A Week on the Green, or What's with the Hats?

I planned to start my summer off with a week-long, 120-mile paddle of the Green River in Utah with my thirteen-year-old, Aliy, and her best friend Isabelle. The trip would begin just south of the town of Green River and take us through Labyrinth and Stillwater Canyons, cutting through the heart of Canyonlands National Park to the convergence of the Green with the Colorado River. From here, a jetboat would pick us up to take us and our dirty, well-used gear up the Colorado to the town of Moab.

I was more than a little nervous about taking these two too-urban girls on a week-long wilderness paddling trip through the desert. Neither of them had done anything remotely similar and their lives haven't exactly been marked by discomfort or physical sacrifice. I tried something similar the prior year with my then-eight-year-old, Peyton, along with Dave, Peyton's "Gramps." We'd paddled a 120-mile stretch of the Upper Missouri River in Montana, and she famously quipped at trip's end "I think I got the wrong father." That was not exactly the response I'd been going for. I figured, though, that Aliy and Isabelle were older and perhaps more likely to appreciate the overall experience. Plus, they could share the highs and lows with one another rather than having only adults to turn to, as Peyton did.

Adding to my reservations was the passing of Isabelle's dear grandmother just after we left Cincinnati for Colorado. It was not unexpected, and Isabelle had been able to say her goodbyes before we left; thus her parents decided that, unless Isabelle wanted to head straight home for the funeral, she should continue with the trip. This left me a little uneasy that, should she not enjoy the trip, she might especially regret not returning home.

But I set all my reservations and concerns aside and ventured forth with great hope and enthusiasm.

We began the morning of June third in Fruita, Colorado at the home of my children's maternal grandmother, Connie. We headed out at six in the morning for the 90-minute drive to Tex's Riverways in Moab, car stuffed with a week's worth of food, camping gear, and a single folding kayak. Tex would be providing our shuttle service, driving us to the put-in, storing the car while we were on the river, and picking us up via jetboat just below the confluence. When we arrived at Tex's, we completed a little paperwork, picked up some rental gear (toilet, well-insulated cooler, two 6-gallon water containers, and one canoe) transferred our gear to their shuttle van, and headed north to the put-in.

There was another party setting out with us--a married couple and their three boys. They were using two folding boats and an inflatable kayak. Isabelle dubbed them, somewhat derisively, the "Brady Bunch." On the drive to Crystal Geyser the shuttle driver, Darren, a highly charismatic lifelong river rat, warned us of some of the potential hazards we'd be facing on the river: high winds (the most serious hazard), the swift high waters of the river itself (our trip falling at the peak of spring runoff), hypothermia, rattlesnakes, and scorpions.

I should also note that both the shuttle driver and the office guy at Tex's definitely did a double-take when they saw the composition of our group--they both said to me, essentially, "are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into taking these two out on the river?" In fact, Darren's last words to me after he dropped us and all our gear off at Crystal Geyser, as he was preparing to drive the empty van back to Moab, said with a wry smile, were "You're a brave man."

At Crystal Geyser, I worked furiously to assemble the folding boat, got the canoe in the water, and loaded everything up. At precisely noon, we were ready to set out, well ahead of the Brady Bunch who were still working to get all their boats assembled. I put Aliy in the kayak alone, as she had the most kayaking experience, and put Isabelle in the bow of the canoe with me. A capsize of the canoe, which held the overwhelming bulk of our gear, would be a major ordeal, whereas if either girl overturned the kayak I could easily get them out of the water, clear the boat of water, and have them back in their boat without even needing necessarily to go to shore. Thus, I planned on piloting the canoe for the first few days, at least until the girls each got some more canoeing experience, and having the girls switch off between canoe and kayak.

As we set out we said our good-byes to the Brady Bunch, whom we would never again see along the river. It was warm and sunny with scattered clouds. Leaving the initial eddy was a little unsettling for Aliy whose prior paddling experience was all on still water, but she managed just fine and quickly found her paddling legs, so to speak. An eddy, by the way, is where the river's current swirls back, moving at variance with the river's main flow. When entering or leaving eddies at an inappropriate angle inexperienced boaters will sometimes lean the wrong way and quickly find themselves swimming.

