Post Colorado

Well, after an awesome week in Colorado of camping, sleeping in a car, hiking, mountain biking, and of course kayaking! All I can say is it was a fantastic time and a really fun adventure. I was able to push myself to the limit with my skill on the water this trip and ran some pretty stout whitewater.

There were two runs that really stood out to me as pushing me to be a better paddler. The first was on the Uncompahgre River, it was a good class V run at a healthy flow, with some fun continuous whitewater:

The next major run I had was on the last day. It was on a river called Pine Creek and we only ran the rapid at the end of it, appropriately called "Pine Creek Rapid." It was my fist experience with big water and it was a very high flow. Normally at 2200 cfs it is considered to be class IV+. However when I ran it, it was at 2600 cfs and had a couple of very sticky class V holes on it.

Here's a picture of the crux section of the rapid:

Here's another picture of me right after the main "eat your soul" hole:

To say the least, these two runs pushed me to my limits on this trip and made it quite a rush.
There was a lot of other fun things I got to do and see while I was there. The mountains were always absolutely astounding to see! It was also fun being able to hike up to the top of one mountain and see that we were at approx. 12,350 feet above sea level! Then it was really fun to ride some of the mountain biking trails, but also exhausting because of not being used to the lower oxygen concentration.

Overall it was a great trip and will probably end up being the best week of the entire summer! I can't wait to go back again and be able to run the gnar!

Greetings from Colorado

I left Tennessee on Saturday and I have been traveling around Colorado for the past few days. I'll be here until next Saturday before starting the long drive back. So far, the scenery has been beautiful and with all the rivers, this is a great place to kayak!

We (me and Tommy Clapp) started out our first run with a bang yesterday. We ran the Upper Animas, which is a class IV run with a class V gorge at the end. We paddled at total of 29 miles in 6 hours, ending with the box gorge. The hike out was exhausting but worth it for the run. So far it's been a great trip, just bumming around Colorado, living out of the SUV we're traveling in, paddling whatever we want to!


This is some of the scenery from the road.

Prepping for the river. (I'm on the left)

 On the river.

More on the river.

Today we're going to run a rive called the Uncompadre and after that we're going to do some mountain biking. Colorado is a wilderness paradise, one which I am going to love exploring over the next week!

About me!

My name is Josh Carter and I am an orientation leader for fall of 2013 at Carson-Newman University. I am going to be a Senior Nursing major (I'm also the president of the outdoors club here) and this is going to be my second year working as an orientation leader. I am excited to get to know all of you, especially those of you that will be in my group.

Here's a little bit of information about myself: I am from a little town in north east Ohio called Wadsworth. Chances are most of you haven't heard of it. I chose to come to Carson-Newman because I found that after visiting it and seeing the atmosphere and that it had my major I couldn't go anywhere else! I have a wide range of hobbies. In high school I swam. I play guitar, I golf on occasion. I also love to be outside and do things outside. My favorite sport/hobby is whitewater kayaking. But I also really enjoy climbing (also, we are just finishing a brand new section to our bouldering wall here on campus, so you should check it out when you come), mountain biking, hiking, and backpacking.

I'm going to try to keep up the blog, as this weekend I will be leaving to go to Colorado for a week and half to go kayaking on some of the rivers out there! I look forward to meeting all of you this fall! Feel free to friend request me/follow me on my social medias!