Verde

We put on Saturday morning at Beasley. The CV gauge was 3100. What a
day! We were lucky enough to have the time and spent the night across
from Gap and hiked a few miles up Towel Creek Trail. At sunrise, the
marker I put out at the water line was the same as the night before.
During the couple of hours we spent at breakfast and breaking camp,
the river came up 10 vertical inches. A look at the CV gauge this
evening said the river was at 4200 at that time. What a change in
power that 1000 added, all I can say is WOW!

The Pre and the Falls were both runnable. The holes in Pre were
avoided by a right of center entry. The falls had chaos. We followed
three paddle rafts into the right sneak but that proved useless to
our row boat. The current at the right was drifting into the center
holes and my line could not have been improved without turning the
boat; I was not going to turn sideways into those three holes at any
cost so we ran the fury. In hindsight, the row boat should have taken
the pour over on the left and stayed in the more friendly current
found on that side. It was a tremendous ride regardless. At Punk,
that big hole was working OT. We started far left, worked hard to the
left and cleared the hole left by 10 ft. It was big and deep and
other boats that hit it square dropped out of sight for a second or
two before launching out. Day two was big, long wave trains and the
occasional hole that appeared from nowhere.

If the river holds this flow for a week or two, we will be back for
more fun. The good words of advice are to stay in the low flow
boating routes. They are narrow in places but passable where the
overflow routes are clogged with live willow and those strainers are
not something to mess with in water at this level. Slingluff had been
talking about a big change at the drop below Coldwater Canyon for a
number of years. I have heard this drop called by a few different
names but right now it is best to give it your full attention. At the
entry, there are three directions of water that look possible. The
low boat channel is far left one but it does not expose itself until
the last second and the water is fast enough that you must commit
without a second chance. You are now into a narrow channel with a
rootball on the right and a tree further down on the right. Both can
be avoided easily by IKs and even raft if one is willing to turn the
boat fore and aft to make the needed maneuvers. After clearing this
weirdness it all opens up into the bouncy wavetrain it was named
after. I have not scouted the other two entries but am assuming a
number of trees in each one.

Our take out at Childs was easy as always and the road back to Camp
Verde is rough as usual.
Don Farmer

Sun Mar 2, 2008 8:08 pm (PST)