Winter Afternoon on South Platte River with Thunderbolt-X Kayak

Tue - December 19, 2006

Winter Afternoon on South Platte River with Thunderbolt-X Kayak

My local lakes remain frozen, but South Platte River is flowing. So, I drove 35 miles to Evans River Park to exercise my Thunderbolt-X on the river. It was sunny afternoon, air temperature in mid 30's, no trace of snow in Weld County, a good flow in the river (450 cfs at Fort Lupton, 780 cfs at Kersey).

I paddled 2 miles downstream to the dam then back to Evans and 1 mile upstream - 6 miles in 2 hours with some photo breaks. I met one duck hunter and no ducks below Evans. I saw some ducks and no hunters upstream of my launching.

Above, you can see snapshots of South Platte typical scenery: fallen cottonwood trees, old cars, nice sunset; not shown: a freezing cold after the sunset.

It was my second paddling with the Thunderbolt-X kayak. I was much more comfortable after trimming off the seat hangers, but I still need to improve seating comfort. It is not possible to make any objective speed comparison to Sisson Nucleus kayak from this river paddling. I think that I paddled about 0.5-1.0 mph faster in Thunderbolt. This kayak is faster and, at the same time, motivates to harder workout.

I was using a spray skirt. I was warm and dry until I got out of the kayak and spilled all water from the spray skirt on my legs. I am going to buy Seals splash deck for Thunderbolt. I don't need a full spray skirt for paddling on South Platte.

I was also testing a new deck mount for my Garmin Edge 305 GPS. It is based on a suction cup from a sticky pod that I use in my photography. It worked just fine.

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Technorati tags: kayak paddling training South Platte Thunderbolt river Colorado shooting pictures Garmin Edge 305 sticky pod splash+deck