One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: July 26, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1990_0804_TenmileRange.htm)
Sure I knew how to canoe -- I thought. I'd been up and down some short runs in Florida, several times around Sheldon Lake in Fort Collins, and of course last summer there was the five-hour ride through Fort Collins with Jer/ and Megan... Uh-huh. Well I knew I had something left to learn when Bernie Kendall, of the White Water Canoe Company in Greeley, gave the 12 of us a short course on the shore of the Green River in Utah. I'd never heard of the three basic strokes he started with. Four days (three nights) and 67 miles later, I was pretty sure I grasped the essentials...
The notice in the Colorado Mountain Club magazine caught my attention in May I think. I wasn't even sure where Green River and Labyrinth Canyon were, but I decided to go for the trip anyway, and it was great. All equipment and food was provided for $270.
Bernie and his side-kick Mike Willis, both schoolteachers in Greeley during the "on-season", proved to be capable, competent, humorous leaders and cooks. Don McNair, the CMC trip leader, also took charge as necessary to ensure a successful journey down the river. He turned out to be more of a "mileage man" than most however.
I don't know why it was called the "Green River". At the town of the same name, a better description would have been "dirty grey brown". Further downstream there was no grey about it, we're talking reddish brown, a river of mud, "too thin to plow and too thick to drink." The river headed in the mountains near Jackson, Wyoming and joined the mighty Colorado River in Canyonlands NP before it entered Lake Powell and Glen Canyon.
Tuesday, Aug 14: Unable to find a passenger, I drove to Utah and back alone -- but for my ham radio as company, and I met some nice folks using it. I spent Tuesday night camped on Transfer Trail above Glenwood Springs, and arrived at the town of Green River, Utah, just off I-70, at about noon Wednesday as planned.
Wednesday, Aug 15: We had a simple but sumptious lunch at Green River SP, the first of the many tasty meals provided by Bernie and Mike. After that the afternoon was devoured by a car shuttle from Green River to the take out point... Mineral Bottom, just north of Canyonlands NP, was only about 30 miles away by air, 67 miles by river, but 71 miles by road.
It took us nearly two hours each way. The last 15 miles were on a rolling dirt road across the high desert. The last three miles were down a spectacular series of switchbacks from high, rolling, red-rock terrain to the Green River. We got back to the campground too late for much but dinner and mosquitos.
Thursday, Aug 16: A good chunk of the morning was spent packing stuff into canoes and then learning how to maneuver them. We had six two-person decked fiberglas touring canoes, each with flat bottoms and rounded tops, and one historic replica 26' cargo canoe called a Voyager. It carried almost all the communal supplies. Each smaller canoe started out with 10 gallons of fresh water for cooking and drinking -- since very little was available along the way.
(Even as I began this adventure, my friend Sherry Perkins realized a long-time dream by summiting the Grand Teton in Wyoming. We kept in touch by HP voicemail. She also became a grandmother that very same Thursday morning! I relayed the news to her from her children. It was waiting for her when she came off the mountain that evening -- by which time I was 16 miles down river at the first night's camp!)
After all preparations and training, at last we were underway at about 10 am for three nights on the river, headed almost due south down the river from the campground. I teamed up with a Spanish teacher from Colorado Springs for the first two days, then with a somewhat stronger paddler, a guy from Parker, for the latter two.
We started at "mile marker" 120, according to the river maps carried by our guides. (Mile 0 was the confluence with the Colorado, deep in a canyon and many miles downstream the Colorado River from Moab.)
The first several miles were slow going as we all figured out how to make the canoes do what we wanted. The scenery wasn't that interesting either until we entered Labyrinth Canyon at about mile marker 93 (on the second day). It was generally flat, slightly undulating, desert-like terrain. There were occasional back-country farms, ranches, and ruins along the river banks. The river itself varied from several hundred yards wide with no perceptible flow, to perhaps ten yards wide with a several-knot current.
Apparently the river ran rather low in August, and it was especially low this year. As a result it didn't help us much. I suspect we paddled 60 of the 67 miles. There were occasional small "rapids", enough to rock the boat and form small whitecaps, but they were few and far between.
The highlight of the first day was a hot noontime break at Crystal Geyser. The waterspout was drilled by people! It had become a mere fresh-water spring surrounded by exquisite, pre-existing, red, orange, and brown flowstone along one bank of the river.
[2023: Apparently I forgot about seeing Crystal the first time, this early. When I revisited it at least once by road, decades later, I thought it was my first time there. Sigh, that happens so much... "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on disk somewhere."]
