Paria River Flash Flood

    The Colorado Plateau sports a number of gorgeous sandstone canyons that are routinely to infrequently paddled - Cataract and Labryinth are runnable year round, while Muddy Creek, the San Rafael Black Boxes and the Virgin River system have semi-reliable snowmelt runoff or releases after good winters. Paddlers debate the merits of a predictable spring or fall scrape/walk/float down the Dirty Devil, or occasionally catch a few thousands cfs on a summer rain event. Some small drainages like Dark Canyon, Courthouse Wash, and Cottonwood Wash have been paddled, usually by locals. The Paria River, spanning terrain from Bryce Canyon to the head of the Grand Canyon, though gaged, produces exceptionally fleeting floods given the extent of its watershed.

A 2017 Sorbet Soiree on the Paria

                    And now, from 2021:

    I live between 4 and 5 hours drive from the Paria, but if I wait for a flood to show up on the gage the river is reduced to a trickle by the time I arrive. So, the two types of events that produce marginally predictable flows: summer monsoon rains and winter rain-on-snow, must be anticipated. This is a difficult, frustrating and time consuming process that I don't want to get into the weeds about here. Suffice to say, I've now made it work for 2 out of 4 attempts based in Durango.

     The first success came in the winter of 2017:

(click for old video from 2017)

with Flows ranging from 120 cfs (narrows) to 200 cfs (boulder gardens) to 300 cfs (exit)

My initial trip spanned Feb 10-12. Shown: three diurnal snowmelt pulses followed by rain-on snow

    In mid-August 2021, an active phase of the monsoon created an opportunity. Usually a single dose of rain is too difficult to predict with enough geographic accuracy to justify driving for 5 hours, but the Paria basin had gotten hit with three runoff-producing events in 24 hours and a fourth was on the way. With soils/sand/substrate likely saturated, Tom and I decided to gamble on a trip. We drove out as the fourth rain event was occurring, and it looked like only slightly promising accumulation compared to the prior events. 

    Boy were we surprised when we reached the put-in!

Fourth rain spike arrived around 9am Aug 19. The Paria had only been that high twice since 2014.

    We didn't see that the gage had spiked at over 3000 cfs until after we finished the run (data reporting lag), we only knew the last report was 800+ and rising, but clearly it was going to be high. We weren't quite on the peak, but damn close and rode high water the whole way to the first serious rapids near the end of the narrows around mile 25.

    How high? I went back through my footage from the 2017 winter run to compare water lines to this 2021 summer run, and here are some sketches from roughly the same positions:

Entering the Narrows

2017

2021

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Slideblock Arch

2017

2021

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mid-Narrows rockfall rapid

2017

2021

        These are all relatively wide parts of the narrows, and in the short slot sections I'd guess our 2021 flood had water 8-10+ ft higher than our 2017 run. Even at extreme flows, I anticipated the low river gradient would produce little more than boils and seams - cobble bar riffles in the narrows could be run on the inside of corners and the rockfall only occurred in wide parts of the narrows so holes could be dodged. I'd read reports of successful hardshell descents around 500 cfs, so how different could 800+ be? Well, even given that we were actually riding >2000 cfs, I was mostly right. About 99.9% right. However, one of the roughly 3 slot sections (all 6-10 ft wide) featured an eddyless and narrowing run-in that started with mild laterals but delivered us straight into a set of crashing waves that was downright terrifying (starts at 1:00 in the video below). 

    In retrospect, it was fortunate that we couldn't stop to scout because there was no time get frightened or psyched out... we were just in it and had to execute. A wave hit my face and gopro at video minute mark 1:18 and obscured the view, but there were another few crashing waves followed by a boof off the side of a large submerged boulder into a relatively placid mudpool.

  Here's POV video of the run:

(Click for Video)

    The first overwhelming part of this experience, for me, was the smell. The river emits a heavy odor of wet earth that just penetrates everything; it felt like it was accumulating in my lungs. As we worked our way down the braided approach to the narrows, dodging active log jams, we got our first doses of mud/sand/water droplets. A single drop in the eye was somewhat crippling, and we both came to the conclusion that a swim, or even flip, or even a crashing wave to the face, could be catastrophic. 

