The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was busy this winter, improving the camping and boating facilities in the Orilla Verde (Green Banks) Recreation Area (OVRA). You earlier saw, on this Blog, a report of the work done at the boat ramp at Taos Junction Bridge, where the Taos Box trip ends, and the Rio Grande Gorge trip starts. They did a great job.
They have also just completed work on the Arroyo Hondo campground, which now has great views of the river and is very beautifully landscaped.
Who pays for this work, by the way? You do, at least in part. We collect, from you, 3% of the rafting fee, to turn over to the BLM. It’s a Federal User Fee, and it goes back to the “resource” (the BLM facilities on and along the river).
I consider the camping opportunities that are found in OVRA to be as nice as you could hope to find anywhere. What a beautiful canyon and river, with fishing, hiking, biking, birding, boating, swimming, lazing around in a gorgeous setting and sitting by the campfire all available. You just can’t beat it!

We’re having a beautiful Spring this year, with warm weather arriving early. The photos seen here were taken near the Gaging Station in the Orilla Verde Recreation Area of the Rio Grande. This is the stretch we run when we do our full-day Rio Grande Gorge trip.

Taos Junction Bridge is both the take-out for the Taos Box and the put-in for the Rio Grande Gorge raft trips, and thus sees a lot of use. Before this renovation it never adequately handled the traffic it saw. This is a huge improvement and we would like to thank our partners in the BLM for doing such a great job.

Operations Manager Britt Huggins took our first two guests of the season down the full-day Rio Grande Gorge run yesterday (4/18/12). The river was running at 500 cfs and the weather was gorgeous!

It’s always a crap shoot in April, when it’s 80 degrees one day and snowing the next! But there is water in the river, and fun to be had. So, we will be doing a Rio Grande Gorge full-day trip on the 18th, and you could join us on it!

We went abruptly from Winter into Spring, here in northern New Mexico, already seeing temps in the 80s. The apricots suddenly bloomed, causing everyone to worry about an ensuing freeze, which would doom the crop. Last April was cold and snowy, so who knows what is next to come? The river too responded to the sudden warmth, jumping up to 1130 cfs this AM, with the water temp at 54 degrees. And, when you can locate them, the trout are biting. Apricot trees are to be seen here and there, outside of the orchards. I call them free-range trees, and here’s a nice one that’s blooming on the banks of the Rio Grande, in the Orilla Verde Recreation Area, where we run our full-day Rio Grande Gorge and Float trips.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now in the process of making substantial improvements to the River Access point (beach) that both serves as the take-out for the Taos Box run and the put-in for the Rio Grande Gorge run, on the Rio Grande river. The installation of a concrete ramp and increased room for maneuvering vehicles will make for much a much more efficient process, and will reduce conflict with other users. Permanent toilets, changing facilities and picnic tables will also be provided.

Our tulips have been up for a while, and the willows are leafing out. We expect our first trip to take place on 4/19, but we’re awful glad that we’re not rafting today, because it’s in the fifties and the wind is howling. Spring is always windy in New Mexico, and this Spring it has really been blowing, with gusts up to 50 mph over the last few days. Of course, the wind always blows upstream, which makes getting a raft downstream particularly troublesome. That’s why we always wait until the last half of April to open. Otherwise, the irrigators in Colorado are already beginning to divert water out of the Rio Grande, so the river is now low and will remain so until the melt starts up in the headwaters. This year our snowpack is at 80% of average, which will shorten our Taos Box season. Our other trips (Rio Grande Gorge, Racecourse, Float) will, as always, run all summer. Hope to see you soon!

Photo by Britt Runyon