News

Another boating season approaches, and it looks to be a good one with plentiful snow to feed the rivers in the west. Hopefully most of you either got lucky in the lotteries or know someone who did. Many rivers that have short or nonexistent seasons in most years should be running well this year.

One of those short season rivers is the Upper Salt in Arizona. We ran out of guidebooks early last year, and we postponed reprinting for two reasons. The White Mountain Apache Tribe had closed the reservation to non-members and was not issuing river permits, and severe debris flows in August 2021 rerouted the river through a thicket of vegetation, requiring a long but "easy" portage. We didn't want to print books for a river that couldn't be run. Well, the WMAT reopened the reservation and started issuing permits, and high water in August 2022 began to clear the blockage at Horseshoe Bend. We drove into Horseshoe Bend on New Years Eve to scope things out, and it appeared somewhat runnable at that time. Less than a week after our visit, the river spiked to 24,000 CFS twice and firmly reestablished a clear channel. We transmitted the files to the printer the following week, and we expect the books to arrive on March 13.

Folks increasingly asked us in recent years about whether we planned to have digital versions of our maps. We were also thinking along these lines, but the lack of durable, water-resistant devices with a way to keep them charged kept us from putting any effort into this. Now that we have more durable devices with longer battery lives and solar or external battery chargers, we decided the time was right.

We only thought we were immune from supply chain problems since we have our books printed in the USA. We were wrong. We gave our printer the go-ahead for reprinting six books back in mid-December, 2021. Normally it takes about four weeks for them to get the synthetic paper from the mill. This time it's taking three months. Books that we expected to have by February aren't going to be in our hands until mid-April. In the meantime, we've run out of four titles (not including the Salt guidebook, which is another story described below) and will probably run out of at least one more.

We've been busy working on making our maps available in digital format. We're nearing the conclusion of that project with today's publishing of five sets of maps for the Grand Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument (Yampa/Green), Middle Fork & Main Salmon, Rogue, and Snake/Lower Salmon. Our website will be updated shortly to include links to those map bundles. We intend to add most of the rest of our maps this spring in time for the 2022 boating season.

This has been a very busy spring. We've updated three guidebooks, reprinted another, and have two more under revision as I write this. The Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, and Middle Fork/Main Salmon guidebooks are new editions, and the Snake/Lower Salmon is a reprint with only minor updates. We are currently working on updating the San Juan and Upper Colorado guidebooks. You can find the major changes to be incorporated in the upcoming Fourth Edition of the San Juan under the errata section of the San Juan web page. Changes to the Upper Colorado guidebook will incorporate proposed management changes by the Bureau of Land Management for the 14-mile Pumphouse to State Bridge section of the river. This is one of the most heavily used sections of whitewater river in Colorado. Currently unpermitted, the BLM proposes to institute a self-issue permit system, prohibit camping except at 25 designated sites, and require each campsite to be reserved in advance through www.recreation.gov. We do not yet have release dates for either the San Juan or Upper Colorado, but the San Juan will be July at the earliest and September for the Upper Colorado.

The new Dolores River guidebook is available! This publication is a collaborative venture between RiverMaps and the Dolores River Boating Advocates with over 90% of the gross revenue going to DRBA to support their activities.

We occasionally become aware of changes that need to be made to future printings of our guidebooks. We post that information on this website so that you can note those changes in your book as appropriate. This is not a comprehensive changelog, and the errata posted only apply to the current edition of each guidebook. Updates to prior editions are not noted. The errata can be found on the webpage for each guidebook.

Thanks to our great friend, David Abel, and the corona virus schitt-show that gave him time to help us, we have a new website that doesn’t look like it’s straight from the late 1990s. Thanks, David! 

We also have a new guidebook coming for the Dolores River in Colorado and Utah. This is a collaborative venture between RiverMaps and the Dolores River Boating Advocates, who secured funding to publish the book and will receive over 90% of the sales revenue. Josh Munson, DRBA board member and author, went from zero to sixty in learning how a guidebook is put together. He repeatedly commented that it was a lot more work than he thought when he started! Thanks, Josh! You did a great job! The release date is uncertain, but we’ll have it for sale as soon as DRBA makes it available.

We have a new guidebook for the Arkansas River in Colorado! The book covers just over 117 miles of river from Hayden Meadows near Leadville to Cañon City. This includes Pine Creek Rapid, the Numbers, the Fractions, Browns Canyon, the Royal Gorge and all points in between.

We frequently get inquiries about a guidebook for the Dolores River. We have been working with the Dolores River Boating Advocates on a guidebook that willl be published by DRBA and marketed with our assistance. They are soliciting donations to fund publication, and they are also selling a PDF version of their interim booklet on their website. You can find it here.

Check out our coffee cup! If you are like us, you spend more days in the office than you do on the river. That means you probably spend a lot of time with a hot beverage nearby or in your hand. When we decided it was time to come up with some promotional swag, we thought “what better way to put our name in front of folks than with a cup to hold that hot beverage!” But not any cheap cup would do. We didn’t want just a really good cup, no, we wanted a great cup! A cup that would hold almost a pint of that hot beverage. A cup that had great graphics that reflect what we do. A cup that was made in the US of A.

Got a great photo that you think should be published for one of the rivers we cover? Send us an email at the contact link below. You'll get credit for the photo and a free copy of the book if we use your photograph.