Once we were out on the river, we rafted the boats up together and I took the following photo of the two girls, appearing to already be having a fine time out on the river:


The initial fifteen miles along our route passed through desert terrain like you see in the background above, prior to entering Labyrinth Canyon. While rafted up in the main current we enjoyed a leisurely lunch. Lunch was basically the same each day, almost always eaten in the boats: bagels and cream cheese (or butter, or PB and J), granola bars, almonds, gatorade, some kind of fruit, and (for me) some beef jerky. The girls switched between boats a few times, each getting the feel of both boats, and taking advantage of the ability to kick back and rest in the canoe if they so chose. With our stable craft, switching back and forth was easily accomplished on the river--no need to go to shore.

Soon enough, they both needed to pee. I explained their options, and they decided to my relief that lowering themselves into the chilly water was the best approach. Much screaming, giggling and hilarity ensued, but eventually bladders were emptied into the swift silty waters of the Green.

As we expected, the river was moving swiftly--at about 4-5 miles per hour in the main current, so we were able to make it to mile fifteen, the beginning of Labyrinth Canyon, quite early in the afternoon. A famous formation, Dellenbaugh's butte, named for the 17-year-old artist on the Powell exploratory expedition of this river, roughly marks the beginning of Labyrinth Canyon:


At high water, when all the sandbars are covered by the river's swift current, finding suitable campsites along the river can be a challenge. Where the river doesn't directly abut steep canyon walls there is normally thick, impenetrable vegetation blocking passage to the shore. Thus, side canyons, where you can often paddle the boats some ways up the high river's backflow to accessible ground, become favored campsites. A huge benefit of camping in side canyons is that you can explore them on foot from camp.

Darren had told us that there was great camping at trin-alcove bend, a place where three converging side canyons join the river at a sharp bend. He warned us that, as this spot fell at mile 25, this would make for a very ambitious first day given our noontime start. Now, we had 120 total river miles to cover in, essentially, six days (on the seventh day we would need to be ready for pickup by 11 am). Since the weather was cooperative and the river swift, I decided to make for trin-alcove bend that first day. Making big miles on the early days would give us more options on the later days, and I knew that bad weather could potentially force a layover day at some point.

Shortly after Dellenbaugh's butte, the typical up-canyon afternoon winds kicked in. It was nothing that we couldn't handle, but it meant that everyone needed to paddle consistently to counteract the slowing effect of the contrary winds. After ten miles of hard work, we reached the lovely side canyons and were dismayed to find a large party of older teens just unloading their boats and setting up camp. Fortunately, though, there was room father up the canyons for us to find a perfect spot in relative seclusion:

The girls did an excellent job helping me unload the boats up a steep, high, sandy embankment and carry the gear to our selected campsite. We set up camp together, the girls obsessing about keeping sand out of their tent (an obsession that would disappear completely by the third night). I would be sleeping under the stars, so they had the tent to themselves. When camp was in order, I started the charcoal going in the firepan as the girls explored their nearby surroundings and went swimming in the shallow waters of the lower side-canyons.

All fires along the river must be kept in a firepan, and all remains must be either packed out or (if they are fully burned to ash) dumped into the main current of the river. Since wood can be hard to come by and it is more difficult to burn wood down to pure ash, I had brought charcoal along for the first four nights when we would be grilling our dinners over a fire. I had a simple stove along for cooking breakfasts and dinners the last two nights when I knew our ice would have melted off from the cooler and spaghetti was on the menu.

Once the coals were hot I set to cooking the girls spicy chick'n patties and my sirloin burgers. These cooked up beautifully, and we enjoyed them on big whole-wheat buns (kept protected in a separate smaller cooler) with lettuce, tomatoes, and delicious avocado from the main cooler. I was chastised, but not too roughly, for forgetting mustard and ketchup. After we were all well fed, the girls set off to explore one of the three side canyons from camp:



I let them go off on their own for about 25 minutes, then set off after them. I found them scrambling along the upper side wall of the canyon pictured above, enjoying the views down to the river and climbing up onto the larger boulders that they found. Together we then climbed down and followed the floor of the canyon up a few hundred meters to where it ended abruptly in a large dry fall (a vertical section of canyon that would be a waterfall if there were water flowing). We worked together to climb part-way up the lower portion of the fall, listened to our own echoes, and then made our way slowly back to camp as night settled in. At one point during this excursion Isabelle said "I used to think that 'beautiful' was all bright colors and pretty flowers, but now I see that rocks and sky and light can be beautiful too."

