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Slaughterhouse is ‘in’: Aspen’s iconic whitewater rafting section in full flow

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Skyler Stark-Ragsdale

Blazing Adventures guide Spencer Dusso, back right, leads rafters down the Slaughterhouse Falls section of the Roaring Fork River on Monday, June 2, 2025, near Aspen.
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times

Some rivers keep you coming back. 

Such is the case with Slaughterhouse, Aspen’s renowned section of the Roaring Fork River, the 5-mile stretch of whitewater running from the Henry Stein Park to Upper Woody Creek bridge.

Despite a below average snowpack, the section was running in full force Monday, torrents of near-freezing water cascading downvalley.

“You don’t usually have that high quality of whitewater so close to a town,” said Blazing Adventures Trip Leader Conrad Niven, who is also captain of the USA Men’s Rafting Team, as he drove a shuttle away from the takeout after an adrenaline-filled lap of the section.

Rated Class IV of the I to V whitewater difficulty scale, Slaughterhouse is unique within the Roaring Fork River in that it features large, granite boulders that dropped to what is now the river bed as a glacier melted in the valley.


“And granite, just in my opinion, it makes for the best whitewater features,” said Niven, who in addition to rafting competed in the 2025 Freeride World Tour big mountain snowboarding series this past winter.

“You have hard eddy lines, hard features … it’s very defined, so you know exactly what you’re getting every time,” he added.

As of Monday morning the run was flowing at 850 cubic feet per second — meaning 850 “basketballs of water” were flowing past a given point in the river every second, according to Ryan Latham, Blazing Adventures raft guide trainer. It generally sees peak flows around the second week of June, and runs in May, June, and July.

With this winter’s snow water equivalent arriving on April 10 at 92% of the historic median on Independence Pass, unseasonably warm temperatures in April caused a rapid decline in snowpack, leaving rivers with less to work with.

“The declining curve of the snowpack was much steeper than on an average year,” said Colorado Avalanche Information Center Deputy Director Brian Lazar. 

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But Blazing Adventures guides still expect Slaughterhouse as well as the Roaring Fork River’s middle and lower sections to remain commercially runnable until at least the start of July. 

This week’s expected rain, too, could either boost Roaring Fork River flows or extend the runoff season. If temperatures drop enough for the rain to turn to snow at higher elevations, the Roaring Fork will likely drop, according to Niven. Based on his eight years of experience at Blazing Adventures, every day of spring snow equates to three additional days of runoff. 

But if temperatures remain high as showers begin, the river will rage, but the valley’s mountain snow will disappear more quickly, as will the runoff.

Blazing Adventures will typically move onto its mid- and late-summer runs once the Roaring Fork River runs its spring course — the Class III-IV Shoshone section of the Colorado River, Class IV Numbers section of the Arkansas River, and the Class III Browns Canyon section of the Arkansas River. However, all trips are open to book at blazingadventures.com even before the Roaring Fork drops.

Niven said the company’s busiest time of year begins after the Fourth of July and continues until the end of August. But business continues strong through September.

He estimated Aspen’s whitewater industry employs around 150 guides, between Blazing Adventures, Aspen Whitewater Rafting, Elk Mountain Expeditions, Kiwi Adventure Ko., and Thunder River Adventures. 

“Why do I do whitewater? It’s a constantly changing medium that you can interact with at any level,” Niven said, adding, “You can do any level of it, and every second it changes, it cannot ever be exactly the same. It’s just not possible. And so that is constantly engaging.”

Skyler Stark-Ragsdale can be reached at 970-429-9152 or email him at sstark-ragsdale@aspentimes.com.

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