Every year in June during the Arkansas River runoff in Salida, Colorado, a festival occurs called FIBArk or “First In Boating the Arkansas.” The festival focuses on whitewater boat races and paddlers from around the nation and world come to compete. The town is consumed with FIBArk. Every person who lives in Salida is involved as a merchant, a volunteer, or a spectator and people who come from out of town fill Salida to the brim to witness one of the premier boat races in North America.
The FIBArk boat races started June 19, 1949 when six boats entered the Arkansas River in Salida on their treacherous 57 mile run to Canon City through the vertical cliffs of the Royal Gorge Canyon. Fueled by the spring snow pack runoff from the mountains of the Continental Divide and 5 or 6 feet above normal level, the river water ripped down the canyon creating tremendous currents and boiling rapids where the valley walls narrow and the river floor drops.
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