{"id":2446118,"date":"2019-07-08T21:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T03:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/north-star-boaters-urged-to-start-at-southgate\/"},"modified":"2019-07-08T21:52:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T03:52:00","slug":"north-star-boaters-urged-to-start-at-southgate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/north-star-boaters-urged-to-start-at-southgate\/","title":{"rendered":"North Star boaters urged to start at Southgate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Paddle boarders take advantage of the nice weather at the Northstar Preserve on Friday.<\/strong>
Jeremy Wallace\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

With the North Star Nature Preserve flooded and space dwindling under bridges, county open space officials are asking boaters to put in at the popular float spot\u2019s midway point until further notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re encouraging everybody across the board \u2026 to put in at Southgate,\u201d Pryce Hadley, ranger supervisor for the Pitkin County Open Space and Trails program, said Monday. \u201cThe water is high for July and people need to be careful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The North Star Nature Preserve east of Aspen is the only flat-water section of the Roaring Fork River. It is owned by the open space program and a popular spot for stand-up paddle boarders, kayakers and other boaters looking for a mellow float experience.<\/p>\n

However, with the enduring snowpack feeding runoff and diversions to the Front Range from Grizzly Reservoir on Independence Pass halted for the time being, the Roaring Fork is running high, said Hadley and Pitkin County Emergency Manager Valerie MacDonald.<\/p>\n

The lack of Front Range diversions adds about 550 cubic feet per second to the Roaring Fork River, they said. That water began flowing down the Roaring Fork on Thursday evening, and the river peaked at just over 1,000 cfs July 6, Hadley said. It was running at 779 cfs Monday morning, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s still well above the 300 cfs we had midday on July 4,\u201d Hadley said.<\/p>\n

And that means boaters who begin at the normal North Star put-in at Wildwood are not going to be able to make it under a pedestrian bridge and a car bridge at McFarland Gulch, he said. While some stand-up paddlers might be able to make it under the bridges lying on their bellies face down, most likely cannot, Hadley said.<\/p>\n

Portage is not possible either, he said, because the bridges and surrounding land are on private property, he said.<\/p>\n

Southgate is located roughly at the halfway point of North Star and is marked by the multicolored flag for paraglider landings visible from Highway 82 and the river.<\/p>\n

Starting at Southgate isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing when North Star is flooded, Hadley said. That\u2019s because the extra water has created numerous pools and eddies outside the river\u2019s regular channel that easily be explored on a SUP or kayak, creating a longer float.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt almost looks like mangroves out there right now,\u201d Hadley said. \u201cIt\u2019s a cool time to explore but remember the water is very cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

He emphasized that boaters should not get out of boats or off boards when exploring the newly flooded area or the river channel, and should be respectful of wildlife habitat and wildlife in general, including moose, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the backchannels \u2026 the flooding area has become like a lake,\u201d Hadley said. \u201cYou can be paddling a lot more than the channel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Hadley and MacDonald said the runoff appears to be subsiding and the river level is heading down.<\/p>\n

MacDonald said the decreased runoff happened just when the Grizzly Reservoir diversions began flowing down the Roaring Fork. At the same time, Ruedi Reservoir officials decreased the flow down the Fryingpan River, which empties into the Roaring Fork, by 200 cfs, she said.<\/p>\n

Because of those developments, \u201cwe didn\u2019t have the flooding we could have\u201d after the diversions to the Front Range stopped, MacDonald said.<\/p>\n

It is not yet clear how long the water from Grizzly will continue to flow down the Roaring Fork, MacDonald said.<\/p>\n

An official with the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co., which owns Grizzly, was not available for comment Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

jauslander@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paddle boarders take advantage of the nice weather at the Northstar Preserve on Friday.Jeremy Wallace\/The Aspen Times With the North Star Nature Preserve flooded and space dwindling under bridges, county open space officials are asking boaters to put in at the popular float spot\u2019s midway point until further notice. \u201cWe\u2019re encouraging everybody across the board […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 01:36:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}