Despite the noise from the teens camped down-canyon, the girls fell quickly to sleep after
climbing, exhausted, into the tent. I lay awake for a few hours, looking up at the stars from my nearby bedroll, before finally drifting off to sleep.

The next day dawned cloudy, cool, and dreary. The forecast when we set off had called for this day and the next to be quite chilly and potentially rainy and I knew we would nevertheless need to make solid progress unless the weather was absolutely prohibitive. Thus I got the girls up early as I started off the morning's egg-scramble breakfast with a cup of hot chocolate for each of them. This gave a good start to their morning, and they began taking down camp as I cooked up the eggs, scrambled with some veggie sausages, tomatoes, and avocado. I realized this morning that I'd forgotten to grab the three packs of cheddar cheese that I'd purchased for the trip, so we had no cheese in our eggs.

With impressive speed and efficiency we broke down camp and got the boats loaded up for the day. As a light rain began to fall, we paddled down and re-entered the main current of the river well ahead of the larger group camped nearby. The day was going to be largely a play-it-by-ear day. I hoped to make big miles, but would remain flexible given the uncertain conditions. We paddled through gorgeous canyon country for a few hours, through intermittent rains and upcanyon winds. The girls continued to trade off between boats, and we enjoyed another lunch in the boats. You can see from the following photo of Isabelle proudly displaying her bagel that it was clearly much colder than the prior day:



At one point, shortly after lunch, fifteen miles or so into our day's journey, the upcanyon winds became dangerously strong--at their worst they can create three-foot standing waves and make forward progress impossible. We immediately brought the two boats together and found a place to escape to dry land. I tied up the boats in a small protected eddy and we huddled under some overhanging rocks at the base of the cliffs for about an hour until the winds subsided sufficiently. At one point the girls wandered off in the drizzle to find a place to pee.

When we got back in the boats the weather relented somewhat and we made good progress for five more miles to Bowknot Bend, a place where the river makes a giant seven-mile loop back on itself and you can climb up a steep trail to a gap in the cliffs from where you can see the river on either side. When we reached the take-out for the hike the weather had become calm, sunny, and warm. You had to exit the boats up a vertical three-foot embankment, and there was a shortage of solid places to tie up the boats, but eventually we got ashore and secured our boats.

Unfortunately, as I was gathering snacks and water for the hike up to the overlook, Aliy got some sand in her eye and became inconsolably grumpy. She wouldn't let me flush her eye with water, preferring to sit and whine and complain. This was essentially the only time on the often uncomfortable week-long trip when she got this way, so I don't mean to give her a hard time about it now. But neither Isabelle nor I wanted to miss this hike, so we set off leaving Aliy to rest and pout at the base of the hike.

The hike was steep, pleasant, and brief. Soon we found ourselves at the overlook and I snapped the following photo of Isabelle overlooking the river just as it enters the seven-mile bend:


I also snapped the following photo showing the river on either side of the Bend:

When we got back down to the boats the sun was shining and Aliy's mood had lifted somewhat. As we prepared to launch, we encountered another party of three canoes who had decided not to make the hike but were resting in their boats at the trailhead. We talked for a while, then they set off just prior to our launching.

Though it was sunny, the winds were swirling and there were some dark and ominous clouds forming in the distance as we started off downriver, entering the giant loop in the river. We quickly passed two of the three canoes from the other party, as they were having difficulty managing their boats in the blustery winds. Eventually the winds settled and we made good progress through the bend. At about the midway point, the leading canoe from the other group pulled aside to wait for the rest of their party and we passed them.

Shortly thereafter the dark clouds were virtually upon us, and I realized that things could get ugly very quickly. I called Aliy, who was then paddling the kayak, over to us, had her hold onto the gunwale of the canoe, and paddled the pair of boats over close to shore, searching for a place to pull out. No sooner had I accomplished this than the winds began to howl--downriver this time--immediately increasing our speed from five miles per hour to an estimated ten-to-twelve miles per hour.

