Upper Animas First Descent: RFI
 

Someone mentioned Stohlquist's book. I don't know if this is a
picture of the Upper Animas on the cover, but the date of the book is
1982 (and that is the first edition). The book reviews the run from
Silverton down. It gives a harrowing account of no-name and of the
carry-out.

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that the Upper A is not
in Earl Perry's book, Rivers of Colorado: Ten easy trips (1978). As
far as I know, there weren't any paddling guidebooks to Colorado
before Wheat, Stohlquist and Anderson. (Except of course for the
ignominious Earl Perry).
-Mark Chilton

According to Fletcher Anderson "Rivers of the Southwest" 1982, it was
kayaked by Ron Mason in 1966. It was considered un-raftable prior to
the 82 book, according to Fletcher.
As for rafts, the invent of self bailers opend the horizons to folks
who would have never run same water with regular rafts, and the
catarafts provided another step up.
Dan
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 12:28:13 -0700, Chris Webster
wrote:


No answer yet. The instruction video I got with my new AIRE Raft
(YESSSS!), has a clip of an AIRE Cougar (Twin tube Cataraft)running
no-name rapid at huge water and the caption says FIRST DESCENT. The
Couger is less that 10 years old and my guess was that the actual
first descent was well over 10 years ago. I thought I'd get an answer
right away but I guess I'll have to go ask at the river shop.


I was running it 15+ years ago. The picture on the cover of Wheats book
is from the Upper Animas, which was published around 1983. I thought
Stholquists book from around 1979 also had a cover photo from the Upper A.

You can bet they were running it in the '70's though. Noname is a
single difficult rapid on the run, so it's 1st running may not coincide
with the rest of the river, but was being run in the mid-80's for sure.

--Chris