Yampa River, South Beach to Duffy Mountain
May 4-5, 2019
By Dan Custer
The last two years this trip was planned as a 2 ½ day trip. This year we did it in two days, with only one night on the river. Several people camped at the South Beach put-in, which is permissible and free if you check in with the Yampa State Park in advance. Maybe in the future we can make this a 2-day trip with the option for some of the group to split off to make it a 3-day trip for them. That would take some up-front planning on the shuttle, and possibly two trip leaders. For 3 years now, we have scheduled this trip on the first weekend in May. For all of these trips we have had excellent river flow, fair weather, no mosquitoes, and no competition for camp sites. This year, as well as last year, the only other boaters we saw were 4 biologists conducting fish surveys. Three years ago, we saw one raft. Early May on the Yampa is peaceful and quiet.
Since last year’s trip, 5 campsites in the Little Yampa Canyon have been improved. Friends of the Yampa, BLM, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife coordinated for the site improvements, where at each of these campsites they installed a firepit, a picnic table, and a sign post at the river’s edge. They also gave these campgrounds names; Antlers, Friends, Railroad, Bubba’s Beach, and Charlie Mike. Our river camp was not at one of these improved sites. We stayed on a large island on BLM land and brought our own firepan. After setting up camp and exploring a bit, we saw that the island had an eagle’s nest and what appeared to be a golden eagle sitting on it.
We had a group of 15 people (7 tandem boats and 1 solo) for the 32-mile Yampa River stretch between South Beach and Duffy Mountain, through the Little Yampa Canyon. While the river had been up to 7000 cfs days prior to our scheduled departure, it was only flowing around 3500 cfs for our trip. This was consistent with the flow we encountered the last couple of years in early May. With the help of the current we moved along at a good pace, covering 13.5 miles the first day, with plenty of time to setup camp. On the second day the current carried us down river as easily as the first day until the last 4 or 5 miles, where we were confronted with a stiff head wind. We had to work like we were paddling upstream for those last few miles.
I lost count of how many occupied bald eagle nests we saw, but I know it was more than 4. Almost all of those nests were on the private land that we passed through on the first day. A group of 3 otters were spotted on the river. Deer and elk were seen at camp. Little hand prints were in the mud at camp and I think they were probably racoon prints. Like last year, soon after getting on the highway home we came up to the Great American Horse Drive, which spilled over on to the highway. The horse drive slowed us down for a while but was fun to see.
It was mostly sunny for this trip and much of the second day it was cloudless, and a nice 69 degrees when we got off the river. The morning was frosty with ice on my gunnels, but it didn’t take long for the sun to come up and warm us.
This year we had a fisherman, Wyatt. He tried fishing at the put-in during the shuttle and he tried fishing from the island while at camp. No bites but I think he enjoyed exploring the river bank in solitude. He was always upbeat, just like everyone on the trip. We were all glad to be on the river with no bugs, perfect weather, and good company.
Click on the image below to manually cycle through the photos. Click on the group photo for the names of the participants.