While the more common up-canyon winds can create very dangerous standing waves and require you to get off the river quickly, they at least slow one's progress downriver, making it much easier to navigate the boats to solid ground. Downcanyon winds, with dangerous destabilizing gusts, can also necessitate a quick exit from the boats, but they make matters worse by hurtling you along at nerve-racking speeds relative to the safe and solid river banks.

At this point on the river, there is thick vegetation all along the banks which makes finding an exit point very difficult. There are occasional small breaks behind points where the vegetation protrudes further out from the river--this breaks the wind and slows the current, providing a sort of semi-eddy into which I knew we could, with some difficulty, escape. Thus I pointed the boats upriver, angled toward the near shore, the kayak joined to the canoe on the upriver side, as close to shore as was feasible, waiting to dart into one of these breaks.

When I spied one Isabelle and I paddled furiously (Aliy could not paddle as she was tasked with keeping her boat secured to ours) to escape the main flow into the half-shelter along the shore. But we didn't quite make it and we kept moving downriver, now too close to shore. As I backpaddled furiously I saw that we were not going to clear an overhanging bush, and I yelled to Isabelle "Down! Down! Down!" She ducked into the boat just as it scraped overhead. I then turned the boats 360 degrees, whipping the bow away from shore and repositioning the boat for another attempt.

This time our furious paddling brought us ashore, and Isabelle and I were both clutching at roots and bushes along the bank to try to hold us there, but Isabelle's grip gave out and the river tugged us back into the main flow. Once again we were pulled under a sweeper and Isabelle ducked below the branches into the belly of the canoe.

For the third attempt I spy a much more substantial half-eddy, and we are just able to pull in behind a wind-break into some relatively calm waters. We clamber out of the boats onto the soggy shore and find ourselves in a most unpleasant tangle of bushes and low-hanging branches. At this point it is quite late--well after six--and we have covered an impressive 25 miles in variable weather. I'm not at all certain that we will be able to get out of here before nightfall, and assess the prospects of setting up camp in this spot. It was obvious that, while it would have been doable, it wouldn't have been at all pleasant.

After the leading edge of the storm passes through, the weather stabilizes, but there are still steady and strong down-canyon winds, so I am reluctant to relaunch the boats. In the meantime, Isabelle decided that now is the time when she must absolutely inaugurate the toilet (all parties must carry and use a sealed toilet system to remove all solid human waste from the canyons). I dutifully climb into the canoe to extract the toilet, set it up for her in the only flat area nearby and turn around to let her do her business. Soon it is all closed back up and stored safely in the canoe.

A good hour passes, and I am cold and wet, having given my best warm-when-wet clothing to the girls. I constantly check in with the girls and conclude that they are nowhere near as cold as I am. I know that hypothermia is a real possibility, so I decide that I must either relaunch the boats and begin the warming work of paddling the boats, or decide to camp here and start a fire for dinner and fire up the stove to get some hot chocolate in me. As the wind has abated somewhat and this would have made a truly miserable campsite I tell the girls (who are anxious to move on) to saddle up. We get back in the boats and are soon making good progress downriver in safe conditions.

I know of two nearby campsites: the first a very good campsite three miles downriver, but with no hiking opportunities, and the second a decent campsite five miles downriver with better hiking. Since I fear that the next day's weather may be even worse (the forecast called for the following day to be even colder with a greater likelihood of rain), I want to be somewhere that we could go for a hike if we cannot get back in the canoes. Thus I bypass the excellent campsite at Oak Bottom for the good hiking of Horseshoe Canyon. When we arrive at the entrance to the side canyon, it is well into dusk and I am borderline dangerously cold.

We navigate the boats a hundred meters or so up the river's backflow into the canyon and remain enveloped in dense vegetation as the water becomes too shallow to continue. I jump from the boats and clamber up the shore to search for a suitable flat spot for camping. I find a pretty good spot actually, though reaching it requires climbing through bushes and over deadfalls. I tell the girls that we must work quickly to get camp set up because we all need to get dry and warm.

