Rockwood – Butch Knowlton has mapped a dozen helicopter landing zones within the rugged Animas River Canyon in the hopes that one will someday save a boater’s life.
On hot days, some helicopters can’t make it out of the 300- to 700-foot walls confining the jade-green river. Some landing zones disappear under white froth at high-water levels.
The southwest Colorado county’s emergency radio communications don’t penetrate the canyon. There are no roads.
If it weren’t for the antique trains of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad chugging alongside the Animas River much of the way, it would be a long time before rescue teams got word of a crisis.
For Knowlton, La Plata County’s emergency planner, this dangerous playground is one of his biggest headaches.
As melting snow races to the river channel this spring, Knowlton braces for the challenges even low-runoff years create on a river that is one of the most difficult to be commercially run in the country.
“My level of concern goes up each year,” Knowlton says. “I worry most about private boaters who might not understand the power of this river.”
Last summer, with the biggest runoff in 25 years, three people, including a well- respected professional river guide, drowned trying to run the Upper Animas between Silverton and Rockwood.
And while the county prepares medical evacuation zones and trains its swift- water rescuers to rappel down cliffs, the logistics of rescue are so daunting that operations often become body recoveries.
Knowlton has a warning for boaters.
“There’s a reason the Spanish explorers named this river what they named it,” Knowlton says, “El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas (En Purgatorio).”
The River of Lost Souls in Purgatory.
But one man’s purgatory is another man’s paradise. To expert boater Dana Kopf, the Upper Animas is a garden of delights.
“The scenery, with the 13,000- and 14,000-foot peaks, is beyond any other river I’ve ever done. And I’ve run rivers all over this country,” Kopf says. “At high water, it’s nonstop action.”
The Animas is 24.2 miles of Class IV and V (extremely technical) rapids.
The Upper Animas, which only four licensed rafting companies run regularly in whole or part, sees about 1,500 user-days a season, typically May through July or August, Kopf says. But there is no way of knowing how many private boaters make the run.
Although kayaker numbers hit a plateau a few years ago, says Kopf, a manager at 4 Corners Riversports, boats are getting better and boaters are getting braver.
“People are getting bored with the regular runs,” he says.
Swift-water rescue expert Skip Favreau says that he has seen more extreme rapids shooting in the past five years than he ever would have imagined.
“They’re shooting rapids in places we never dreamed they’d put a boat,” he says.
The multiplying numbers on the Upper Animas alarm Knowlton. And for kayakers, and even the rare rafter, the run is more often being extended 2.6 miles farther downstream into the Rockwood Box, which many boaters call the most intense 20 minutes in white water.
This stretch of Class V and V+ white water begins with a rapid that is extremely difficult to scout, known variously as the Guardian or Mandatory Thrashing. The gorge finally funnels boaters into the unsurvivable, Class VI lower box – if one misses the takeout.
There is one sign.
Kopf warns that, whatever you do, don’t miss the takeout “unless you’re Spiderman or Superman.”
What makes the Rockwood Box so lethal below this point is a giant slab of granite that fell from a cliff and wedged itself into the rocky gorge, which measures roughly 20 feet across. Logs and other river debris have been jammed around the slab by the river, turning the obstruction into a powerful sieve.
“It’s unrunnable. It’s unsurvivable. It can’t be portaged,” Kopf says. “It’s a body collection area.”
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.
