Journeys

Five degrees and a birthday
January 8, 2019

Well, whaddaya know! Although the señor's annual age turnover date had commitments scheduled, the day just prior did not, thus an outing was planned. And because we are in the midst of winter's chill, the outing's destination was chosen partly for warmth and partly for fishing.

Okay, so five degrees is not much warmer than our Prescott home, but every little bit helps, and besides, the Verde Valley also has that Verde River thing going on besides being a bit lower in elevation and a more likely fishing opportunity, so that is where we headed for our birthday observance.

With a brand-spanking-new camera in hand, I began slowly to work my way around a few of the myriad dials and settings as I used the birthday boy for my subject. Learning the various geegaws of the camera is clearly going to be a process, so I'm actually signed up for a short how-to-figure-it-all-out class.

Our basking/angling perch was at a Verde River spot known as Beasley Flats, a common takeout place for kayakers who put in upstream at White's Bridge in Camp Verde or Clear Creek. Before the river falls rapidly downward through a narrowing chute, the water backs up into a long wide pool, an intriguingly fishable spot.

As it turns out, the señor caught our first fish of the year - an impressive sucker, literally. Hating to be outdone, I followed his feat by landing a nice largemouth bass, but smaller than Chris' take.

Unlike more clement seasons on the river, all is dry and gray, awaiting the warmth that will transform the landscape along the water's course.

Yes, that is snow on the surrounding mountains.

When I wandered upstream slippin' & slidin' along the very mucky riverbank, I savored a different view. After a spell of veggin' (I must have something against "ings"), I heard voices and eventually realized they were from voyagers on the water.

Four fellers had boated down from above and sounded very excited about their journey as it came to an end.

After trying our luck in various ways and various places, it became clear that the fish was dozing on the bottom for their siesta, so I suggested we do some exploring. Although it was not our first time to Beasley Flats, and despite that we had explored further downstream at Gap Creek, we had not ventured directly below that spot, so off we went.

We were flabbergasted by the huge extent of flood damage that we encountered! It really was beyond anything we had seen before. The debris in the photo below was estimated at 16 feet above the river's surface! That was a substantial flood!

Our entire walk was either through scoured rubbley streambed or climbing around and through detritus that had been washed down and deposited in heaps and jumbles as the flood passed. Many trees were down and had trapped other matter as it washed through.

We had to laugh about one almost unrecognizable bit of refuse: a vintage vehicle steering wheel still attached to its steering column and steering box that even had its gear shift in place.

Mother Nature had provided some lovely etching-like artwork in dried mud coating the river rock.

In the distance, I had seen cliffs that would have changed the Verde's course there, and I hoped to see how far downstream we could get by staying along the river's bank. As we went, the gradient dropped, causing the swollen waterway to increase its rate of flow.

It was late in the day by then; with the sun low in the sky, we were in a kind of twilight situation as we scrambled to find a route.

My question about how far we could get was answered when we came to the river's turning along the cliffs. Perhaps in a lower-flow time, we would be able to continue along the west/south bank, but not this trip. The high water rushed along the base of the cliffs leaving no place to walk.

On our return walk, we spotted something fascinating that we had missed as we stumbled through: a spring's trickle from beneath a rocky overhang has grown a long fern garden hanging from the precipice.

A substantial pool under it made it impossible to get in closer for a photograph. I pushed my luck to the max as it was and nearly slid into it.

We were very surprised at the scenes we encountered where extremely large pools remained that were not even connected to the main channel. Not knowing when this flood occurred, we surmised that it had to have been fairly recently, even though there had not been that much rainfall on our side of the mountain. Everything was completely saturated, muddy, slick and/or in standing water.