It was my last weekend in New Mexico so I am glad I got to spend it in an area I had not been before. A friend was having a get together up at her place in Taos which seemed like the perfect excuse to get away. I was eager to do some packrafting on the Rio Grande in its youthful gorge as I heard there were some classic kayak runs. The river was running at about 500 cfs, unusually high for this time of year as they have been getting good rains up there. Lots of people seemed eager to innertube so I came up with a short relatively mild 2 mile stretch of water with access at each end. We started at the John Dunn Bridge and floated a short distance to the John Dunn hot springs right at the river's edge. After a good time soaking in the warm waters, we re-mounted our vessels and floated on down through several small riffles. This stretch of river had no road; for such a short stretch it felt wonderfully isolated. Before long we floated by the others who had just started fishing and pulled in just after Manby hot springs. Another nice long soak then we started up the trail to the rim. Nice views of the stretch of river we had traversed as we climbed the trail.
By the time Sara and I returned to the car we didn't have enough time to do some of the longer more committing runs so we chose the Racecourse, a 5 mile stretch of supposed Class III-IV, further down the gorge south of Taos. This had the main highway adjacent to the river for the entire run so was not very committing and we thought we would have a good chance of hitching back to the start. We started a little after 5pm which meant we had the whole river to ourselves. Though Class IV and even Class III seemed like a stretch, Sara still managed to rip a hole in my packraft and bust a paddle. After some repairs we were able to keep running. Thunder rolled overhead and rain fell. The storm light was dramatic and beautiful, an absolute delight.
The first half seemed to have the bigger rapids, with the biggest features occurring in the middle of the run. Sara made it through them without any issue, no fear punching through the messy waves. After about an hour and a half we reached the County Line take-out, by which time is was exceptionally windy. We carefully cleaned and packed the rafts making sure gear did not blow away and changed out of our wetsuits. We then walked the couple hundred feet to the pullout on the road and got an easy hitch within five minutes from a local family. When they asked us where our boats were (expecting they were hidden in the bushes) we pointed to our bags and they were impressed- packrafts are the best! I hope I get to use mine again before long.
Thanks to Sara and the others.
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