BoaterBeta reports real-time streamflows for whitewater rivers
We got flows, and not much else
BoaterBetaCO brings you the most-recent streamflow information for the state's classic paddling runs. Current boating information, without any extra bells and whistles. If a gauge exists on a popular run, we can report it here.
If you're looking for comprehensive run descriptions, follow-the-blue-dot directions to the put-in, the best nearby tapas and craft cocktail joint, and easy-access #vanlife campsites with good enough Starlink Reception to make some crypto-trades and Zoom calls back to your tech-bro job main office between laps, we love that for you.
But in all seriousness, there are plenty of other apps for that kind of thing already: American Whitewater and Dreamflows are great places to start. Mountainbuzz is another great place to go when you need to query the paddler hivemind archives for deep beta on runs, flows, equipment, accidents, and how to be a better person.
Interpreting the flow table colors, run difficulties, and access
Run status colors are based on personal opinion or recommendations from commonly accessible guidebooks or online sources. The categories are:
- Too Low/Not recommended Although maybe you are an ELF-er or ULF-er and nothing is ever too low. Love that for you.
- Running The run is in by most opinions or guides, if no 'optimal flow' is known, this covers from the low cutoff to the high cutoff.
- Optimal Optimal describes a narrower range of flows than just 'running'... the 'sweet spot' (if one is identified on a run).
- Running High High end of recommended, consider the potential for big swims and lost equipment in your group?
- Very High Probably too high, but some people are really, really good, and others are really, really stupid.
Difficulty Ratings follow the International Scale of Difficulty and are based on personal opinion, community consensus, and commonly available guidebooks or online forums. They are no substitute for realistically assessing your own skill and scouting and assessing rapids on-site. Most runs have a general run character rating, and may have an additional rating in parenthesis of one or outlier rapids. P stands means there might be a portage. Remember that difficulties may change over time (channels and rocks move), and may change at different water levels.
Difficulty ratings are generally crowd-sourced, hive-mind sorts of classifications. In the end, they are entirely subjective and you need to base your own decisions from real-world assessment and experience, not a website or a book.
Access Points (Put ins and Take outs) are generalized locations. Its up to you to do your homework to understand what is a legal access point and what is private property. If you don't know how to figure that out from other sources, that probably isn't the run for you quite yet.
How to use the site
There are three parts to this site:
- Flows Home Page - The main flows table is organized by river basin. Here you can find the latest gauge reading, as well as link to more-detailed flow history information on the detail page for the run. To see recent flow trends for a run, click on the '7-day' pop-up hydrograph. To take a deeper dive, click on the 'Full history' plot and head to the Detail pages. This system relies on automated webservices from the USGS and CDWR on the backend (your taxes do important things!), if a flow isn't available, chances are the gauge or webservice is temporarily down or not reporting, check back later. Some gauges are only seasonally operated in the state, so you may not see data if you are a looking outside the late-spring/early-fall window. Some gauges run all year, but may be affected by ice or other issues in which case the data stream temporarily halts. Go look at the stick?
- Run Detail Pages - Find more in-depth information about flows for an individual run here. Data products include a 7-day trends plot, a Percentile Plot that shows the full range of observed flows for a given date as well as comparisons between this year, past years in the flow record, and various statistical benchmarks. If you're traveling to a new river and you want to know the most probable dates of hitting a certain flow range, this is your jelly. If you're wondering how this year's runoff might play out by comparing to similar years in the past, this is the place to do it. If you're tired of listening to the old-timers say this year is the highest/lowest/longest whatever they've ever seen; this is your page.
- Community Pages - Colorado has a vibrant and busy paddling community. I will try to keep a calendar of upcoming events including festivals, races, roll-clinics, and other paddling-adjacent content going here. I also hope to compile a decent-ish resource list of outfitters, gear shops, boating and river advocacy groups, land manager contacts, and other relevant paddling community content. Caveat: this isn't my full time job, and I may not always be able devote time to this.
Eat your boater vegetables annually
Speaking of American Whitewater, have you paid your membership dues this year (or ever)?
