5/21 7:07am Update:
Just waiting on this morning’s river forecast update. Castle Rock about 36 hours upstream is still putting out a lot less water than expected given what is going on upstream of Castle Rock. This is not promising as I think it’ll push elevated flow rates further into the weekend. That said, our current plan is that we will officially cancel overnight trips, day trips are still good to go, and while there will be no guarantees of places to camp, there should be at least a couple if water levels stay below 25kcfs (expected). So, if any overnighters want to give it a chance with the expectation that no legal places to camp (no shoreline camping!) means you’ll finish as a day trip and we’ll refund the unused days. (This part is still unofficially official, emails will go out later today confirming)
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The most recent river forecasts are out and they aren’t great. After taking into account the rain forecasted over the next 24 hours, it’s expected that river levels will maintain their elevated status. Furthermore, our unstable weather system will remain in the area throughout the week, possibly right into Memorial Day weekend.
At this time of year, there isn’t a lot of greenery to soak up all of that extra moisture so soils are quick to saturate and then everything runs straight off the land into the river system. That means even relatively small storms over a broad area of our watershed cause problems with putting sandbars underwater.
We won’t make an official cancellation call for another few days, waiting until after the forecasts take account for actual rainfall, but it’s not looking great. If you haven’t already made plans to be on the river, you may want to hold off on this one. For everyone else with reservations, we’ll be in touch via email.
To get an idea of how it’s going, we aim to be under 13.5′ at the Portage river gauge. The forecasts are typically updated everyday around 9am and 9pm.
