Six Mile Campground to Treasure Island
June 6,7,8
This year there was a lot of concern about the flow in the North Platte as measured by the Northgate gauge, but the flow was fine. The gauge when we put-in was around 700 cfs and grew to about 800 cfs when we floated Douglas Rapid on the second day. There were a lot of rocks to dodge, but it didn't seem much different than other years.
We had a small group, only 4 people. Everyone camped at Six Mile Campground on Thursday night. Thursday and Friday had periodic showers. Friday morning we delayed carrying our equipment to the river because of the rain. But then there was a couple of hours without showers, and we got everything down to the river and ran the shuttle. After the shuttle we noticed the sky getting really dark in the west and it started raining again. We hid under bushes and trees as the rain turned to hail. At least, we weren't on the water yet. I paddle a duckie and I am use to setting in water, but not on ice. The hail would have made great Margaritas, but hot chocolate sounded better.
We had a small group, only 4 people. Everyone camped at Six Mile Campground on Thursday night. Thursday and Friday had periodic showers. Friday morning we delayed carrying our equipment to the river because of the rain. But then there was a couple of hours without showers, and we got everything down to the river and ran the shuttle. After the shuttle we noticed the sky getting really dark in the west and it started raining again. We hid under bushes and trees as the rain turned to hail. At least, we weren't on the water yet. I paddle a duckie and I am use to setting in water, but not on ice. The hail would have made great Margaritas, but hot chocolate sounded better.
It is nice to have a helmet on during hail storms.
The storm passed and then we started floating. There were some small showers as we headed toward Deadwater South, but nothing troublesome. Everything was very green, with plenty of flowers.
Finally floating the river.
This is the view looking upstream from Deadwater South. Many of the trees near the river were untouched by the 2021 Mullen fire. It is still a great campground.
The picture above shows the Deadwater South campsite before we set up our tents.
The morning of the second day, June 7, we awoke to really dense fog as shown below.
Fog at Deadwater South
The fog finally burned off and the sun came out.
Spider web illuminated by the sun near my tent.
After breakfast we headed toward Douglas Rapid shown below. Then we stopped and had lunch at Pickaroon Campground. All the campgrounds, including Six Mile were very quiet. At Bennet Peak we didn't see anyone. The day became sunny and that warmed up all of us.
Douglas Rapid look about the way it always does and now the sky is completely clear of clouds.
After running Douglas, we paddled to some BLM land where Ken Bauer always camped. The weather was great, no rain, and then the Wyoming wind came up. You had to paddle hard to keep going down the river. There were hatches of bugs and the wind blew them into us. Like a biker, you had to keep your mouth closed. With the sunny weather we started to see other people. Finally we reached camp and set up our tents. We were tired from fighting the wind, so we didn't hike up the rocks until Sunday, our last day.
View from the top of some rocks near our campground.
Sunday morning we hiked the rocks near this camp and you get a great view of the river. We had another sunny day and the river was getting larger as more streams fed it. We came around one bend and saw a moose. We had just passed where the Encampment River enters the North Platte.
Moose near Treasure Island
All in all we had a great trip. It was tiring paddling against the wind, but we were rewarded with a Moose. On the way back to pick up a car at Six Mile we stopped at at the "Bear Trap Cafe and Bar" in Riverside and had lunch. They serve good food.
There are more photos of this trip and many others at the Poudre Paddler flickr site:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/poudre-paddlers/albums/
Cheers,
Roger Faaborg