GREEN MOUNTAIN RESERVOIR — The commentary, sparse as it was, grew quickly redundant yet never seemed to get old.
“I’ve never seen a dory down here before,” was the prevailing theme, sometimes posed as a question: “Can you run that boat over these drops?”
The drops in the river proved to be the least of our party’s concern. The 120-foot drop at the put-in, now that was a little tricky.
Like many of the world’s most compelling experiments, this one might have been loosely linked to what could be considered “chaos theory.” The idea was to take one of John St. John’s classically styled 16-foot river boats and run it through the ringer on a section of whitewater considered suitable only for small kayaks and craft of the inflatable sort. Holding to the theory, an obvious exponential growth of perturbations of the whitewater was the inclusion of some solid Class III fly-fishing. The equally obvious destination was the Lower Blue River through a somewhat mysterious 15-mile segment known as “Jurassic Park.”
The reason behind the mystery is twofold.
First is the clear challenge of rappelling a raft — in most cases — over the steep dirt embankment mirroring the nearby dam creating Summit County’s Green Mountain Reservoir in gradient, if not stature.
While most dory-style boats made of wood, fiberglass or even aluminum would suffer irreparably from the dirt and stone they’re sent plummeting over to reach the river’s edge, St. John’s rotomolded plastic vessel built by Steamboat Springs-based Hog Island Boat Works slid down the hillside like a toboggan over snow. The only real question was whether we had enough rope.
“I’m going winch shopping when I get home,” the proud boat owner said after that hurdle was cleared, “for more demanding rivers like this.”
The rigors of entry alone tend to weed out an otherwise certain throng of anglers eager to discover the monsters lurking downstream. Combine that with some technical rowing through the rocky, narrow gorge at a bouncy flow of 800 cubic feet per second (cfs), and even a Saturday afternoon adventure lacks the typical crowds found on rivers of comparable repute.
In their place were maybe a half-dozen fishermen in inflatable boats, most of whom marveled equally at the angling action and dory’s presence. Limited access to a three-mile stretch of public land in the sheer-walled canyon keeps almost all walk-in anglers at bay.
The remainder were likely scared off by mystery reason number two: Wall Street billionaire Paul Tudor Jones and his 25,000-acre Blue Valley Ranch comprising the vast majority of the “Jurassic Park” riverside. Although Blue Valley permits boat access at a point near a bridge at Spring Creek, a lengthy history of trespassing tickets issued to careless float fishermen continuing downstream to pluck a few hand-placed fish presumably indicates a preference for boat take-outs over launches at the site.
The lure of lunker trout beneath the canyon whitewater was too great for our crew, however, and we opted to take our chances in this nexus of public and private river regulation. So long as we never dropped anchor or pulled our boat to shore. As it was, the boat’s quiet hull slipped effortlessly over weirs and manmade holding ponds for a stealth approach to the 10-pound trout lurking in the dark water below.
“As a kayaker, I understood the benefits of a plastic molded boat,” St. John said of his opportunity to establish Hog Island through family connection in the plastics industry four years ago. “They are incredibly durable, quiet, with clean lines and very few hang-up spots. We’ve tried to establish what we consider several ‘points of difference’ in our boats. And to our knowledge, we have the only river dory that has been tested and approved by the U.S. Coast Guard. Flip it over and it still floats like a raft.”
Wider and a bit heavier than most boats of similar design, the mid-profile dory handled well in whitewater even when a tempest worthy of the river’s menacing nickname blew through. By the time we reached the frog water near the BLM access point above Gore Canyon, all that was left to do was strap a bow-line to the bumper of the truck and haul the boat back uphill.
“Boat ramp? We don’t need no stinking boat ramp,” oarsman Scott Gansmann joked.
All we need is a longer rope.
