ESCALANTE UPDATE: 4-18-05

[Tom R Chamberlain]

Escalante is rippin'! Barry and I ran today. It was huge (up even more than the weekend). It was higher today than I have seen it in 4 or 5 years. No sign of any fin at 57 Chevy. It is so nice having Leap of Faith back! It runs clean now with all the new drift wood wedged into the sieve. For all you folks that have been complaining that Escalante is only class IV+ its time to sack-up and see what it's like when its really running. I have this sick feeling that it is still on its way up. There is still tons of snow up high and the night time temps are up. Be careful out there! Me - I'm just glad to be alive. If it comes up much higher I think I'll go climbing.

[ToddG]

just posted a photo of 57 chevy from late sunday in the gallery ...

[Cutch]

Tom, I'm eating my words. I used to refer to it as a great beginers creek. How was your run? When it gets higher what happens to magnetic wall? What is the highest that it was ever been run? That thing is completely different at higher flow.

[Waterpooch]

Here is what I saw over the weekend.

This is a picture of the falls on saturday and sunday in comparison.

I Hope to get more pictures up in a gallery soon. Hopefully the site will be ready in a week or two. For now here is the pic.

The Falls picture, enjoy

[Tom R Chamberlain]

Hey Cutch,

Right now it is at a level that is close to the max it has been. Barry and I actually ran the whole thing a little bit higher once but we had a full team and we were in good paddling shape. The first time we ever boated on it, it was way higher than it is now, but we were unable to run any of the major rapids at that level. I wish I could find those pictures; The falls was just one big smooth poor-over into a lethal mega-hole. As it gets higher magnetic wall becomes really horrifying. The whole river folds over on top of itself against the left wall. A clean run seems impossible. Maybe in a little play boat full of water you would just flush through?

If anybody looks at it mid-week be sure and post the situation. I hope it comes down a bit so we can paddle this weekend, but if it goes up I'll just take photos from the bank while Gar runs it.

[waynechorter]

A group of us are headed up from durango to boat it this thursday. If anyone wants to meet up it'd be nice to do a shuttle but I'm sure we could just walk it too. We'll be camping out wednesday night and trying to lap it a couple times on thursday, anyones welcome to come meet up. Sounds like it should be exciting.

[steven]

anyone looked at kannah? it must be ripping as well. about 3700 cfs difference between delta and gj. esc., dominguez, kannah, and east creeks... is that it? they all must be ripping!

[ski_kayak365]

on Sunday kannah had almost nothing coming down yet. The mesa is still high enough to not be melting as fast.

[Cutch]

I believe that Kannah has way too many barb wire fences to be worth it on the upper. The top upper is extremely fast with no eddies, but the hike-to is good. This is above the run in the book.

Haven't done the lower.

[steven]

i left out rubedeau [sp.] we did the book section of upper kannah a few years ago and only came across a couple barbed-wire fences. are there more now? that run was super fun, like a long non-stop class4+ rapid at good water. how far up did you guys hike above the normal upper book put-in? is it similar to wat's below? thanks