Later we ate lunch under some trees. By the time we packed up it had started raining. There was nothing to do but canoe through it. Fortunately it cleared up by evening. Of course two days later, seeking out shade in the searing heat, we found ourselves wishing for more rain.
The low cumulostratus clouds rolling over the landscape created an effect I didn't expect and had never seen before. The grey cloud bases were tinged with sunset colors, pink and red, even though it was mid-afternoon. It had to be reflections off the square miles of red-rock canyon country to the south!
We spent our first night 16 miles down from our launch point, around mile marker 104, on a sandy island. Well at least it was sometimes an island. The river was so low, perhaps 10' below the peak water marks, that many sandbars no longer had flow on both sides.
There were enough mosquitos that we all slept in tents. Speaking of which, here I found an abandoned two-person tent, apparently from an unidentifiable rental company. It was stuck in some bushes. After a fair bit of repairing and modifying, it was more or less useful. Quite comfortable once it was up, but a pain to take up and down. There's no such thing as a free tent...
Friday, Aug 17, was our longest day of canoeing. We covered 24 miles, down to mile 80, well inside Labyrinth Canyon. We stopped for lunch in the roasting sun at the point where the silty San Rafael River, little more than a wide, muddy stream through dense overgrowth, joined the Green on the west bank. The "boils" along the turbulent junction, and for several miles downstream before it all turned mud-brown, were astonishing and beautiful.
[Years later I was much more familiar with the San Rafael, flowing through Hanksville, and having visited/hiked a few overlooks of its canyon between there and the Green.]
If I'd thought the river was "thick" before, after this confluence it was even moreso. Regardless, almost all of us floated in it at one point or another just to cool down. We spent the night at a sandy, bushy bend in the river across from a sandstone cliff.
Saturday, Aug 18, we proceeded another 20 miles downstream to mile 60.5. It was for me the most interesting day of the journey. In the morning we cruised down wide, calm, straight stretches of the river in deep cliff shadows. They looked more like connected lakes than a continuous river.
I found myself surprisingly strong, not sore (except in the sitting spot) from the long day before. Using the proper stroke did allow me to paddle all day. Of course there were many times when I wished we had more time to stop and play, or to explore away from the river. With miles to go before we slept, and six other canoes going on anyway, there wasn't much to do but keep paddling and looking for current. At times we were all strung out over a mile or more, a series of small white dots lost in the hot, serene vastness of the canyon.
We made a long lunch break on one side of the Bowknot Bend ridge. The Bend was a huge loop in the river, about seven miles around high, elegant cliffs and towers. The river returned to within 1/4 mile of itself on the opposite side of a long, straight ridge about 500' above the water.
Most of the group hiked and scrambled up the boulders to the ridge. There we had a magnificent view of the river in both directions. The strong breeze was a welcome relief. Several of us strolled the length of the ridge, past a rock pile called "The Post Office", where numerous people had scratched their names into myriad flat "postcard" stones. At both ends of the ridge the rock rose sharply to higher, less-weathered ground. It was an intense, fascinating place, rich and colorful.
My partner for the second half of the trip was a history buff who was very talented at finding spots of interest. Later in the afternoon he located somehow an ancient bit of graffiti under overgrowth along one wall of the canyon. It was a name and date left in 1836 by a French trapper. Seeing it only heightened the solid feeling of being surrounded by eternity.
Once again on Saturday evening we ended up paddling later than planned to reach our intended destination. It was something of a stretch. We picked a spot on another sand bar island, again with a dry riverbed on one side. There were small catfish trapped in evaporating ponds on that side, the only clear water we'd seen in two days. Again we ate a huge, delicious meal under the stars.
Sunday morning, Aug 19, we finished up the float with a quick seven mile sprint to Mineral Bottom. It was straight into strong wind and chop for the last couple of miles as the canyon opened somewhat. Arriving at the take-out point and our cars, we spent several muddy hours cleaning (or at least rinsing) and loading the equipment.
After one last White Water Canoe meal, I began the solo "death drive" home at 1312. I arrived in Fort Collins 443 miles later at 2200.
I'd gladly make this trip again, but next time I'd want to spend an extra day or two on the river, more time for playing and sightseeing. Either that, or go at a time when the river flow was higher, thus more exciting and helpful. [2023: Never yet been back to this stretch, and probably never will, oh well. So many rivers, so little time. But late the next spring I continued downstream...]
(Next trip report: 1990_0908-16_LakePowell_Alan.htm)