Field-based multibeam sonar surveys were collected along the Colorado River, near Lees Ferry, Arizona from a motorized cataraft. These data were used to assess the accuracy of river bathymetry inferred from the ASTRALiTe bathymetric lidar, acquired contemporaneously from the same survey vessel. These data sets were collected to support research focused on developing innovative methods for non-contact measurement of river discharge based on various forms of remotely sensed data. The sonar survey data were exported to a comma-separated text file and the resulting *.csv file contain for each point the spatial coordinates, and depth (expressed as a negative number), all in meters