Wildfires generate hydro-geomorphological disturbances initiated by post-fire precipitation-runoff events. These disturbances are drivers of aquatic impairment over multiple months and years. While the impacts of wildfires on streams and rivers near burned areas have received increased attention in the last decades, it is still unclear how wildfire disturbances propagate longitudinally through fluvial networks. We deployed a rapid response team to install and maintain five high-frequency in-situ sondes to monitor water quality and stream metabolism changes over 190 km along the Gallinas Creek-Pecos River-Santa Rosa Lake fluvial network in response to the Hermit’s Peak - Calf Canyon (HPCC) wildfire, the largest in New Mexico’s recorded history. We assessed how far downstream water quality disturbances propagated along the fluvial network, the role of seasonality in that propagation, and the impact of lakes in mitigating further longitudinal propagation. Monitoring began a few days after the fire started in April 2022 and before any precipitation events had occurred. In the ten months post-fire, there were significant increases in turbidity and fDOM and reductions in gross primary production and ecosystem respiration at all monitoring sites upstream of Santa Rosa Lake. Stream metabolic fingerprints suggest increased scouring, DOC, nutrients, and suspended sediments at these sites. In contrast, the site downstream of Santa Rosa Lake did not have altered turbidity, gross primary production, or ecosystem respiration, and the metabolic fingerprints remained unchanged. These results suggest that Santa Rosa Lake, and associated water operations, buffered the propagation of wildfire disturbances ~180km downstream from the burn scar, resetting water quality parameters and metabolic activity for over ten months post-fire.