    The water was so thick with sediment that it behaved and looked and felt different even compared to other desert floods I've paddled. The San Rafael or LCR at high flows were nothing compared to this, though the lack of foam here that the LCR featured is still curious to me. The combination of both mud and sand made it difficult to grip my paddle shaft - I took to dipping my hand in the river and immediately shaking the sand (not mud) off, then using my muddy hand to wipe the sand off the shaft. Otherwise I had too shaky of a grip. Awful. At every stop I would have to shovel handfuls of sand, foam, sticks, needles and juniper berries out of my cockpit.

    The somewhat predictable nature of the cobble bar rapids in the narrows became routine - strong boils off the walls were at worst meddlesome for our downriver progress. 

    One of the river-running problems at low flow in 2017 was that eddies were mostly filled in with sand so eddy hopping was not entirely easy. In 2021, eddies were much more workable in the vicinity of rapids.

    Working through the Paria narrows, the river cuts progressively deeper into the massive sandstones, exposing more easily erodible units underneath. This has caused the tall sandstone walls to retreat away from the river, but at the same time allows large blocks from the cliffs above to fall into the river channel. This, in combination with the higher gradient (~80ft/mi), forms a 4 mile long crux section of III/IV or IV/V rapids, depending on flow. 

    The first set of rapids we encountered, bedrock ledge plus giant boulder affairs, were mostly flooded out wave trains (!), but due to time spent scouting and portaging the water was quickly draining out. Fortunately, at the crux boulder gardens towards the end the water had already dropped by 3'. We still portaged about 5 rapids overall.

recent high water mark visible on left boulder

    Part of our plan involved not spending time to set shuttle at Lee's Ferry, so before our hike out over Dominguez pass back towards HWY 89 we spent the night. Meaning we had no spare water to clean gear or ourselves until the next day...

    Seven hours out of the canyon, over the pass and down towards the highway the next day.

    Would I do it again? Hell no! I mean, maybe...

    If you made it this far and still thirst for muck, check out MC's post from their winter run in 2019. Small flow for the narrows but similar flows in the lower rapids, and they used real cameras.

 

Skiing a 14er on the Animas-Vallecito Packraft Linkup (San Juan mountains)

    Skiing with a boat on my back at nearly 14,000' sure sounds like a gimmick, but it turns out our corner of southwest Colorado features an incredible high altitude travel route perched in-between two of the state's best whitewater runs.

Wilderness beauty in the upper reaches of Vallecito Creek, the exit paddle leg

  Carrying boats towards the 13,670' pass in the middle of a 35 mile long skiraft traverse

   The Rockies are inarguably the best region in the lower 48 for extended packraft trips. Best known is the Bob Marshall wilderness complex, which contains multiple contiguous watersheds mostly in the Class II-III range with relatively easy access. However, many other large wilderness areas with link-up options can be found in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and even New Mexico if you look hard enough.

    I still haven't hopped on Forrest McCarthy's River of Return route, but at the moment the (multi-river) linkup I'm most partial to is found in Colorado's Weminuche Wilderness. Some of the craggiest and most inaccessible peaks in the southern Rockies, the San Juan's Needle and Grenadier mountains, are carved from a granite pluton and folded quartzite, respectively. 

Jagged Peak (granite)

Trinity Peaks (quartzite)

    These subranges happen to sit astride two high quality high-country whitewater runs - the Upper Animas river and Vallecito creek. The adventure possibilities are obvious for hikers, climbers, hunters, skiers and paddlers alike. In early summer 2017 Dan and I linked the Animas and Vallecito together by way of a Grenadier traverse.

2017 Summer (foot+packraft) linkup

click for youtube video

    Since that gem of a trip went down I had been dreaming about the next step - a springtime version on skis. The individual conditions that could scuttle an attempt are numerous - either drainage running too high or low, insufficient or discontinuous snowpack, lack of corn cycle or lack of refreezing up high, dangerous avy conditions or storm... It seemed unlikely for all the elements to align perfectly. But when a forecast window appeared mid-spring our careful route choice exceeded expectations. There were points of uncertainty and brief distress, and they were the minor exceptions.