AW is the primary organization working locally and nationally to protect and expand access to the whitewater runs you love. Don't take clean, publicly-accessible, dam-free rivers for granted. The rivers and access we enjoy today directly result from the work of giants in the paddling and conservation community who have gone to bat for rivers since the 1970s. Its the least, laziest, minimum-est thing you can do each year to be a good citizen in the whitewater world. It may even finally make your dad proud of you. Too poor to afford dues you say? That new piece of plastic you're paddling and the bar tab you dropped on new-release fruity craft IPAs and the overpriced Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich at >Insert Local Brewery Name Here< says otherwise, mi amigo. Be a real (wo)man, Join AW today!
I want to make my dad(s) proud and join AW
Stream Gauging Under Fire
Did you know it takes about $20,000 or so to install a new gauge? Did you know it takes another $20-30K to operate one annually? Stream gauging is expensive, requiring repeated field visits to keep ratings curves calibrated, and lots of back end data management. USGS and CDWR stream gauges are funded by a combination of government and local groups, using formulas that take into account the value of a gauge's location to water resource management at the local, state, and a national level. Gauge data serves a lot of different data needs, some are national priorities, some are more local.
The gauge on the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry that is used to operate the Colorado River Compact that divides all the river between the 40 million people of the 7 upper and lower basin states? That's an important gauge that gets fully funded by the feds.
The gauge on your local backyard whitewater run at the headwaters of some tributary? Not so much.
In Colorado, local gauges are usually co-funded by water provider districts or municipal and county governments and may receive only small funding match from the state and the feds. As it so happens, the federal pool of money used for this (USGS Cooperative Matching Funds) has been frozen at a static level for quite some time due to the ongoing dysfunctional nature of our US Congress. We might also suggest that this static level of funding for a vital national program is more than a little due to the irrational ideological beliefs of a subset of one particular party (cough cough, ahem) that government isn't a useful and reasonable tool to accomplish together what is too large or too difficult to accomplish on our own.
At any rate, as personnel costs at USGS and local cooperators like the Colorado River District go up each year, but Cooperator Funds remain static, something has to give. That matching federal money that funded 30% of the gauge cost a few years ago may now only add up to 20% or less of the cost to run the site. This means that many long time stream gauging locations are on the chopping block. Is it a bummer that you won't have the data stream for boating? Yep. But more importantly, we are losing valuable monitoring locations for agile management of the state's dwindling water resources for agriculture, drinking water, and ecosystem functions. We are also losing some of the most valuable sentinel locations for monitoring and managing continuing climate change issues in our region.
Does this seem like a negative trend? Yep, you betcha. What can you do about it? Send your thoughts to our state congressional delegation, who ultimately hold the purse strings for the Department of Interior and the USGS. Let them know that the slow diminishing of USGS Cooperative Matching Funds has real and negative effects on local communities and water management in our state, and that its time to bring up funding levels to match annual cost increases.
Let your representatives know that:
- Stream gauging is really important to local communities, economies, and environments
- Congress needs to keep funding USGS streamgauging at sustainable long term levels
- Cooperator Matching Funds have been static (and therefore declining) for too long; Congress needs to increase CMFs to realistically keep up with increasing annual costs and inflation.
Contact links for Colorado's US Senators and Representatives
About the creator
I live in the bustling metropolis of Minturn, Colorado; a town slowly working hard to become another empty second-homeowner development serving the needs of Vail and Beaver Creek. We've got the mighty Eagle River for our town run. While it isn't all that amazing of a whitewater run, it sure is right there by the house and we can shuttle it by biking or jogging. My full-time gig is working for a environmental science services firm helping people involved in water management across the West Slope. This project is something I've been working on for awhile to help serve up simple flow data to the boating community without all the bloat and fluff that seems to be inherent with current recreation apps.
Contact
If you'd like to submit information on a run, get an event on the community calendar, or chat about ideas or bugs on this website, please use this contact form. I will delete emails regarding this website that show up to my work or personal email addresses, so please don't try to reach me at those even if you know them.