Doubtful. You divide the gauge reading by 1/2 to get the approximate flow. Ideally you want 500 (aka 1000+ on the gauge) although it can be done lower. Not sure of the minimum. The San Juan's are dieing. Time to head north.
we paddled it last year at a super low level, approx 200 cfs. The first half or so where the rapids are was decent, but the paddle out was pretty scrapy. I thought that 300cfs would have been a good minimum level. Be heads up as there was definitely one river wide, unpaddleable sieve, and I think I remember another sieve that we portaged as well, but it may be runnable at a different level. Neither came up on you too fast, but be heads up. Have fun.
Chris
today would be the day for that, i can practically gaurantee it. hot, humid weather yesterday followed by thunderstorms in the afternoon, combined with marginal remaining snowpack, my bet says that the Lake fork(gunnison) peaks today and so does the big cimmaron (since theyre both N. side of the same range) ... actually, for the cim, apparantly yesterday was the day (just checked the flow) .. yesterdays peak became todays "wherd it go?"
The water talk gauge that CRC recommends being at 500 is at 500 today. I looked at the lower yesterday and it was definitely good to go. If you go down there it would be great if you could try to get the log out of the lower cim in Bass-O-Matic. It looks like a hand saw might free it, but a chainsaw would be better. Post an update on the big if you run it - i'm interested.
joe
You can run it down in the 200s but its bony. 400 is great. 500 is better. 600 starts to get weird. 1000 would be very intense with eddies dissappearing. Those are the guage readings, not what you are actually on. The actual flow will be much less.
thanks for the ACCURATE info tom. the guage in cimmaron was reading around 400, so thanks to your beta we went for it. awesome run! full day, epic scenery, great whitewater. it was so nice we didn't even complain [too much] about the shallowness, wood and fences in last 2.5 miles or so. above the bottom, we had a handful of portages due to the dam, the seive where the entire river goes under the big boulders, and some wood. we went under and over some tricky placements as well. it is surprising that with the amount of wood you see, that there are still routes through. i expected even more wood portages. a little more water would have been nice, but not too much more. none of us had done it, so we were out of our boats scouting alot. the drive at sunset over owl creek pass was incredible. has anyone scouted the forks above silverjack res.?
all of the forks of the cim have alternating stretches between ugly and flat wooded messes to short gorges with runnable drops.
i did a backpack trip up there a few years back from the mi fork down the ea fork, the mi fork has one, maybe two gorges that could possibly go. the ea fork has several, including one just above the trailhead. i would really like to get up there and hike around a bunch, mostly because that area is just so damn beautiful, but if anyone else wants to go up this weekend maybe, let me know.
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