On the third day, we got up earlier and got on the river earlier. We scouted Pinball, ran it, and then ran the Maze without scouting it, all without a problem. We stopped above Quartzite. Jerry went ahead and scouted it from the left, then waved us down. When we got there, he said to go ahead and run it on the far left without stopping, which we all did except for Ted, who stopped and scouted it himself, and then ran it. (Jerry said he waved us on because he thought it wasn’t Quartzite, because it did not really have a right-run option.) Tom was the only one who flipped. Ted helped Tom flip his IK back over in an eddy on the left. A few of us scouted Corkscrew on the left, and I instructed the others how to run it. The raft went first and the current pushed it to the left away from the intended entrance onto some rocks. It was tense for a few seconds, but the raft went over the rocks, slid down the other side, and they ran the rapid successfully. Ted, myself, and then Tom ran next, trying for the far right run. But the current pushed us to the center and over a pour over at the top. I (unintentionally) took the hard line the whole way, but none of the three IKs flipped. Jerry flipped and ran much of it upside down, unable to roll in the white water, but rolled back up when he cleared the foam. Jerry flipped a lot on this trip, and often missed his first, or even second, roll attempt, but did not swim for the whole trip. Tom flipped again in The Sleeper. After that, we stopped for lunch, happy to be ABQ. We stopped at Cherry Creek and visited the old stone cabin, and camped at Coon Creek at mile 16 under some big trees. I hiked up Coon creek a ways and took an old overgrown trail that went up the side to the West. It was nice. There were some mosquitoes and ants at this camp, but I had no problems. We saw some yellow birds and Ted caught a frog.

It only took us about 2 hours to go the 8 miles to the take out at mile 8 on the fourth day. We had discussed stopping for a hike at Chalk creek, but got distracted by a coyote and missed the stop. There were a lot of class 2 rapids and good flow and excellent scenery below horseshoe RAP at mile 21. This would be a really nice 13-mile class 2 run. I wore Michelle’s dry top and dry pants and hydroskin socks when on the river until taking off the pants at Cherry Creek. On the fourth day I just wore synthetic clothes and was fine.