The Dolores River last had boatable flow in 2019 and so was on many people's radar to try to run this snowmelt season. A tributary of the Colorado, it drains a curious corner of southwestern Colorado including outliers of the San Juans. It cuts through a V-shaped ponderosa pine lined valley at 6500 ft elevations and then ends in a steep-walled sandstone canyon with sweeping meanders down to 5000 ft elevation, an interesting mix of scraggily forest and plateau desert river. The Dolores' flow is controlled by McPhee Reservior, which in most years does not release boatable flows but ample snowmelt this year actually meant a long season. We worked hard to line up our work and family schedules to be able to string together enough time to [semi]justify the !24 hour! round trip of driving. We watched the ever-evolving flow schedule for weeks ahead of time. Surprisingly if anything the river was going to be too high and we saw lots of reports of flooded banks, too low bridges that might need to be portaged, and overgrown or missing campsites. Our original plan was to run the upper Ponderosa section (47 miles, Class III-IV) and the lower Slick Rock section (49 miles, Class II-III) back-to-back but the reports of challenging high flow whitewater conditions on Ponderosa (notably Snaggletooth Rapid) and the fact that we were only a team of two, reduced our ambitions to just the Slick Rock section. I did what planning I could and Heather arranged our car shuttle. The driving was predictably long but thankfully uneventful, making it through the Flagstaff gauntlet upright this time and finding a nice roadside campground halfway between Blanding and Monticello. In the morning we left the flanks of the Abajo Mountains and drove east through flat farmlands and then north into the deep trough of the Dolores River. There was not much to speak of at our Slick Rock put-in other than plenty of cars parked for the river and a few raft groups that managed early rigging starts. Overall not as busy as we thought it could be given the holiday weekend. We fairly efficiently organized our gear in the clifftop parking area and carried stuff down an iron staircase to the water's edge. We inflated, suited, and pushed off.
In almost no time at all we passed an old uranium mine on river right, a weird human-blasted stream piracy tunnel on river left and then an out-of-place tower house on river left as the canyon began to narrow and sandstone walls began to build. At 3000cfs we found the banks of the river to be completely submerged; there were essentially no eddies and getting out of the current was a very deliberate endeavor. We found the rapids to be mostly washed out at this flow but there was a surprising amount of boils and whirlpools. The water was near freezing in temperature, opaque from suspended sediment, and had a gritty quality that unpleasantly dried our hands. There was no complaining about our 5.5-6 miles per hour pace with next to no paddling!
After 10 river miles the canyon relented for the wide open Gypsum Valley. The river more lazily snaked its way through river flats here, some stands of large cottonwoods being the most notable features. We almost imperceptibly past the first named rapid, Gypsum Valley (II) and then a few boater opting for a Gypsum Valley put-in. We floated under a low bridge and then entered the run's main canyon at a sweeping right turn (I think I spotted some Paradox Formation exposed here?). We stopped briefly at Shaman Cave, a riverside alcove with a few nice pictographs including a prominent figure. Bull Canyon actually had a riffle. Virtually every named camp seemed to be occupied which we noted for later. Overhang Camp probably had the most impressive swooping alcove of the whole trip.
We stopped again at the Anderson Mesa archaeological site and had another mild riffle just after. I recognized The Notch, a place where the river has a three-leaf clover shaped series of bends where the river travels a circuitous 3.5 miles with a lateral distance of only 400ft! Here we passed The Grotto Camp, which looked to be tops but of course was occupied. After the backside of The Notch we drifted around one more horseshoe bend to where we spotted a shallow alcove we thought worth examining. Since we were only two people and every named camp so far had been taken it seemed to our advantage to find our own campsite. This one has spiny plants at the shore but other a nice patch of sand beneath an overhang with a nice view of the river so we called it camp, going 29 miles for the day. As we lounged in camp, two more groups passed us almost at dusk, undoubtedly others that gambled and failed to find an open campsite. Despite borderline wind I briefly flew my drone over the neck of our meander.
After a good night's sleep we awoke to daylight. As we readied to get on the water Heather noticed an unfortunate tear in her boat due to the spiny plants so we dedicated some time to patching it up.
We made good miles as the previous day. There was a few places I was considering stopping (Spring Canyon, Coyote Wash) but the lack of easy landings with all the overgrown shores deterred us and so we floated onward through more great canyon country scenery. Spring Canyon Rapid had a few splashy waves. The river had a few nice sections where we had to navigate around mid-river house sized boulders (notably Pirate's Cove) and we got a few good views of a prominent butte shaped like a ranger's hat.
We made one last stop past La Sal Creek to see hike up the river left bench to see several boulders coated in petroglyphs and a single upturned boulder with rather good dinosaur tracks imprinted into a rippled dune surface. A close contender for the highlight of this stop was a handsome collared lizard watching guard over the dino tracks.
The last few named rapids had no more bite than the previous ones. We made it to the takeout a little before 2pm and worked to quickly pack up so the we could work our way west and find some food. We stopped for a meal in Moab and drove on, fueled by a hopeful promise of a not-too-crowded Meadow Hot Springs. We arrived there around 9pm finding the place absolutely disgusting with people. Probably 50 cars parked haphazardly, the best hot springs filled with more than 50 people with two dueling speakers blaring music. It was highly disappointing and so we drove on bummed out. Near exhaustion managed to find a place to camp off the highway north of Cedar City. It was a pretty unpleasant way to end the nice start to the day but at least this driving push would place us well to get another river run in the next day. Overall the flows were great for a scenic mild float down this rarely running river.
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