# 20K CFS on the Dirty Devil



## zbaird (Oct 11, 2003)

Got to the cat takeout one fall and the devil looked like it was being used as a logging transport river. A steady flow of trees gushing out of the mouth and bouncing around in the eddy. We had to fight with them to get the boats out at North wash. It was during the floods that washed out boulder/ Lyons/ etc. We saw X and Y flash while we were camped on the right below 9. Don't remember how much it came up on us but it was a bunch. I think the devel had come up above 10k. Lotsa water in that lil bed.


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## Blade&Shaft (May 23, 2009)

Amazing. I did the DD last spring at around 200cfs and during our five day suffer fest we often wondered what it would be like with super high flows. We could see log jams and debris piles high up from previous floods but it was hard to imagine that river corridor (more like a stream) facilitating that kind of water.


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## zbaird (Oct 11, 2003)

Driving out of there, as you know you get a few views of the Devil. Every time we saw it, it was completely unfloatable. Just a huge moving logjam.


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## Blade&Shaft (May 23, 2009)

Wow. Guessing thats all from rain? That’s incredible.


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## Bootboy (Aug 25, 2020)

I’ve been watching it today. The highest hourly reading I saw was 13,200.

For historical perspective - In October of 2006 there was a storm that is regarded by some as a 1,000 year event that went through southern Utah and dropped several inches of rain in a matter of hours. The Escalante was estimated to have risen to as high as 80,000 cfs at lake Powell, very briefly. The whole river corridor was wall to wall up to 10’ deep at fence canyon. 

That same cell moved East and dumped even more water over the Fremont and Muddy creek. The dirty devil swelled to over 35,000 cfs at the poison springs gauge. 

Lake Powell rose 6’ in 5 days. During the peak of the flood, lake Powell rose 36” in less than 48 hours. During a time of year that sees relatively static to slightly decreasing water level. At that lake level and the corresponding outflow, that means there would have had to be over 100,000 cfs flowing into the reservoir at peak flow. That’s only happened on 3 (pretty sure) of the biggest runoff years since the dam’s construction. 

While the current flood situation is indeed impressive, it is not even close to record breaking. It’s the fifth highest recorded annual peak flow since the gauge was built in 1948.

I have some friends that floated the DD at about 2,500 a couple years ago. They averaged just over 12mph at those flows. They were watching the radar based on the forecast and got into position in case it popped off. They got lucky and when they saw the flash pass near angel cove, they hopped in their Alpackas right behind it. Made it to Hite in a couple hours.

I so badly wish I was down there today to ride that flow. Sigh.


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## Bootboy (Aug 25, 2020)

zbaird said:


> Got to the cat takeout one fall and the devil looked like it was being used as a logging transport river. A steady flow of trees gushing out of the mouth and bouncing around in the eddy. We had to fight with them to get the boats out at North wash. It was during the floods that washed out boulder/ Lyons/ etc. We saw X and Y flash while we were camped on the right below 9. Don't remember how much it came up on us but it was a bunch. I think the devel had come up above 10k. Lotsa water in that lil bed.


What year was that?


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## sporkfromork (Dec 16, 2020)

Dang!!! At least something is actually running still


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## Blade&Shaft (May 23, 2009)

That sounds like a potentially deadly adventure. I could see lethal strainers forming with the many blind corners that are in the inner portion of the canyon.


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## Bootboy (Aug 25, 2020)

Blade&Shaft said:


> That sounds like a potentially deadly adventure. I could see lethal strainers forming with the many blind corners that are in the inner portion of the canyon.


The river is pretty broad down there and there isn’t much to constrict the flow or catch debris and cause log jams. There would be much less wood at a moderate flood level because it happens more often and keeps the debris cleaned out. Like Zbaird’s observation, I’m sure at 13,000 there is so much more wood because of the infrequency of those levels that it accumulates for so much longer. I’d definitely wait for a few hours after the initial front had past.


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## Bootboy (Aug 25, 2020)

The Escalante just peaked at 1600, dropping now.

