View topic - Pontax levels vs. Broadback

Hey, Broadback/Pontax vets -
Our Broadback trip scheduled to putin on June 27 - levels are in the high 400s currently. Scares me. Looking at Pontax, but gauge is not working. Any way to extrapolate the level of the Pontax from the gauge on the Broadback?
I've read high water on the Pontax is fun with lots of long CIII. But how high on the Pontax is too high?
At what level do beach sites go underwater?
Looks like a dry week forecast ahead - maybe the Broadback will drop like a stone...? I'm thinking 300 is about as high as I want to tackle it. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Christian

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"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." - WATER RAT, The Wind in the Willows

I have no idea how they correlate, but I would imagine their levels would be similar. The Pontax is definitely a smaller river. The camp sites will be few and far between on the Pontax at high water. We paddled it at low (very low) water, at the same time of year and camped on the rock out crops we could find - would imagine that most would be submerged at those levels. I can only imagine that the rapids would be huge based on the rock gardens we walked through.
The Pontax guage didn't work when we ran it either. Two weeks is quite a bit of time for the water levels to come down. 400 would be huge on the Broadback.
would love to see pictures of it at high water,
rab

Based on a single experience with the Pontax which, if my memory serves, peaked during our trip at about 250, that turned out to be too high for us to run most sets. We were a group of strong technical paddlers, but fairly risk adverse. We did not have spray decks on our boats. We lined anything significant. At one set, which the cartes plein air map said a side channel would be dry, we ran it instead of the main flow and found it to be Class II/III. Finding campsites was quite difficult.

Looking at the Broadback where the highway bridge went over it, it was also booming.

Based on a single experience with the Pontax which, if my memory serves, peaked during our trip at about 250, that turned out to be too high for us to run most sets. We were a group of strong technical paddlers, but fairly risk adverse. We did not have spray decks on our boats. We lined anything significant. At one set, which the cartes plein air map said a side channel would be dry, we ran it instead of the main flow and found it to be Class II/III. Finding campsites was quite difficult.

Looking at the Broadback where the highway bridge went over it, it was also booming.

Highly recommend Pontax at high levels!! It’s a blast!!!

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"It's healthy to be dirty" - Lars Monsen

Would be curious to hear how it goes! Tentatively have the Pontax penciled in for August.
Are there decent eddies to catch below sets at high water? It looks like a rocky affair at lower flows...

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My Backcountry Website: www.explorethebackcountry.com