Canoe Camping

[NJSurfCowboy]

so I go to ASU and a buddy and I were thinking of doing a canoe camping trip an a few weeks with some girls we know.

Anyone know of a good river to do this on. We were thinking of setting out saturday morning, canoe until maybe 4 or 5 with obvious stops along the way for scenery and lunch and such. then camp saturday night and canoe a little sunday morning

any insight on this would be great because although ive canoed a lot in my life, ive never done it in arizona so i have no idea where to go.

Thanks
Keith

[pitch]

I'd suggest looking into the Verde River, up north of the Valley. Starting and ending points would of course depend on how long you would like to be out. Surprisingly, the flow of the river is pretty strong right now.

I am sure that some others may have more to chime in.

[Oc1paddler]

The Verde is a great run and can easily acomodate your schedule. Ive run it from somewhere in the neighborhood of 120cfs all the way up to well over 30,000 cfs. PM me if you would like more beta on put ins and take outs.

[westy]

Verde River info -

http://southwestpaddler.com/docs/verde.html

[NJSurfCowboy]

hey thanks a lot guys, i think we are gonna do the verde

westy: i saw that website last night while searching around....its a great source of info

with the inexperienced girls we are bringing i think we are going to do the horseshoe dam to barlett dam section. my buddy and i would love to do more rapids but we dont want to scare the girls TOO much haha

Oc1paddler: have u done the dam to dam route....it says its about 19 miles....good for 2 days of canoeing with camping in between?

thanks
Keith

[Oc1paddler]

Yes Ive done the dam to dam run once a long time ago. Iam usually looking for a little more gradient than that run has to offer. It should work fine for your intended purpose. 19 mile is perfect for a two day trip especially if you don't want to spend a huge amount of time on the water. It makes it so that you can sleep in and still be off before its to late on Sun. Make sure that you tie all your gear down so that you don't lose anything if you happen to tip! A great trip can get miserable really quick when you dinner washes away.

[NJSurfCowboy]

haha thanks....definately done that before....you end up pretty hungry towards the end of the trip......thanks for all the advice.....ill post pictures after the trip

[NJSurfCowboy]

well we went to scout out the river today and we found that the road to horseshoe dam is closed.....hmmmm now we need to figure out what other part of the river we are going to go on.....


any suggestions?

Thanks
Keith

[Oc1paddler]

Keith,
You could go from Camp Verde go Childs! The will be a couple of rapids you will probably want to portage but the rest should be great. Plus you get the bonus of the hot spring right above Childs. There are some killer camping spots and some pretty good small mouth bass fishing as well. Your other options would be the Upper salt from horseshoe down to Roosevelt. This is a really nice run with some great camping spots as well as some great scenery. The road to the put in is a little rough but since your asking on the jeep club and not the paddling club I don't think that you will have much of a problem. If you need more information on either of these runs let me know, as I have done them both dozens of times.