North Platte River (Northgate Canyon)

The North Platte River forms in North Park, fed by creeks draining the Rabbit Ears and Park mountain ranges, then cuts north across the valley floor before dropping into Northgate Canyon on its way to the Wyoming line. French explorers the Mallet brothers named it for the flat, braided water through North Park; the canyon downstream is a different river entirely, walled in rock covered with pinon and sage and cut through with quartz pegmatite outcrops. Moose were reintroduced to North Park starting in 1978, and the town of Walden, about 25 miles south of the canyon, still calls itself the moose viewing capital of Colorado.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife designates the 4.5 mile stretch from the Routt National Forest boundary downstream to the Wyoming state line as Gold Medal and Wild Trout water. Brown and rainbow trout hold in the calmer pockets and pools between the canyon's rapids, feeding hard even when spring runoff turns the water the color of coffee.

The Routt Access parking lot off Colorado 125 is the only maintained public put-in on the Colorado side of the canyon, and it doubles as the trailhead for hiking the river's west bank; the trail gets rougher the farther you go in. Floating the canyon takes at least 1200 cfs and real whitewater experience, since Northgate holds the most technical rapids on this stretch of river between Routt Access and Six Mile Gap on the Wyoming side. Regulations require artificial flies and lures only, with a bag and possession limit of two trout, on the Gold Medal reach. The same flies-only, two-trout rule applies upstream in North Park within the Brownlee II and Verner State Wildlife Areas, where Verner SWA leases about two miles of river along Jackson County Road 18.

Caddis hatch from early May through October, and a strong salmonfly emergence runs from mid-May into mid-July, right as the canyon clears from runoff. Green drakes and golden stones carry the water through June and into August, PMDs run June through mid-September, and tricos show up by mid-July. Blue-Winged Olives and mahogany duns take over as the water cools in September and October. Live discharge for the canyon reach is available at USGS gauge 06620000 near Northgate. Anyone floating into Wyoming needs a valid fishing license from both states.