Photographing Geese Flying over the South Platte River Valley

Sun - February 25, 2007

Photographing Geese Flying over the South Platte River Valley

After shooting goose decoys last weekend, I had occasion to observe and photograph hundreds of geese flying over the South Platte River. I paddled Thunderbolt kayak again but starting from the highway 60 bridge east of Milliken. I believe this is the fastest river access from Fort Collins.

I went upstream for 3.5 miles just to spot the St Vrain Fort Power Plant and turn around. It was a pretty good workout, especially, that the river flow has doubled since last week (1370 cfs at Kersey).

Snow is disappearing is northern Colorado. Nevertheless, I had to go through waist deep snowdrifts when portaging the Union Ditch dam. It was calm, cold (~34F), and cloudy afternoon. The light was pretty bad for photography most of the time, but at the end of the trip I got my reward: sunset light with a dark sky. So, in addition to geese I shot a few pictures of the river.

One biometeorological observation. When I paddled upstream I was hot, but as soon as I turned around I started to freeze and I even could not paddle without gloves. I was moving upstream between 2.5 and 3 mph, but I was cruising around 8 mph downstream. It was interesting that just about 5 mph difference in air flow around my body had such significant cooling effect.

All pictures were shot with Pentax Optio W10 camera. I am thinking how to take my Canon DSLR on the board of the Thunderbolt.