The falls at Elves Chasm.  You climb a dry, rocky, hot drainage and come to this delightful, fern clad cool swimming hole.

Today has an unexpected twist.  We start out visiting Shinumo Falls, a few hundred feet downstream of where we camp.  After playing in the falls, we intend to make our way to Tapeats Canyon for a two day stay.  However, at Waltenberg Rapid disaster strikes. 

Waltenberg, a 7 rated rapid, named after an associate of William Bass, is located in a narrow, rocky area of Canyon at Mile 122.  The rapid is a giant hole surrounded by rocks, making the hole unavoidable.  Steve drove the Fubar into the rapid making an excellent entry.  However, his boat got caught in the back wave at the end of the hole and driven sideways, leading to a flip.  He, Charley and Kyle were thrown into the water and the boat was capsized.  Charlie and Steve popped up quickly on the right side of the boat, as those of us in the paddle boat could see.  Charlie was frantically calling for his son, Kyle, who was not visible.  However, Kyle was on the left side of boat hanging onto the handholds.  The force of the water kept driving the boat and although we tried to reach it with the paddle boat, it was beyond our reach.  We did get Steve into the paddle boat.  He kept trying to do something helpful, but mostly he kept getting in Brian and my way.  We made him sit down and charged after the overturned raft.  Al caught it first, and in a superhuman effort, with James and Erika getting a line on the flipped Fubar, Al singlehandedly oared his boat and the flipped boat through a major riffle below Waltenberg and found purchase on a rocky, sandy ledge on river right about a mile downstream from the flip. 

Once we flipped the boat we took stock of our situation.  The meat cooler had a bad strap and it's entire contents, meat for another six days, was lost - although a sealed bag of canadian bacon showed up shortly.  The video camera, stowed in a self-sealing 50mm ammo can was ok, although the bag it was in was damp.  But everyone was ok, even if shaken up a bit.

From Waltenberg we run to Elves Chasm, a delightful water fall where we relax, play and lunch.  Then we head downstream, well behind schedule.  Instead of making it a 25 mile day we instead make it a 13 mile day and pi tch camp on a large, sandy beach at Mile 122.  There we pull out our gear to dry, and hold a Union Meeting.

Towering cliff above Mile 122 Creek	Tim resting in the Colorado	Elves Chasm