The Denver Post
August 10, 2010, Scott Willoughby

It could, I suppose, be considered the end of an era, although such lofty portrayal is typically reserved for matters of broader significance. But as I drove off after signing over the title of the river boat I'd owned for the past decade, I couldn't help feeling just a little melancholy. Memories, too many to count, of quiet days on the water came flooding back like snowmelt gushing down a mountain stream in springtime. The miles I'd logged in the McKenzie-style drift boat with friends on the major rivers of the Rocky Mountain West were equally unquantifiable. From the Gunnison, Roaring Fork, Green, North Platte, Salmon, Snake, San Juan and many more throughout Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and up into Canada, the boat had served as travel companion to some of the finest trout fisheries and most scenic spots in the nation. Without question, though, the vast majority of our time was spent right here, where the transition came to pass on the upper reaches of the Colorado River. I learned to love the upper Colorado River early in my boating career, training as a guide on its serene stretches in the early 1990s and uncovering several of its infinite secrets as I explored the nooks and nuances of the state's namesake waterway for the better part of 20 years. Although it might appear that all that can be discovered on a river as renowned as the Colorado already has been discovered thoroughly since the pioneering age of Maj. John Wesley Powell and his 1869 expeditionary rival Samuel Adams (credited as the first man to attempt boating the Blue River and upper Colorado through Gore Canyon), nothing could be further from the truth. Like all moving water, the Colorado River is change incarnate, different every day. Most days, in most places, there is an aura of humility surrounding the tranquil river and pastoral valleys that border it. Its mere presence provides comfort with nothing more to prove. Yet the threats to the upper Colorado somehow manage to multiply. ...

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_15725733