Well, I've got some catching up to do. It's been a couple of weeks, due to a great trip on the Green River and around Colorado.
First, six days on the Green River between Vernal and Green River UT in what is known as Desolation Canyon. Honestly, I have to say that late March is still a little early for good river time, but any day on the water is better than no day on the water.
We put in at Sandy Wash, where we met Ranger Joe and the outfitter, whose name I've forgotten. Both are former Marines, as our friend P-Cake soon learned due to his USMC beanie. I almost showed up in a "WWII Veteran" baseball cap that was for sale at a gas station along the way. Probably literally dodged a bullet on that one. Funny what you can buy at gas stations sometimes. "USMC" "Ranger" "Fire Dept" (no particular location) "WWII Vet", no credentials required, but you could probably buy those, too.
But I digress. The Green River, irrespective of its name, is surprisingly brown. It seems like more of a mud flow at times, and leaves you with a perpetual layer of fine dirt all over your skin. I kind of like it that way. The river is lined with wonderful sandy beaches at many points, allowing us to camp on the rivers edge every night. Lower along the Green, in Labrynth Canyon, the campsites are more removed and you rarely sleep to the sound of running water. That does have the advantage of allowing you to sleep through the night without dreaming about peeing, though, so either way is nice.
Bountiful driftwood also made for easy campfires both in the evening and the morning, which would prove to be critical for morale after the weather turned cold. The first two days were beautiful, with sunny, dry air and cool water, allowing for hours of lounging in the bow of the oar boats. Nothing quite like laying on your back, watching two thousand foot tall rock walls drift by in a blue sky and hearing the rhythmic splashing of the oars. I've never felt so lazy.
On the third day, the winds picked up and blew in a cold front. The winds in a canyon during a frontal passing are intense, gusting into the 60s I would guess. Tara was actually blown over at one point, which is odd since, at 5' nothing, you'd think she was the most aerodynamic of us all. After being blown all over the river, and even into the shoreline in the middle of a section of rapids, we tied the boats up and sought shelter behind a large, downed cottonwood, well out of range of other overhead hazards.
Looking down river towards the last boat, the water spary that was blown up by the wind was immense, towering over everything in the canyon but the walls themselves. Water and sand, slowly arching skyward and twisting along the walls, turning up-river, towards the observer and rising higher and higher. Then the sudden blast of the air carrying mist, knocking around anyone standing and blowing the tamarisk branches horizontal.
We sheltered for nearly an hour, until the winds died and the low clouds of the front were directly on top of us. As a front passes, the squall line winds blow parallel to the front in front of it, and when the front passes, the frontal winds take over and blow perpendicular to the front, in the direction it is moving. These frontal winds can be less intense than the squall winds, and that is what we experienced. The winds slowed and we continued down the river, though now without sun and with considerably cooler air temps. This was also the first day of real whitewater rapids, so we were in for a cold, wet, afternoon, and, as it turned out, couple of days.
It was quite a learning experience to run whitewater in an oar boat. I was happy to note that we had three boats, but only two guides, neither one of which was in my boat. I was going to get to pilot the boat! In reality, P-Cake (aka. Lopsing, aka. Bryan) and I would trade off rapid for rapid, playing rock-paper-scissors for the first shift of each day. That was fine with me, I still was able to pilot several of the class 4 sections and one of the two class 6 sections, along with numerous class 1, 2, and3 sections.
The trick to whitewater is that it's all in the set-up. You have to pick your entry point to each section of fast water, because once you're in it, particularly in a big oar boat, you are pretty much at the will of the water. At 5000 cubic feet per second (the flow that week), you're working with or against 311,000 pounds of water per second. Trust me, the water wins. So you look the rapids over, pick your line, set up the boat to drift through that line, and plunge and pray. Pretty simple.
Dawn of day four brought snow. The caps of all the walls and mesas of the river were well dusted with the white stuff. Beautiful. Beautiful and chilly. Fortunately, we had plenty of hot chocolate, coffee, and bone dry driftwood. Funny thing about being a firefigher, you also come to be a pretty decent fire starter. When it's cold and wet out, that really makes you a pretty popular guy.
The sun rarely shone for the next two days, but we learned how to stay warm and fairly dry through it all. Honestly, it didn't matter too much to me. I was loving just being "out there" again. In skiing and firefighting, you don't get too far away from anyone. Unless you're really motivated, it takes a while to get out there in the winter. Fires, however remote, are more like military operations, with bulldozers, 4x4s, helicopters and tankers all bringing the full power of mankind into the wilderness. Rivers, though, cut the land in their own way, and often in a way unfriendly to driving to, so there you can get "there". Creature comforts tend to go the way of the wolly mammoth in those places, so being wet or cold is just part of the deal. In reality, being wet or cold is simply part of being human in this world, though we avoid it and now forget it because it's so easy to avoid. And after all, that's part of what being "out there" is really about. It's about finding out what's inside us that only arrises when we're there. Thus, the removal of cars and water heaters and electric blankets is the first ingredient in recipe.
One last night on the river brought us to a high bank shrouded in tamarisk thicket, with all its secret passages, foyers, and great halls. Another fallen cottonwood formed an open kitchen for our camp, complete with dinning room chairs. A fast river that day gave us a long evening of snacking, cooking, eating, eating more, and stuffing every last nook and cranny of ourselves with the piles of food provided by the provisioner, but only after a long group hack.
The ambitious goal was a complete, eight person hack, with even the first timers getting in. After many disappointing rounds of 1, 2 or 3 touches, with a few zeros and a number of great catches by Lopsing, who didn't quite seem to get it, we settled for a five touch round. "Good enough! We've got hours of eating to get to!" This was already a day removed from my pie-dealing street gang dream, and we had many thousands of calories of desert to go. Frankly, I think the hack and the endless dinner were subconscious distractions that saved us from wondering what had been buried and then exhumed a few yards from our campsite as the holes were disturbingly grave-like. But, once again, there was food to be eaten.
The last day on the river began with "Rookie Rapid", where anyone who had not paddled a class 4 or greater was required to pilot the boat. That was Tara's turn for us, and she nailed it. Then, another round of rock-paper-scissors between P-Cake and, yours truly, Trix. (Trix won, for the third straight time, just for the record.) Soon there after, Trix was spotted very successfully and skillfully piloting the boat into an eddie some distance down river of the twenty yard wide pull out, which he had completely missed. Though, in his defense, I must say that the Wonder Boat had edged out Team Tasty Treats and clearly won the 2007 "Groovin' on the Green" extreme oar boat challenge, and were merely enjoying an extended victory lap or two. Which they richly deserved.
Photos will eventually follow.
Labels: Great Escapes
