A recent Saturday afternoon was over 90 degrees and sunny. The Animas River was running at what should have been a wonderfuly fun level of nearly 5,000 cubic feet per second. Yet, I did not see a single private raft on the river. I then went down to the take out below the Humane Society, and again, there was not a single solitary private vehicle at the takeout.

Did the city of Durango’s Parks and Recreation really spend millions of dollars on a whitewater park that the vast majority of river users can’t use? Because what else explains why the Animas was not covered wall-to-wall with private rafters on a day that was perfect for boating.

I did see some commercial boats go through Smelter. One group walked their passengers around the rapid. Another company ran the rapid but only by using the sneak on the left, which avoided all the features of the whitewater park. Another company’s boat nearly flipped when the boatman missed, ever so slightly, that sneak around the left side of the rapid.

The city of Durango designed and built a million-dollar whitewater park that is not only unusable for the majority of river users at prime river flows – it is actually dangerous. What it built was simply a number of weirs across the river, weirs that serve as a series of lowhead dams that turn into a riverwide keeper hole during river flows that should be the most fun. And the city’s advice to any rafters on the Animas is that they should portage Smelters Rapid and walk around the best part of the river. Really?

Did the city of Durango and its contractor not even consider rafters when they designed this project? Or do they not care?

What the city built at Smelter is simply a hazard – hazard that has taken one life already. That was the only life lost on a commercial river trip in 40 years of commercial river trips on the Animas River in Durango.

Michael Black

Durango