After lugging the bare essentials up to the campsite I immediately start the charcoal burning and set up the tent. Once the tent is finished I put the girls in there with the bag of dry clothes and set them to changing out of their wet things. Then I fire up the stove and get some hot chocolate brewing, which I pass in to them just as they've gotten dry. Next, dinner goes on the grill as I begin heating more water on the stove for my own hot chocolate. Only after drinking the warming beverage do I begin to relax.

As it's getting fully dark, I pass the veggie dogs into the tent for the girls. They seem to enjoy these as I've rarely seen them enjoy any food in their lives. I sit outside in the growing darkness devouring my own sirloin burgers. Soon thereafter I climb into the tent, and we are all quickly asleep.

I had told the girls that, since we'd made 55 miles in the first two days (leaving us with 65 miles to travel in four and a half remaining days), we could take the third day off from paddling and just explore the nearby canyon if the weather wasn't nice. But the morning of the third day dawned much more promisingly than I expected, and I wanted to get back on the river. I left the decision up to them, though, telling them that they could decide after the pancake breakfast. We took turns having pancakes, cooked one at a time and served with real maple syrup and squeeze parkay. Both of the girls said "I've never squeezed butter from a bottle before." Aliy, who somehow finds syrup too sweet, had peanut butter and jelly on her pancakes. We each ate three pancakes, and then the girls decided that, since the sun was coming out and the skies were showing blue patches, they'd rather get back out on the river.

Once we'd decamped and loaded up the boats, we set out to make our way back down the side-canyon to the main river. While I had been able to turn the kayak around in the narrow stream for Aliy to paddle out, it proved impossible to rotate the longer, heavier canoe. I said to Isabelle, "Well we could just back-paddle out of here" and Aliy, never lacking in common sense, said "Why don't you just turn around?" And, while that presented comfort challenges given the position and layout of the seats and gear, this proved to be the best way to navigate the canoe out of the shallow, narrow side-canyon.

Once we got out on the river the weather brightened considerably, and, while it remained an unseasonably cool day for the Utah desert, it was a brilliant day to spend leisurely paddling fifteen miles down the Green River through Labyrinth Canyon. Early in the day, we were realxing along the river and I took this shot of the girls:

They intended to give the peace sign, but apparently only one of Isabelle's fingers responded to the neural signals from her brain, so she inadvertently flipped me off. There was no end of laughter about this picture. Later, someone snapped the first picture of me:

One final shot from the river that day shows Isabelle kicking back in the bow of the canoe:

Ten miles into the day's paddle we passed Mineral Bottom on river left. This is the only (rough, steep, dangerous, dirt) road access to the river along our route and a common put-in and take-out for paddlers looking to complete half the 120 miles that we were traveling. This was where the Brady Bunch were planning on taking out, and the party of three canoes we'd met the day before was on shore here waiting for their shuttle vehicle to arrive. We exchanged pleasantries and discussed the weather-related challenges of the prior day. This would be our last encounter with other people for a full 72 hours.

About 90 minutes after passing Mineral Bottom, we came to our chosen campsite for the night, at Horsethief Canyon. After paddling a few hundred feet up the backflow into this canyon we spotted an obvious takeout and, just above the landing, a beautiful campsite with lots of open space, good vistas, excellent nearby hiking and exploration opportunities, and soft level areas for sleeping. The only problem was that, for some reason, this place was heavily infested with mosquitoes (nowhere else did we suffer from much of a bug problem). Nobody wanted to go back to the boats to unload gear since this was where the mosquitoes were thickest. But eventually, after liberal use of bug lotion ("Why didn't you get the spray?!" they whined--it never occurred to me that it mattered), we had camp set up (the tent's around the corner to the right--you can see its shadow):

The girls spent the afternoon exploring the canyon walls above the campsite, where they found a deposit of crystals that they mined for what seemed like hours. Meanwhile, I took a brief hike up the flat canyon floor that appeared to go on for miles and miles, and then returned to join them at their scenic overlook. Later we made dinner (black-bean burgers for the girls and gourmet brats for me) and had s'mores for dessert over the wood fire (we started out with charcoal, and the girls collected and added wood to keep the fire going until after dark. I retired early to read and left the girls to enjoy talking and laughing around the campfire.

