Behind the Boats

That’s it for us in 2020! Certainly a weird year with Covid acting as a 3rd wrench (after weather and water) but everything generally went about as well as could be hoped for. We struggled with water levels just about…

We’re down to the last few days of our season. While there is still plenty of good paddling weather left in the fall, this is generally the last week it makes sense for us to be open as most people…

Water levels are looking good! Weather is looking mostly good! Sounds like we might get 3/10ths an inch of rain early Sunday morning and a little headwind to go with it later in the day but can’t complain about sunny…

Thursday night update: drops in water levels out of Castle Rock earlier so we’ll get a little breathing room here by Saturday night. Wednesday evening update: Man, this is so painfully similar to a few weeks ago when we called…

Water levels are holding mostly steady or dropping so we shouldn’t have any trouble keeping the sandbars we’ve got. Rain this week was less than expected and the forecast through the weekend looks pretty great (maybe a little breazy Sunday).…

Monday morning update: Water levels are continuing to recede. It’s a little tight today and tomorrow but we’ll start getting some more breathing room by Wednesday and that should get us to the start of the weekend. Beyond that, still…

Wednesday Afternoon Update It’s official – sandbars will be gone for a few days starting Friday Dams upstream just started pumping out more than enough water to shut us down and it’s likely to go higher yet. We’ll have great…

Saturday afternoon update: Storms held off today, that was nice! Water levels up north have peaked and should start receding down here on Monday evening into Tuesday. If the current forecast holds, we should have plenty of sandbars for this…

Conditions are good and getting better. Sandbars are out in large numbers and by Thursday it’ll be more sand than river. The weather is looking phenomenal for being on a river. Highs in the upper 80s (albeit sticky so more…

Water levels are coming down, more sandbars everyday, and the long range forecast looks amazing. This coming 4th of July weekend seems to have everything going for it!

======================================= Final update for the weekend – I was feeling real good about the drop in water levels until I noticed the Lemonweir River running over 2kcfs. That was a big surprise whereas the Baraboo River is the next tributary…

Water levels are currently still high enough to cover most sandbars and overnight trips are on hold through Thursday. Day trips are still good to go and feedback about current conditions from those that weren’t planning to camp has been…

A Monday evening update for you – southwest WI got socked pretty good, but that’s fairly inconsequential for us. The rest of the state, particularly the watershed, didn’t see a ton of action. And even though there’s a chance of…

Friday evening update: Few sprinkles today, not bad. Sunday still looking dry. For tomorrow, from our local NWS forecaster: Saturday and Saturday night…Forecast Confidence is Medium. Unsettled weather is expected for Saturday. Showers and a fewstorms will likely be ongoing…

3rd year in a row where I think maybe we should just stay closed until July… The storm wasn’t so bad in the lower 2/3rds of the river. Unfortunately, the northern 1/3rd did get 3-4″ of rain. From what’s happening…

Given the smaller number of sandbars, I pulled up satellite images from similar water levels last month (4/16/20). You may want to use these to plan a few campsites and know where the sandbar of last resort is. I believe…