Lower Elk Gauge below Philips Canyon
Preliminary Data; Calibration is still ongoing.
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F. A. Q.
We installed an online gauge in 2025 for the whitewater sections of the Elk river, in collaboration with the Elk River Alliance. It is a free resource, and always will be so. There have been a number of questions that we have been asked about this project, so hopefully you find the information here useful.
Why? There has not been an online gauge available for this popular section.
Yes, but why Shaggy Designs? It was a technical challenge, solvable with technology that has recently become widely available. It was fun to try something new. The extra website traffic here also isn't a bad thing for us.
How? Briefly, the height of the river is sensed using an ultrasonic rangefinder (similar to the sensors in your car that help you parallel park without hitting other vehicles). The information is transmitted to our webserver via the GPRS/3G (cellphone) network, and some .php script on our server draws a nice graph for the website. We will be producing a technical document in the future that goes into a bit more detail.
That sounds like it cost a lot? The gauge project has cost several thousand dollars, and hundreds of hours of development work over the years. This would not have been possible without our sponsors - please support them.
How are you going to make that money back? If you wish to support this with some sponsorship, that would be fantastic! The continued existence of this gauge will not depend upon if we get sponsorship or not. The gauge will always be free to use, and available on this or a similar website.
What next? We are continuing with some developments, looking at new sites on other rivers.
Where is it? Somewhere on the river.
I have found out where it is! Have a gold star for being observant. Please don't mess with it.
How accurate is it? Depending upon the level, it is usually good to within about 20mm.
Should I rely on it? No - if you need to know the level, then checking the river yourself is your only way to know for sure. We will do our best to make this as useful as possible, but don't blame us if you go paddling and the river isn't exacly the way you like it. We are dealing with mother nature, and sometimes things change quickly.
Can you put one on another river for me? Probably - get in touch!