By the next morning we were clearly out of the bad weather spell. We awoke and enjoyed a breakfast of egg scrambles again--this time with a bit of ricotta cheese (pilfered from the spaghetti night ingredients). Aliy and I had ours with a ton of onions and tomatoes (a bit too many onions for Aliy's tastes) in addition to the ricotta and sausages, while I made a separate batch for Isabelle with just cheese and veggie sausages.

Breaking camp had become routine, and we were soon in the boats headed back through Labyrinth Canyon. On this day we would actually pass out of Labyrinth into a wide, open area called Tower Park for a few miles before entering Stillwater Canyon in Canyonlands National Park (up until then we'd been on BLM lands). Just before leaving Labyrinth, though, we planned a hike up to an overlook and ancient masonry tower at Fort Bottom. So, five miles into the days paddle, we pulled into an eddy at Fort Bottom, packed up the camera, lunches and water, and hiked up a hot steep hill to an old stone tower:

The final 12 feet up to the level of the tower required some challenging class four climbing, and I helped the girls past this difficult obstacle. At the tower I snapped a couple of photos of the girls, first peering through a window:

And then standing next to the structure:

Then we hiked back down the hill to the remains of a hundred-year-old cabin where we ate our lunch in some rare shade. After resting awhile we got back in the canoes and left Labyrinth canyon behind for good and entered Tower Park. From Tower Park, we could first see some of the famous formations of Canyonlands National Park, such as Buttes of the Cross. You can see the buttes in the distance behind the paddling Aliy in the the next photo:

The Powell Expedition initially named this formation the "Butte" (singular) of the cross since they mistook the two formations, aligned in their sight-line, for a single one, and they thought is resembled a "fallen cross." Here are the buttes closer-up:

When they got further down-river and saw that the single formation was indeed two, they renamed them the "Buttes" (plural) of the cross. And that is the name it keeps today.

Just beyond where these photos were taken, the geological character of the surrounding sandstone changed noticeably and "White Rim" sandstone made its first appearance right at the riverline. As the miles passed, the White Rim sandstone climbed higher along the walls above us. After passing through a few miles of short white canyon walls we approached Millard Canyon, a camping area in Canyonlands' Maze District where I'd camped the year before with a group of friends, mostly from Denver. It all looked perfectly familiar, though the river was noticeably higher and our swimming area was in deeper water and no longer contained a protective eddy.

Past Millard, we passed under the cliffs that I'd hiked along the prior year and, after a few miles and some interesting, swirling river eddies, reached Anderson Bottom. I had hiked to this area from Millard the prior year and knew of an excellent slot canyon for hiking and some well-preserved pictographs that I wanted to show the girls. I also knew that there was an excellent campsite here, and planned on spending the night.

We found a good place to beach the canoes at precisely the spot where the prior year my group had pumped water from the Green. We did this without letting the silt settle out from the river water first, which is very hard on the filters and requires constant cleaning to keep the water flowing through the apparatus. As an aside, I'd brought a pump along to supplement the 13 gallons of water with which we'd started this trip, but I planned on settling the water out in our bailing bucket prior to pumping. With the unseasonably cool weather we'd experienced, though, we were not drinking water at quite the rate I'd planned, and our initial supply proved more than adequate (just). I never had to pump!

After setting up camp on the increasingly windy flats of Anderson Bottom, I let the girls enjoy the can of baked beans that I'd neglected to feed them on their fist night of veggie dogs. They devoured these enthusiastically. After their bellies were satisfied, and they'd had a brief rest, they wanted to go swimming in the small eddy where we'd beached our boats. After checking out the situation (some small potential for them to get careless and be swept into the main current of the river, I said they could swim, but only in their life-vests and only with me standing guard with the throw-rope on the downstream side of the eddy. They thought these precautions reasonable and enjoyed a good hour of splashing around in the silty water, and running in circles around the eddy along the sticky, muddy river-bottom.

After they recovered from the swim, we filled our water bottles and headed out for the hike to the slot canyon. Unfortunately, the approach to the slot was longer than I recalled, and the girls got a little disheartened hiking under the hot desert sun for maybe a mile and a half, as I kept promising: "It's worth it."

