Salt Predictions this Week

Well it was pretty epic. We launched at just below 6K and ran everything up to the maze on Wednesday and camped around mile 28, we were in camp by 3 including a lunch break and then it rained all night. Current was 6 mph and up, it was all formidable with literally no breaks. Most of the big named rapids had pretty obvious sneaks (and mostly on the right), by and large we could read and run everything, which was good because there were no Eddie’s. The only rapid we scouted was black rock and it was a predictably straight forward right run with no sneak around the runnable big wave. Ran the rest and Quartzite Thursday around or likely over 9K with the 13K spike chasing us down. Corkscrew and the gorge below was non stop. First two nights the water came up enough that we had to deal with boats during the night. We then Laid over and the water receded dramatically so we had to deal with that too, but the last two days were very relaxed in comparison to the first two. The group we launched with had the mtn lion incident, it could have easily been us, that’s really bad luck. They rowed out that day and reports are he is doing okay. It was just the two groups at the put in, they were great folks and we were really concerned for them. The Apache ranger told us about a guy who went missing in white rock (?) rapid, he still hasn’t turned up yet. The ranger was no nonsense yet very friendly, I suspect he treats everyone the same way they treat him. He will ask you for the tribe permits. Once the other group rowed out, it seems unlikely anyone launched on Thursday and maybe even Friday, we had the place to ourselves.

It looks like more high flows are coming this week, perhaps too high for the comfort of most. The best advice we got while en route was to stay tight and communicate. You can’t hear anything from the other boats so have whistles and discuss your hand signals. It is important to know where you are, the velocity can be disorienting.

Epic trip! The Salt is truly a one of a kind trip, so wild. Can’t wait to get back!

There was a lot of precipitation with an inch or more of rain Wednesday night, water rose fast and furious, it was coming in from all sources so likely neither gauge was accurate, my figures were interpolated from the Chrysotile gauge and figuring out the time it took to get there based on the >6mph velocity we were seeing and I didn't include tributary contributions. So my 9-10K estimate in Quartzite could very well be low. Whatever it was was screaming and was high water conditions, even the ~6K we launched on was really spicy going around the big bend at the start. If you aren't familiar with the joys of flood stage you should skip the trip until it gets back down to 5K or below. I knew Big Wave cancelled for the Wed launch, it seems like most probably cancelled their Thursday launches too, we did not see anybody else after two small groups that launched ahead of us and the NM group that had the lion issue all rowed by but I suppose they could've laid over above rapids and waited for the flow to subside. But we didn't see anyone for 3 nights/4 days.

Looks like another big gush is approaching, bring your A Game if you decide to go.