At some point during the night two or three or four trains roared past our camp at what seemed like mere inches away. Surprisingly, the maniacally loud horn did little to deter us from a well-deserved sleep. We were exhausted.

We allowed ourselves the luxury of sleeping until eight o'clock. Even though we are behind schedule, we feel that we can make up some of the time on the river. As we packed up our gear a police officer stopped by at our impromptu campsite. Ben ran interference while mentioning our Big City Mountaineers fundraising objective of raising $10,000 (have you donated yet?) and managed to talk his way out of a ticket.

Once packed, we still had to walk a few miles around and across I-70 to the town boat launch on the Colorado River.

It took us a couple of hours to get our gear dried out and reconfigured for packrafting. Our Granite Gear back packs which had served us so well we're now exchanged for Kokopelli packrafts. We inflated the rafts, inserted our gear cast off into the current.

Over 20 years ago, I was a river guide on the Colorado (and many other western slope rivers) and it felt good to be back on the water. I enjoyed reading a river and trying to understand how currents change and the features that all crested - eddys, standing waves, keepers...

Rebecca has little experience on the water and her first few miles were a crash course in river running 101. She was a quick learner with Ben and I offering one suggestion for another.

After two hours, the sun was setting and we pulled up on a small island and made camp. Effortlessly, we had covered 9 miles. It is good to be on the river.

If you haven't already, please consider donating to Big City Mountaineers through our Coloradathon fundraising page. There are some great 'thank you' packages with awesome swag form MSR, UCO, Therm-A-Rest, Granite Gear, Garmin, Stanley, Sole, Skratch Labs and Zeal Optics.

https://www.classy.org/campaign/coloradathon/c148619

Image: On the mighty Colorado!