Kayaking the Lower Salt River

This morning, I met up with a the Desert Mountain Paddlers for a float down the Lower Salt River.
I split from my house a few before 6:00 am and cruised over to the Lower Salt River along the Bush Highway. I got to the meetup spot (Lot #1) before 7:00, and I quickly unloaded my boat, and then we shuttled some cars down to the Phon D Sutton Rec Area down river.

I didn’t look at my watch, at the official launch time, but I bet is musta been around 7:45 when we hit the water.
We had 21 people in our group, and there were two or three other groups launching about the same time. Believe me, this time of year it gets pretty crazy with all the tubers floating the river, but luckily we were off the river before the party animal crowd showed up.
This was my first time down this bad boy, and it I gotta say it was pretty fun. There are a few class 2 rapids, and the south side of the island (left channel) about 10 before the bridge really had a nice series of rapids. Nothing to hairy, but just fun fast stuff. The river was flowing a little under 1,500 cfs (Lower Salt – Below Stewart Dam).

It looks like they started releasing water down the river around the first week of May this year. Any cow, it was flowing good.

I’ve been working on my roll. It isn’t bomber yet, but I was successfully pulled out of all three of the rolls I attempted today. Woot! It also felt good to cool off without getting outta my boat. BTW, it was a perfect temp day. Probably about 85 or 90 when we finished up.

Again, I was so jazzed by this float down the river, that I forgot to check the time of when we pulled out of Phon D Sutton, but it musta been about 10:45. Not bad considering how big of group we had. I got home around 12:30, not bad for such a fun adventure so close to home.



Here is a vid of the day: