Canyoneering in Colorado

Canyoneering in Colorado: deeper, damper the better
By Jason Blevins
Denver Post Staff Writer


Chad Alber, 58, of Boulder descends the final cascade below Booth Creek Falls near East Vail. Canyoneering, which involves rappelling down waterfalls and navigating deep gorges, is growing in popularity as an adventure sport. (Post / Jason Blevins)

Vail - Charly Oliver nonchalantly unties a backup knot atop a sheer Booth Creek waterfall near East Vail, warning the soon-to-be rappelling backup knot installer on the cascade's edge that secondary safety systems - while ubiquitous in the climbing world - can lead to drowning.

Climbers, he points out, rarely worry about drowning.

"Don't think like a climber. We do it differently," Oliver said, not quite delivering total confidence in the single-knotted anchor to the newbie canyoneer teetering ankle-deep at the edge of the very tall waterfall. "Just keep going down. Don't let the water get you too wound up."

Where climbers always are looking up, planning careful ascents, canyoneers gaze downward into dark gorges, dreaming of ways to delve deeper into places no one ever has been. Most people are simply content to admire nature's innermost scouring and sculpting from a safe vantage like a canyon rim.

Canyoneering fans are definitely not most people, and their idea of safe takes some adjustment for the uninitiated.

"When I first saw someone rappelling through a waterfall, I thought, 'What a stupid thing to do,"' said Boulder's Oliver, a 53-year-old outdoor industry veteran who teaches introductory canyoneering in Colorado. "Then I got into a waterfall and saw, 'Hey, this is so cool."'

In southern Utah's mostly dry, sandstone slot canyons, the not-quite-underworld exploration is called canyoneering. In Colorado, the probing of the state's ample supply of damp and cold river-carved ravines is called "canyoning," the same name used by most of Europe.

The nuance is lost on first-timers. Most of this country's westerners automatically think of Utah's famed slots when they hear about the sport of can- yoneering.

"Canyoning in Colorado is absolutely off the radar," Oliver said. "It doesn't even really exist."

But the state is home to an amphibious cadre of canyoneers who explore remote gorges hidden in the Rocky Mountains' deepest - and dampest - folds. Booth Creek Falls, a canyon featuring the spectacular 120-foot Booth Creek waterfall, is popular. More navigable canyons are uncovered every fall in the San Juans. The crevices of Wolf Creek are explored. Arapaho Creek near the Moffat Tunnel and side canyons off Boulder Creek rank among the state's growing number of canyoning hot spots.

The sport itself is one of the fastest growing in the dynamic world of adventure sports. Almost every adventure race these days includes some element of canyoneering, which has thrived in Europe for decades but only recently gained steam stateside.

While climbers go up, technical canyon explorers go down. It's controlling the rate of descent that gives the often waterlogged adventurers their thrills. And that control lends the sport its hybrid appeal.
"For me, it brings together so many different sports: climbing, hiking, swimming, caving and rappelling. I've done them all separately, but canyoneering brings them all together," said Chad Alber, 58, who recently united his outdoor interests into one endeavor. "A lot of us are engineering types and we are drawn to the problem-solving aspects of can- yoneering. Anchor building is an art in and of itself."

Colorado canyoneers don helmets, thick wet suits, harnesses jangling with all sorts of shiny gear and canyoneering-specific boots, ropes and packs. They typically play in the summer and fall, when the surge of springtime snowmelt has slowed to a trickle but still tumbles down sheer chutes. They always take the pass less traveled, and they are rarely averse to hiking several miles in the hunt for canyon quarry.

Canyoneers love to startle sunbathers and hikers who feel quite certain they are alone while enjoying the summertime tranquility of a remote, wet gorge.

Their favorite game: breathlessly running up to startled hikers and asking if they have seen a kayak or raft float by on the cataract-flanked, rock-choked creeks. This trick always harvests memorable responses, which canyoneers love to share.

Canyoneering employs intricate rope techniques to anchor the daring descents. Easily releasable single anchors - a sometimes scary technique that differs dramatically from the safety-first, multiple-anchor approach of rock climbing - allow partners to quickly extricate someone who becomes trapped while descending a torrent of falling water.

"The biggest thing we think about is drowning because you are tangled in a rope in a waterfall," said Joe Connell, a 57-year-old retired pilot from Boulder who has been canyoneering for a few years. "One anchor is the safest way to travel down here."