Wed Aug 7 PM Update:
Good news! River forecasts have stabilized below 15,000cfs which means we will be able to run trips as usual this weekend. The only real concern is the 12″ rise over 12 hours from Thursday night through Friday morning (make sure you’re tent on a sandbar is at least 8+” above the waterline when you go to bed Thursday). It’s likely to be snug out there (still no worse than a state park campground) so it’s a good thing you’re all really cool people!
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Oof, this summer just keeps kicking a guy when he’s down! That widespread rain storm Monday night pretty well saturated the entire watershed (the blue box below) and we’re about to see it’s effect flow into our section of the river starting Thursday evening into Friday morning.
Long story short, as of this Tuesday night update, river forecasts are still calibrating as the upstream gauges start picking up the increased CFS from rain storm runoff. I think the current river forecast for this weekend (showing 16,500 as I write this) will be revised down. This high water will impact trips occurring Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with a very quick return to normal thereafter. We’ll make a final determination on officially cancelling trips 36 hours before your trip starts. Refunds for overnight trips will be offered regardless of the final water level, but I fully expect we will allow overnight trips to go out with the understanding that it’ll be tight quarters on the limited sandbars available.
At the time of this update, it’s likely we’ll still see some not insignificant revisions to the river forecasts but water levels will definitely go up – the question is will it go up enough that there aren’t enough places to set up camp overnight. The current river forecast is below and is generally updated a few times a day, usually mid morning and early evening. The key thing to watch here is that purple (blue?) Operational Outflow line.
We generally call off overnight trips at 15,000 cfs in peak summer as there are usually more people trying to camp than there is sandbar space available. Anything below 15,000 and we’re comfortable running trips as we normally would. Well above 15,000 and we’ll cancel trips with a full refund.
However, between 15,000 and 17,000 I like to take water and weather trends into account – in this case, the weather forecast is phenomenal and the water rise should last less than two days with a very steep drop so any sandbar out there on Saturday night will only get bigger and there’s essentially no risk of losing ground overnight. We’ll still offer full refunds if you’d rather not go, but will also still send you out if you’re into this kind of thing.
Keep in mind, sandbars will be much smaller and more limited than is typical for this time of year and since this is a busy weekend, you’re gonna make some new friends since every bit of dry sand is likely gonna want to have a tent on it.
To help in planning/deciding where to camp: the satellite image below is from earlier this year at 18,000 cfs so the marked sandbar locations are accurate and available at least as high as that 18,000 number (consider this a worst case, the sandbars multiply and get bigger very quickly the lower that CFS number goes). I also included a map of 12,000 cfs to give you an idea of how much can change with a few thousand CFS. Click on the maps to get a full resolution image.
More updates to come! -Ryan