A few weeks ago it hit 3600. Likely much more by the time it hit the lake because of all the slick rock in the drainage below the gauge (~80 river miles). That is, if any rain fell in even modest quantities in that area.


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## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

upacreek said:


> Anybody ever seen this kind of flow on the Dirty D? Craaaazy......a near 10,000X fold jump in flows. Sounds like there's a lot of road damage around Hanksville, and even the Escalante just saw a massive flood event.
> 
> View attachment 69762


This is why they plot hydrographs on semi-log scale. The flow went from about 0.2 cfs to about 15,000 cfs. That's a 75,000 X increase.


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## Bootboy (Aug 25, 2020)

Paria two weeks ago at 2,000-2,500.






40 miles in 9 hours. A couple portages.

I floated it in March 2019 at 200-900cfs and it was an overnighter.

Mostly class II-III on day one with a couple miles of class IV boating with potentially deadly boulder strainers to portage.


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## Blade&Shaft (May 23, 2009)

What a filthy mess. Badass


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## upacreek (Mar 17, 2021)

Andy H. said:


> This is why they plot hydrographs on semi-log scale. The flow went from about 0.2 cfs to about 15,000 cfs. That's a 75,000 X increase.


_why_ they plot hydrographs in semi-log space is because they tend to obey a power-law scaling relationship. Gauge rating curves (stage height-discharge) are derived from this, though I suspect they don't hold up well at extreme flows and empirical relationships give way to the chaos of debris through kinematic waves. But of course with some high water marks and a couple transects, you can back out high flows later via some pretty cool math.


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## tBatt (May 18, 2020)

Bootboy said:


> The river is pretty broad down there and there isn’t much to constrict the flow or catch debris and cause log jams. There would be much less wood at a moderate flood level because it happens more often and keeps the debris cleaned out. Like Zbaird’s observation, I’m sure at 13,000 there is so much more wood because of the infrequency of those levels that it accumulates for so much longer. I’d definitely wait for a few hours after the initial front had past.


Isn't the most wood accumulated just after peak?


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## Blade&Shaft (May 23, 2009)

upacreek said:


> _why_ they plot hydrographs in semi-log space is because they tend to obey a power-law scaling relationship. Gauge rating curves (stage height-discharge) are derived from this, though I suspect they don't hold up well at extreme flows and empirical relationships give way to the chaos of debris through kinematic waves. But of course with some high water marks and a couple transects, you can back out high flows later via some pretty cool math.


Huh?


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## mikesee (Aug 4, 2012)

We caught a peak just under 5k cfs on the Dirty D 3 falls ago. Messy and sloppy with silt and sticks and juniper berries, but no real wood moving.

Had been eyeballing the Dirty D for yesterday's event, but with a ~12 hour drive on tap (each way) the precip wasn't looking targeted enough to commit ~24 hours before.

In other words, we failed...


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## zbaird (Oct 11, 2003)

Fall 2013


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## D__G (Aug 15, 2019)

(Bootboy - slot canyon) Wow - that looks crazy. That would be funny if you got off the river and walked straight into a nearby cafe in your river clothes after that one.


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## Scott67 (Mar 4, 2021)

upacreek said:


> Anybody ever seen this kind of flow on the Dirty D? Craaaazy......a near 10,000X fold jump in flows. Sounds like there's a lot of road damage around Hanksville, and even the Escalante just saw a massive flood event.
> 
> View attachment 69762


A couple weeks ago we had a crazy trip down Cat with torrential rains, winds, and rockfall. Thought we were out of the woods but at the bridge we could hear the roar of the DD ahead...and had to land our rafts at the take-out, which had turned into a class III rapid with tons of debris. Probably the sketchiest thing I've had to do in a boat so far this year.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

Bootboy said:


> Paria two weeks ago at 2,000-2,500.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


that's incredible. What did the water feel like? Looks like it had to be about 2x the density of clear water, haha (ok, maybe not quite. concrete is 2.5x the density of clear water)


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