Trampas Creek (Rio de las Trampas), New Mexico, US

into the Embudo

River Description

Atom Crawford writes:
Trampas creek into the Embudo:

The Trampas enters the Embudo on the left just after MJ falls.
For the past 10 yrs I had been looking up at this tiny confluence as we blazed by on our way down the Embudo. It enters the Embudo via a 20-ft slide. The spring of 05 brought huge snow pack to New Mexico and The Embudo was flowing huge. One sunny day we stopped and looked up at the Trampas confluence and thought that there might just be enough water to run it. So TK and I dug out the Topos, drove around for hours and found the putin. Which consisted of a small forgotten town (which will remain unnamed) with a lot of dogs and some wacked people still stuck in the 60's. We came back the next day with Dunbar and a few more Colorado folks. The run was low, probably 60 cfs or so. We launched after warnings from a 60's hippie about rants of it being to steep and that if we went onto river left we were goners. (We took this to mean, getting shot due to a certain "vegetable crop growing.") Well, we made it past all the brush and barbed wire to the entrance of the canyon. All I can say is, the run was bony, hardly any eddies (which was a factor with 6 people), really manky drops, a couple stellar ones and I'll probably never do it again. Sure was fun though when we finally made it to the Embudo and it was a thumping 3.6 ft.
We then boated down the Embudo to the second canyon of the Embudo and hiked out. The Embudo was flowing 3.6 ft and 3.5 ft is my max for the lower. But folks go in there higher, It just starts to hit a pretty high hair factor.
But that's what you go through to figure out if a creek is any good.

Click here for a few photos of the run.