    In the end, three of us spent four days on the wildest adventure I've come up with so far, featuring consistent quality punctuated by a ski descent of the 14,059' Sunlight Peak and an exploratory packraft descent in the headwaters of Vallecito creek. We carried our packraft/paddling setups and full ski mountaineering setups (avy gear, crampons/axe) through the entire traverse.

Video highlights (this trip):

click for youtube video

Route Map:

Route, from top left to bottom right. 

Our three camps were tightly clustered by mileage but well spaced by daily effort

Upper Animas River

launch below Silverton

approaching Needle Creek trailhead, our leg 1 takeout

    The Upper Animas, a bread and butter full-day to multi-day run of midsummer southwest Colorado, is typically done from a dirt road put-in next to Silverton down to a short hike-out at Rockwood. It defines the western edge of the state's largest wilderness area, the Weminuche, and together with the Durango-Silverton coal powered train provides riverside trailhead access to some high-peaks zones, most popularly Needle Creek.

    With healthy medium flows, the relatively continuous gradient Upper Animas was approachable for Allen in a self-bailer Gnarwhal and Dan and I sporting two different prototype versions of the heavy but sleek white-water focused Valkyrie. Amidst a background character of class III, this river features a few stout, pushy class IV rapids (Ten Mile and No Name) with significant, difficult runouts. After a solid and gripping half day on the water we transitioned to packs and ascended our trail into the Needle mountains, camping below snowline.

    

The approach up Needle Creek:

early morning crusts didn't require a switch to skinning

Sunlight Peak summit and the 13,670' pass into Sunlight Basin:

leaving boats behind to tag Sunlight Peak

dropping in just below the unskiable summit

our tracks visible from the 13,670' pass (Windom Peak on the left)

High Camp (night 2) and the ski down to Vallecito Creek:

leaving high camp (night 2)

Foot travel for the last mile down to Vallecito Creek

    On reaching Vallecito creek we elected to hike up a few miles to check out some wonderful and seldom seen watercourse. Returning back to our original entry-point to the creek after some hours, we set our final camp. The next morning we carefully packed skis, boots, poles, avy gear, crampons and axes and camp setup into our boats, and pushed off.

Vallecito creek wilderness run:

tight gorges through the same Quartzite layer that composes 

the grand (but unvisited-on-this-trip) Grenadier range

    camp 3

Vallecito Creek opens up into granite boulder garden rapids with just a few short

bedrock gorges and rapids below our 3rd camp

        The very bottom of Vallecito creek is known as the best mile of creeking in Colorado among class V kayakers, but with relatively high flows for that gorge we elected to portage (it does get regularly run by packraft at low flow). However, the relatively unknown run above this gorge contains some absolutely brilliant scenery and a diverse set of mostly clean, high quality rapids over a 12 mile stretch. It sounds likely that a full descent of this creek section had not been made since the original kayak exploration around 1990. While not a first descent by us, this creek certainly deserves rediscovery by the paddling community and has now seen at least six packraft descents since I first wandered up in 2015.

    There are many precedents for wilderness routes involving multiple river courses, and for skiing and packrafting together. Luc Mehl's Logan traverse inspired me to start thinking about such things years ago when I got my first packraft. To our knowledge this Animas-Vallecito version is the first packraft route that features both significant and serious whitewater (IV) and ski mountaineering as a through-trip. A lot of groundwork was put in by Dan and I and others, over the course of years, before we felt comfortable attempting a route like this [wilderness exploration, skiraft proofs of concept]. I doubt skirafting will ever take off like bikerafting has due to the equipment and skillset requirements and smaller audience, but I believe some of our crew (and hopefully others) are ready to lay down some impressive routes in American west in the next few years by ski and packraft.

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 If you are still wondering where our skis are while paddling, it turns out you can fit full AT rigs inside your boat! Packing and loading them takes care and consideration to warrant a separate future post, but we easily fit 187cm skis inside a small Gnarwhal and my 188 slim pow skis can be loaded into a large Valkyrie.