I bought a Jefe a couple weeks ago, Seems wierd to buy a creek boat when the season is over but it was the only time I had some spare cash all yr. So it has been sitting in the living room ever since. I outfitted it, sat in it, had beers in it and had pretty much concluded that it would be spring before she got wet. Boy was I wrong! Yesterday afternoon some kinda Hurricane arrived over northern New Mexico, all hell broke loose. My parents called from Dixon and said they got 2 inches of rain in a couple hours and massive hail after that. So I asked how the Budo was doing and they said it was thumping. All the arroyos in town were going off and there back room was being flooded by the ditch behind the house.
It then started pounding rain in Santa fe, really coming down. Wierd for end of september. So I got some beer and a movie and holed up for the night. Lords of Dogtown in pretty good. When I went to bed it was still thumping outside. I awoke to it still raining and checked the Budo guage. 2.8 and rising. Thats when my frantic phone calling began. NM has a total of about 10 creek boaters on a good day, That drops to about half when it is a weekday. I couldn't find a darn soul at all, I had almost started crying when my buddy Steve Smidt called and was game to run it. It would be his first time down.
We headed out into the hurricane and dropped off shuttle and headed to the putin. Had to park on the side of the road and hike to the river as we didn't have a 4x4. It felt like something out of Lord of the Ring. there was mist everywhere and every now and then it would part and we would catch a glimse of the Truchas peaks completely covered in snow. The aspens have all changed to the fall colors of yellow and red and where they met the snow line was so beautiful. Trippy to have snow up there in september. I thought that when we got to the creek it might be kinda low because I had a feeling that the arroyos down low had put most of the water in. Boy was I wrong. The Embudo was a frothy mass of dark brown making it's way past us in to the canyons below. And it was really cold. Took me awhile to get used to the Jefe. It felt like all nose, bouncing up and over stuff. But compared to my Nomad it was like a race car. That boat is fast and boofs almost automatically. Didn't feel as stable but was way more zippy. Every now and then the sun would burst through and warm us up. Steve had a bad pin in long rapid but hung in there and we managed to rope his boat out. He then fired up MJ and I saw one of the most amazing melt downs into an out of the water backender that I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. For his first time down, he sure charged hard. Well my boat got wet before spring and I'm still smiling. we checked the guage on the way out and it was at 3.1 ft, perfect! It is supposed to rain tommorrow and with all the snow up there, if it gets sunny we will have a mini melt. Keep your eyes on the guage. We will be there again saturday afternoon if it's still running. Come on down. Adios, Atom...
Ps. in the sixty yrs or more of recorded flows on the Embudo, this was the highest flow for September. For this day anyway.
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