By Mat Bozek
I’ve done the Gunnison River 15 times or so, and it is always a good trip. This trip was a 9.98 on the one to ten scale, with only 6” of mud to deal with at the landings to take away from a perfect 10. Weather was perfect, no bugs bothering us, hardly any wind, and we didn’t see anyone on the river at all except for one camp we passed with 2 rafts parked there. At camp, we did a nice short hike to look at 8 Bighorn rams, and saw a Golden Eagle cruising the flats below us. A tom turkey was gobbling downstream from camp, and I heard a hen yelping upstream on Sunday morning. Temp was a chilly 40 to 45 degrees in the morning
This trip, there were just 4 of us – Jeff, James and Liz, and myself; two solo boats and one tandem, and we all paddled together in a nice small group, often side by side. Paddling at a moderate pace, we made it the 12 miles to Dominguez Canyon in 2 hours, or maybe a bit less. There were lots of hikers and backpackers there, maybe saw 20 people walking by. After a half hour or so lunch break, we made the next six miles to camp in one hour. Sunday left us with 8.5 miles, and we did that in 1 hr, 23 minutes, taking out a 9:45 so we would have an easy drive home; but rockfall in the section of I-70 between DeBeque and Palisade had I-70 eastbound closed at the Colbran exit, with a long slow detour around to the Debeque exit adding some variety to the drive home.
The gauge I use for Gunnison is the one at Delta. I was monitoring it for a while before the trip and got concerned when the flow hit 7000 cfs on the Tuesday before the trip, thinking I would have to cancel if it kept rising. But it trended down to 4000 cfs on Friday, which was a great level for us. (the only other gauge to look at is at Grand Junction – it hit about 10,500 cfs on that Tuesday and was at 5000 cfs for our trip – only Escalante Cr and Dominguez creek feed into the Gunny above GJ – Escalante Cr can “flush” and really put a lot of water into the Gunny). I scouted both of the take out options – The highway 141 bridge take out was really muddy and not very good at this level, so I shortened the planned trip to take out at the BLM take out instead, 26.5 miles. We arranged to park our vehicles at the Lazy S Arrow motel, which I have used many times ($10/vehicle/night). It was very evident that the river had dropped a good 3 feet since the high point, leaving a layer of mud sediment about 6” deep at every landing.
At this 4000 cfs level, both of the CII rapids were quite easy, and so was the go-around at the diversion dam. They were all much easier than they are at the usually much lower levels that I have had in past trips. Rocks were all under water, and no need to dodge any.
Executive Summary: It was great!
Mat