First Field Work

Here are the conditions for the first day of field work on the guide project. The water is very low--84 cfs at Verde-Clarkdale. The mean for this day is 251 and the 1967 lowest all time flow on this date was 74 cfs.

Temperatures are expected to peak in the mid-60's under mostly sunny skies and calm conditions.

We plan to paddle from the VRG Bridgeport RAP on river right upstream from the Hwy 89A bridge to either the Forest Service Black Canyon or Bignotti RAP. We will scout the Bignotti road first to make sure it is suitable for a normal clearance vehicle today.

The plan will be to meet Joshua Wheeler at the Wal-Mart parking lot in late morning, perhaps around 11 am. Susun McCulla will be the shuttle driver and will remain in cell phone contact nearby during the trip.

Electronic gear carried will be: a Garmin 60Csx GPS, a Garmin Etrex GPS, a Samsung Digimax S500 digital camera, and RCA VR5320R digital voice recorder and a T-Mobile cell phone.

Our prior field experiences in river guide data collection has shown written notes to be ineffective. Therefore, no writing materials will be carried. All field notes will be taken by the digital voice recorder and uploaded as MP3 files to the computer.