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Anyone interested in a day trip down the Salt River with a shuttle back. PM me if so. This is a class III portion.

You talking kayaks, rubber duckies, or raft?

whatever you got!

Hey, what I got is a major daydream at this point. I have a hardshell whitewater boat, but I don't dare use it on the upper Salt without some major lessons! However, I could do an inflatable, if there was one available, and have hopes of doing one of those trips this spring, but I may not be able to afford to leave town, to tell you the truth. I am really broke after just having moved back to Eagar from Yuma. I did contact "raft the salt dot com" regarding the inflatable trips they run after the river goes below 1,000. They have me on their list and will call me when they have the trip set up. (They run really fun rafting trips daily but not inflatable kayak trips--you have to make arrangements for the kayak trip.) Right now today the river has gone down from above 2,000 a few days ago, to 1200. That is because the weather up here on the mountain has gotten cold again, so the snow isn't melting off as fast. The river will come up again later, I'm sure. I would love to do that commercial trip because they provide everything: shuttle, inflatable boat, lessons (including falling into the river and getting back into the boat, plus how to read the rapids, etc.), wetsuit, booties, helmet, PFD and lunch. But it's $177 and I can't afford it right now. I can't even afford gas to go skiing 25 miles from here. Sad, huh? I am starting a new job, though...

Speaking of the Salt, is the SRP still releasing a clear, non-alcoholic liquid from the Roosevelt Dam? Is the Salt river flowing through Phoenix, the Gila Bend area, and beyond?

jhodlof wrote:Speaking of the Salt, is the SRP still releasing a clear, non-alcoholic liquid from the Roosevelt Dam? Is the Salt river flowing through Phoenix, the Gila Bend area, and beyond?

Google SRP Daily Water Report. Their website shows the daily inflow and outflow from each of the lakes on both the Salt and Verde rivers.
As for your question ... yes they are still releasing water, and its still flowing through Tempe, though its a fairly paltry 1700cfs. I've read that they expect to continue to release water for another month or so, longer if spring storms add to the upstream drainage basin.

So while they are releasing water, it isn't doing much through the valley or beyond. Well, it is still better than nothing.
Since flowing water in this state is almost as novel as a scenic vista back east, I would request some pictures of the Salt Flowing in various places down stream of the dam. Much like the snow pictures.

jhodlof wrote:I would request some pictures of the Salt Flowing

Thanks for the idea. Its about 75 today, and I found an excuse to run an errand and enjoyed a quick little bike-ride. Only had my phone with me, so the picture quality is embarrassingly awful :yuck: . (Sorry). But here's the flow downstream of Tempe Town Lake/Sewer. (There is definitely not any clear liquid flowing as you questioned!)

I should also revise my earlier comment about 1700cfs. Thats the release from Stewart Mtn Dam (Saguaro Lake). Some of that heads into the canals at the Granite Reef diversion dam, while apparently more of it evaporates and is absorbed into the ground along the way. Apparently its only running around 600cfs by the time it gets through Tempe.

So is the Salt actually reaching the Gila right now, and flowing into it?

Interestingly the Gila does flow way down in Yuma where I spent 4 months this winter. I actually went kayaking on the Gila near its confluence with the Colorado, about 3 miles from downtown Yuma. It was pretty shallow, so after running into quite a few sandbars, we turned the boat around and floated to the Colorado River, and paddled upstream on it. The Colorado runs about 400-600 cfs in that section. We have a tandem recreational kayak, the kind with a big open cockpit. (This is not the same boat I mentioned earlier.) Anyway, we sure had a lot of fun with that boat--once we got the hang of it. We had to laugh when we heard the term "divorce boat" as applied to tandem kayaks! And I never realized I would enjoy flatwater kayaking so much, but I still do want to get into doing whitewater as well. Money is very tight right now, though. I don't even have gas money right now.

We found another spot on the Gila River near Roll, AZ, that was very deep--I am sure that just like the section near the confluence they are running irrigation water in the riverbed. Anyway, it was just before we came home, so we never did take our boat to that area. But it was a lot deeper than the section we had kayaked before. We couldn't tell how long the section was, but it was in amongst the farms off of Mohawk Valley Road. You can only find this place with the Arizona Atlas.

One nice thing about boating on the Colorado below Laguna Dam is that you are likely to have the whole place to yourself. You may see a few fisherman, but not many.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/recreatio ... verMap.pdf
Interesting map of the upper Salt River.....

That is a cool map, someone posted it somewhere else on here a couple weeks ago. Incidentally, there is still a little room on the commercial rafting trip I have set up. For whatever reason, about 25 people have signed up for it, about half of them I don't even know, but not HAZers--mostly from TRACKS-Pinetop hiking club and ABC meetup group. The rafting co said they have plenty of rafts--we are now into the 4th raft:
http://www.hikearizona.com/dex2/viewtopic.php?t=4837