Fossil Creek deathmarch 2-28-2009

I met Josh and Donnie in Arizona on the last weekend in February. Early in the week, flows had looked promising but dropped fast as soon as we showed up. After getting very skunked on the Upper Tonto and East Verde, we headed to Fossil Creek. We figured with the little bit of extra runnoff, we could try to do Upper Fossil plus the regular section. This section needs more water than the regular run, requires a four mile hike in, and is not done very often.

First, we hiked.


Then we reached an idyllic put-in with maybe 70-80 cfs of cold water.



We bumped our ways downstream, and we were really excited when we saw this- the springs- more water!



The Upper Section was still too low to be good. We pushed our way over shallow travertine ledges and logs for the next 4 miles. We portaged 5 times including the dam, which is in the process of being removed, and is not currently runnable.



Finally, we got the the "classic section", which was fun with the estimated 100-150 cfs in the creek. I could see it being pretty boring with the base flow, and great with more water.

20 footer



clean ledges





Fun powerhouse drop.



I won't be doing the Upper Fossil Creek run again. It would be better with more water but still not worth it because the pain-free classic section downstream would be great. The Upper Section would be terrifying at really high flows because of the massive amount of wood in the creek. The lower section is a good fallback if (when) you get skunked on other nearby runs. The current "closure" does not really seem to be enforced on weekends, but don't quote me on that.