A pair of debris flows has left the Upper Colorado River unsafe and unnavigable at the Red Dirt Bridge, between Pinball and Horse Creek, according to a warning posted by the Upper Colorado River Private Boaters Association.
The post, written by longtime guide Jack Bombardier, owner of Confluence Casting on the Colorado River Road in Eagle County, attributed the damage to a short but intense rainstorm that sent two significant debris flows into the river. The first was a major blowout at Jack Flats that Bombardier said put a tremendous amount of woody debris into the channel. The second hit at Red Dirt, where that wood combined with additional flows out of the Posey Creek drainage.
Those high flows carried off a bridge spanning the creek, and Bombardier said the structure is now blocking most of the right channel. Two ATVs were on the bridge when it washed into the middle of the river. One is still strapped to the bridge and upside down in the water, according to his account. The other, he wrote, is upright, dry and ready to roll.
The Red Dirt Creek bridge was no small structure. When it went in roughly a decade ago, boaters posting to the whitewater forum Mountain Buzz described the replacement as a considerable improvement over the bridge it succeeded, with fresh rock armoring on both banks and a main channel that ran center to right.
The report comes during a week of monsoon flooding across western Colorado. The National Weather Service said moisture surged into the state from Arizona and Utah, with parts of the Western Slope facing rainfall rates as high as 2 inches per hour Monday afternoon and the most active storms expected Wednesday and Thursday. A debris flow closed Interstate 70 between New Castle and Silt on Monday evening, leaving water roughly 7 feet deep on the highway, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Regional Transportation Director Jason Smith attributed that flow to fast, heavy rain and hail landing on ground too dry to absorb it, which overwhelmed local drainages.
Bombardier said Jack Flats is almost unrecognizable, and that the only thing capable of cleaning it up is a big runoff year, which he put at “at least two great winters away.” The basin is not trending that direction. The Bureau of Reclamation’s July forecast put April-through-July unregulated inflow to Lake Powell at 17 percent of average, and the reservoir sat at 23 percent of capacity on July 19.
As of press time, no closure or hazard advisory had been issued by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management’s Colorado River Valley Field Office, Eagle County or American Whitewater. The boaters association post is the only public account of the damage.
There is one upside for boaters. The debris flow above Jack Flats deposited enough rock, timber and mud to build a large alluvial fan that cut the river’s width in half, and Bombardier said the constriction has produced a long wave train that looks like it will be very fun to ride. As the first person to see it, he claimed naming rights and christened it the Jack Flats Wave.
Photos and reporting courtesy the Upper Colorado River Private Boaters Association on Facebook. Read the advisory on the group’s Facebook page.