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canyoneer
Member
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Posted: Jun 10, 2013 Post Subject: Upper Cherry Creek flow estimates and logistics questions
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| Does anyone know a source of reliable or semi or unreliable info on Upper Cherry Flows..??
Am planning a trip there and trying to understand safety concerns and such for a big group of us who plan to canyoneer (no kayaks) the route from Styx pass entry to the lake.
We're considering mid July and I'm imagining the low runoff this year may allow for that.
Who has the low down?
Thinking also of a boat shuttle exit from the lake and have that via a boat guy in Groveland for a hundred bucks a head or so. Any better ideas on that? swim? dirt road access near there? heli? ha.
Did this once before and the canyon is so incredibly beautiful, I'm planning to take my wife and a few buddies. Leave no trace....exit hike to the Kibbie trailhead last time was NOT a highlight..hence...any help is much appreciated...David Reid, Berkeley CA
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chris
Site Admin
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| Answering the first question only: I don't believe there's any physical gauge on Upper Cherry. Dreamflows computes the inflow to Cherry Lake, which involves four realtime gauges plus a computation of reservoir flow-through based on storage change ... there are too many variables for comfort in all that, so the best we can hope for is a pretty good indicator of trends, and a semi-reliable computation of average inflow to Cherry Lake. Look at the Daily or Realtime flow reports for a link to the graph. The flow site is called "Cherry Creek - Above Cherry Lake".
A couple things to note.
The first thing is that the computation is actually inflow to Cherry Lake (aka Lake Lloyd), not just flow on Cherry Creek. Though, for our purposes they should be the same. Also, almost all of the famous "Upper Cherry" run is on the East Fork of Cherry Creek, which I'm told is only about 40% to 60% of the total that Dreamflows reports.
The second is that during snowmelt the flow cycles impressively, with the peak around 1am, and the minimum flow at about 6pm. Dreamflows computes/reports the noon-to-noon average flow, however you'll be observing flow at a specific time of day. So, even if the Dreamflows computation were totally accurate, you would still very likely see a different instantaneous flow than the average that Dreamflows calculates.
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