Anyone paddled the Gila river in NM?

[Alan Gage]

Within a week I should be closing on a property on the south edge of the Gila national forest east of Silver City, NM.

Looks like there is some decent paddling along the Gila river although the window to run it sounds pretty narrow and flow dependent. I've read a few trip reports from whitewater kayakers and I'm wondering how amenable it is to canoes? How technical are the rapids? Would you run it in something along the lines of a Wildfire?

Any other good paddling destinations I should know of in the area? Paddling around Gila Box near Safford, AZ has always intrigued me.

Alan

 

[dogbrain]

Alan, I have only hiked along the section from Sapillo Creek to the bridge at Gila Hot Springs while on the CDT in 2007. This is roughly 18 trail miles, maybe 20+ river miles. Here are a few pictures so you can see what it looked like. I would definitely have paddled this section. We must have crossed the stream 30 times, but my memory is that the fords weren't too shallow. I looked up the dates and discharge was 110 to 120 cfs in the first week of May at the Gila, NM gaging station, which is upstream from some or most of the diversions. I don't remember much in terms of rapids, but I wasn't paddling the river either. The Gila tends to get flooded with some frequency, so woody debris could be an issue. Hope this helps. Mark


Bridge downstream of Gila Hot Springs



Somewhere midway between the last picture and Sapillo Creek



Down near Sapillo Creek

 

[DougK]

once, in April 1992.. from the visitor center down about six miles, in an OT Discovery 158, which tells you it wasn't too hard..
river was high and cold, a few strainers but not river-wide.
our backpack into the Gila Wilderness got rerouted after we'd spent two hours going a mile with four river crossings, cold and deep and scary.. the loop became an out-and-back. But we did find a wild hot spring, so that was ok in the end.

American Whitewater shows a number of sections as paddle-able, though several of them have no descriptions.
eg with description,

National Whitewater Inventory | American Whitewater

American Whitewater’s crowdsourced guide to 6000+ whitewater runs with gauges, maps, photos, rapids, trip reports, flow info, and more.

www.americanwhitewater.org

class III, I'd prefer a more ww-boat than the Wildfire for that.

New Mexico Whitewater: A Guide to River Trips, published by NM State Parks in 1983, seems to be the definitive guide, but long out of print..
see,

https://www.mountainbuzz.com/threads/new-mexico-whitewater-1983.103203/

which has a link to a download of a scanned pdf of the book..
In the book the section we ran is Gila River (A). I wouldn't have described it as 'suburban' tho.. not wilderness, still a pleasant float.

let me know if you plan a trip, would be happy to join. I'm retired now woohoo and can go gallivanting..

 

[Alan Gage]

let me know if you plan a trip, would be happy to join. I'm retired now woohoo and can go gallivanting..

Thanks for the info and I will keep that offer in mind. It almost certainly won't happen this year unless it turns into a really wet year and it's runnable later this summer/fall. I close on the house today and will drive down a car load of "stuff" in about a month for a 1 1/2 week visit but that will mostly be spent working on the house and property. I'm thinking I'll drag a canoe along to leave down there so it will be ready whenever I am. I'm excited about new places to explore!

Alan

 

[Alan Gage]

In the book the section we ran is Gila River (A). I wouldn't have described it as 'suburban' tho.. not wilderness, still a pleasant float.

I looked up the link you provided and that section looks like an easy one to do solo. A bike shuttle would be simple enough.

Alan