Rio Chama

A few days after finishing a multi-day trip on the wilderness section of the Rio Chama, I couldn’t walk away from the canyon without one more day on the water.
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We put in at Chavez Canyon, just below the Christ in the Desert Monastery, and floated the nine miles to Big Eddy on packrafts at 170 cfs.
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To be clear about what 170 cfs means: the Chama guidebook puts the minimum at 400 cfs, and the BLM’s own guidance suggests 200-300 cfs for small boats on this stretch. We were well south of all of it.
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The river was fluid, but just slow, and often shallow enough for us to clamor for the line that would give us another inch of of depth. Despite that we only got truly hung up once, at a long diagonal shoals about a half mile above Big Eddy, where one of us had to pop the sprayskirt and shuffle through. Everything else went clean.
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The upper miles from Chavez to Skull Bridge were beautiful. The canyon walls run red and ochre as you descend through millions of years of geologic time. Geese and goslings, paired mallards, lots of flycatchers, swallows, and evidence of deer and otter were evident throughout the run. At a higher flow, the paddling would match the scenery. At 170, the scenery carries the day.
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The action concentrates in the stretch from just above Skull Bridge (where the Continental Divide Trail crosses the canyon) down to Big Eddy. If we ran it again at 170, we’d still put in at Chavez for the scenery, but we’d go in knowing the upper half is a float and plan for a longer day with more snacks.
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Or, if we wanted to maximize whitewater, we’d put in just above Skull Bridge and have a shorter, more concentrated day. Putting in at Chama campground instead of Chavez, would shave about a mile off the full run.
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An honest floor of 200 cfs would have made the full run from Chavez a little more enjoyable top to bottom, but I wasn't upset about working a little harder to experience this special place, and we had a great time anyway.