a Dutch family, and then grew up in England. He was an investment banker in New York before moving to Utah to start a restaurant. After an excellent lunch, we headed to the put-in for the Yampa.

When we arrived at the put-in, we found another group preparing their boats. They told us that they were a research trip going down to a specific spot to gather results and clean up from an experiment started the year before. They were not allowed to camp where anyone else wanted, and most likely we would only see them for a few minutes.

We unloaded our gear, put our equipment together, set up camp, and had a nice dinner (burgers and hot dogs) before retiring for the night.

The flow was around 4000 cfs and slowly dropping, which turned out to be perfect for a first trip. People who started a week later would see increasing flows and flows since mid-May have been above 10,000 cfs. This can be great for people who know what to expect, but it could have been too high for us.