In the summer morning of 1976 I was knee deep in the South Platte River in Cheesman Canyon. I sensed something. Actually, I was hearing something and I turned my gaze toward a water-mark on a boulder across the stream. The stream was rising and it was coming up fast. "Mark!" I called out to my little brother, " Come on, let's get out of here".

5 minutes passed and I turned and looked down at the river from the canyon trail and saw the brown wave of the start of an uncontrolled flood pushing it's way down stream. It was a powerful sight.

On the ride home the rain came down so hard visibility was only as far as the windshield. We sat roadside for 15 min. until things calmed down. The front range was getting walloped with a massive thunderstorm.

It was the year of the Thompson Flood. 144 people died that evening. The normal flow rate for the Big Thompson River is about 30-40 cfs. Over 3,100 cfs came down the canyon that evening. It marked Colorado's largest natural disaster.

I heard the river that day.