Gunnison River Festival

At noon on Saturday, June 13, 2026, the first event at the Gunnison County Whitewater Park was Canine Big Air, a contest to see how far a dog could launch. The same event drew a huge crowd to the park in 2018, according to the Gunnison Country Times, as floaters and spectators gathered to watch dogs take flight. The park lies along Highway 50, and a 2015 newspaper placed it west of Gunnison. The Saturday of the Gunnison River Festival ran there from noon to 5 p.m. and was free to the public. It offered music, vendors, art and food, along with a Kids Zone run with the Trailhead Children’s Museum and face painting. The organizers asked visitors to bring cash for all purchases and no outside alcohol.

Dogs, tubes and hooligans

At 12:30 came a fly-casting competition, with anglers casting at obstacles set in the river and warned to be prepared to wade. At 1:15 a tube race opened to anyone who could swim. Tubes and life jackets were provided, the winners got food and drink vouchers, and the schedule told entrants to “grab a friend and hope the river gods push you to the front!”

At 2:15 the Whitewater Olympics, sponsored by Merrick, put swimmers through “a variety of silly challenges.” These included throw-bagging and retrieving paddles and shoes, “like all good boaters do.” Anyone without a boat could borrow a craft from a vendor or use their own body, life jacket and helmet. Kayak freestyle followed at 3:15, sponsored by the Turd Herder: “Get in your playboat and spin it to win it.” Competitors in the scored events were judged on style, duration, technical aspect and crowd appeal, with cash prizes of $100, $75 and $50.

At 4:00 came the Hooligan Race, sponsored by Wright Angle Construction. Entrants dressed in costume and brought “anything that floats but is not a boat,” and the judges scored them on creativity and style. “The more homemade the better,” the schedule read. “Show off your river rat mojo. Build it well and do not pollute our river with trash.” A prize drawing at the registration tent closed the day at 4:45.

Stamp cards and the ditch downstream

The morning held two programs. At 9 a.m. Scenic River Tours ran a LatinX float, which the festival listed in Spanish under Inmigrantes Unidos community activities. It was free and open to riders over five. Riders met at the Scenic River Tours put-in at 8:30 and took a shuttle back to town afterward. At 10 the Gunnison Kayak Program held a free on-land river safety clinic at Second Wave, with no registration required.

Each vendor carried a stamp and stamp pad. A visitor who talked with a vendor about its relationship to river stewardship got a stamp. Three stamps earned a raffle ticket, and visiting every vendor earned six. The 2026 list included:

• the Gunnison Angling Society
• CKS River Supply
• Colorado Parks and Wildlife
• Wilderness Pursuits
• the Adaptive Sports Center
• Alpine Surf
• Merrick Whitewater
• Flags of Intention
• Patricia Sabino, with the face paint

The festival uses the motto River Hero for anyone who takes the lead on river safety, etiquette, conservation and stewardship. Its etiquette list asks for no glass, pets under voice control or left at home, and historical artifacts examined but not touched.

The festival’s pages also carry one standing warning about the river. The rapid a quarter mile downstream of the whitewater park is the Kemel Owens #2 Ditch diversion, and the festival says it is NOT a park feature. It asks floaters, especially those in duckies and tubes, to use extreme caution there or to take out at the park.

Friday evening on the Taylor

The 2026 festival began the evening before, on the Taylor River. On Friday, June 12, racers registered at Todd’s Slot from 4:30. At 5:30 the long boats left in a mass start, followed five minutes apart by the men’s and women’s kayaks, then rafts at two-minute intervals from 5:45. Every racer had to wear a life jacket, helmet and shoes, and a Forest Service permit limited the field. The organizers expected low water that year. They advised paddlers to “run boats soft,” recommended no more than four people to a raft, and asked anyone who got stuck to respect private property. From 7 to 9 the racers gathered at Harmels on the Taylor with a T-shirt, a beer ticket from Harmels and food from Three Rivers.

The festival’s site posts the 2024 results:

• Long kayaks: Adam Sampson first at 24.64
• Men’s kayaks: Josh Stupka first at 25.32
• Women’s kayaks: Sydney Dickenson first at 27.00
• Rafts: the Three Rivers Resort crew first at 27.28

A class at Western State

The event began as the Gunnison Whitewater Festival, created by Bob Jones and a class at Western State College, now Western Colorado University. According to the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, that first festival had downriver raft floats and races, kayak demonstrations and clinics, biking and climbing events, live music and vendors. Its age depends on the count. The district marked 2022 as the 20th anniversary, saying 20 years had passed since the first one. The Gunnison Country Times, in June 2018, called that year’s festival its 15th.

The district has served as title sponsor of the nonprofit festival, and a festival board runs it. The festival’s stated aim is to “promote awareness and celebration of local rivers as a priceless resource through river-themed recreation, arts and education” and to encourage use of the county’s whitewater park. In 2015 Frank Kugel, the district’s manager, called it “an annual river event that embraces river and stream activities, education, and the celebration of the Gunnison River Basin.”

That 2015 festival ran Thursday through Sunday, June 11 to 14, and spread across the valley:

• Jonathan Waterman gave a slideshow on the Colorado River at the Gunnison Library.
• Trout Unlimited held a Bridge to Bridge Fly Fishing Tournament from North Bridge.
• At the Tickle Belly Friday Night Fish Fry and Community Float, paddlers came down the Gunnison to the whitewater park for fish and live acoustic music.
• The Taylor race ran Saturday morning from Todd’s Slot to South Bank.
• Dogs launched at Mergelmen Pond for $5 a pup.
• Inflatables surfed feature 3 of the park in a whitewater rodeo.
• The Reel Paddling Film Festival screened at the Jorgensen Complex that night.

Cyclists who rode to events got a ticket toward one of two town bikes. That same week the Crested Butte News reported that projected inflows to Blue Mesa Reservoir had risen from 65 percent on May 1 to 84 percent on June 1.

The twentieth year

The festival was cancelled in 2020 and scaled back in 2021, both times because of Covid. “With the cancellation in 2020 and a scaled back festival in 2021 both due to Covid, we are more than ready and excited to have a full-blown festival with three days of events to celebrate its 20th anniversary,” said Joellen Fonken, then the festival’s director.

The anniversary ran June 10 to 12, 2022. It brought back the Taylor Downriver Raft and Kayak races and the Hooligan Race, in which, as the district described it, “participants create their own rafts hoping they will float through the Gunnison Whitewater Park.” In April, volunteers had worked in cool, windy weather to pick up trash along the Gunnison River and Tomichi Creek, and were paid in pulled pork tacos from 5 B’s BBQ at Jorgensen Park, a “taco for trash.” On the festival’s first evening, The Wailers played at the I-Bar Ranch east of town. “We are looking forward to having Bob Jones and some of his original festival cronies involved in this year’s anniversary celebration,” Fonken said.

By the 2026 festival the director was Hayden Daiber. The festival’s sponsor page describes it as a community that comes together once a year “to celebrate our rivers, the coming of summer, a busy visitor season and smiling at green irrigated fields from our headwaters. Our valley is water in many forms… let’s enjoy!”