In September 2004 Colorado Trout Unlimited organized a River Clean Up day where by all of the local chapters of Trout Unlimited in Colorado cleaned up one of their local rivers. The West Denver, Cutthroat and Aurora Chapters selected to cleaned up a five mile section of Clear Creek above the town of Idaho Springs. We also had a few students form the Colorado School of Mines in Golden come out to help. In all, about 50 people participated.
Interstate 70 travels east and west passing through Idaho Springs. Clear Creek runs west to east through the same narrow valley that the interstate does. The interstate crosses over Clear Creek a number of times but for this section there also was a local road that ran next to creek. This made it convenient for us to access the river and to leave filled trash bags next to the road. Thankfully Clear Creek County volunteered to pick up the trash bags for us so our task was lightened quite a bit. The Cutthroat Chapter out of south Littleton and West Denver provided the food that everyone hungerly devoured after finishing the cleanup. The West Denver Chapter also brought along their Chuckwagon to aid in the preparation of coffee for a morning kicker and then to cook hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch at a park in downtown Idaho Springs. By the time the chuckwagon arrived Harry Hall had already found an outlet and was brewing the first pot of java.
The morning started out sunny but brisk. However, it started to cloud up some about mid-day when we were starting to serve food resulting in a few sprinkles. Thus making one think it was going to ruin the luncheon. But the light rain left the area quickly and we had a great gathering and a good lunch.
In past years Cutthroat chaper annually has cleaned up the South Platte River from Deckers downstream several miles but this section of the river has not recovered from the Hayman Fire of 2002 so there has not been a lot of activity in the area that normally generates trash along it. Last year Cutthroat with the aid of a few West Denver people had cleaned up along the river thus it still was in good shape. So one of the few benefits of the fire is that we were able to devote time to cleaning up along Clear Creek.

After lunch a Numerous door prizes were awarded from the following shops:
Trouts Fly Fishing in Denver
Anglers All in Littleton
All Pro Fish'n Sport in Littleton
Discount Tackle in Englewood
Blue Quill Anglers in Evergreen
Colorado Fisherman's Partner in Idaho Springs

Below are some pictures taken at the Clear Creek cleanup. A few of the pictures have a larger image you can open by clicking on it. If so, when you rest your mouse on the image a caption will display saying there is a larger image (on some browsers it may have a colored border around the picture, also). A few other pictures have a caption which is viewable if you rest the mouse over the image.