Eventually we reached the narrowing slot, and the girls were disappointed that, despite the recent rains, the giant puddle at the base of the slot was only about one-third as large and deep as I'd described from the prior year. But once they got over this initial disappointment, they loved exploring up the narrow canyon and trying to ascend its difficult falls sections. Here they are looking up at me from just after wading through the initial puddle. I have a photo of me standing on that boulder above their heads from the prior year posted somewhere on the internet:
Next is a photo of the girls stemming across a narrow section of the slot:

And finally a shot of Aliy attacking one of the most challenging sections of the canyon:


The girls did each need my help negotiating some of the more challenging vertical sections, but they enjoyed trying everything they could to ascend them entirely on their own before finally resigning themselves that they needed a little assistance. In all, they clearly agreed that this hike was fun enough to justify the long, hot, flat approach.

I should note one puzzling observation about Aliy. When I take Aliy to the climbing gym, she frustrates me to no end because as soon as she gets ten feet off the floor she becomes terrified, even though she is on a failsafe safety system and could not possibly fall and hurt herself. But that fear doesn't seem to translate to canyon exploration. She will climb fearlessly up along canyon walls with long and dangerous falls beneath her with nary a thought for her own safety.

On the way back, of course we had to backtrack along the unpleasant approach hike, but we made a side diversion up to some well-preserved Indian pictographs along the section of canyon wall (these were discovered by Nao the prior year). The girls were actually so tired that they only approached just close enough to see the rock art, but I got a fair bit closer and snapped the following photo:

Anderson Bottom contains a few other gems: some ancient Indian granaries hidden among some cliff walls, an old and active spring (that contains far too much organic matter to make it suitable for drinking), and some old cave-like dwellings that have been used over the years to store port-a-toilets by people cruising the river by powerboat. Since the girls were pretty worn out, though, we saved these explorations for another trip.

When we returned to camp, dusk was soon upon us and we set to making dinner--it would be the last of our refrigerated food cooked over charcoal. The ice, expected to last through this night actually, due to the cold, made it another 24 hours, but this was the last of our chilled food supply. It was veggie dogs for the girls and once again gourmet brats for me. After dinner I cooked a blueberry cake made from Krusteaz blueberry muffin mix over the still-hot coals, and we shared this delicacy liberally coated in the nearly-exhausted supply of squeeze parkay.

Once again I retired to the tent to read and left them to enjoy a wood fire and conversation. Just before heading to bed, I snapped this picture of the gorgeous desert night sky:

And this one of Aliy laughing at the fireside:

That night was exceptionally windy, and I wound up getting up in the middle of the night to ensure that the fire had been properly extinguished and that everything had been properly secured so that nothing could blow away. When I returned from my rounds, I snapped a photo of the girls in their sandy-floored tent--as you can see, their early-trip clean-tent fetish had fallen by the wayside:


The following morning it was still windy and I was a little nervous about the conditions on the river. We had another pancake breakfast and enjoyed a leisurely morning around camp. I was hoping that the winds would abate, but they stayed strong and I soon decided that we'd best go ahead and get on the river and see how the conditions developed. Fortunately, the wind seemed to be localized at Anderson Bottom, for as soon as we rounded a nearby bend in the river all was calm.

That morning was the first genuinely hot day on the river. Up until then, "swimming" from the boats had been limited to the girls occasionally lowering themselves quickly into the water to empty their bladders. But on this morning I decided to shake things up a bit. So in a wide, slow, gentle section of river I stood up unannounced, and leapt from my canoe seat into the chilly river waters. When I resurfaced I could hear the girls screaming and asking whether I'd fallen out of the boat. I assured them that I'd merely wanted to take a quick swim. After I climbed back into the canoe I cajoled them into taking a genuine swim in the river from the boats.

After much negotiation to ensure that they would both enter the water simultaneously and swim one full circuit around the canoe, they eventually lowered themselves, laughing and screaming, fully into the river. The following photo captures a moment from their experience:

After the swim we enjoyed scenic miles of paddling with the famous White Rim becoming visible on the upper canyon walls thousands of feet above us. We rounded (the perhaps not politely-named) Turk's Head formation, seen below with the girls in the canoe beneath (I'd finally permitted the girls to paddle the canoe alone, leaving them on their own to talk for a few miles at a time--though always within view and only in perfect weather):

After Turk's Head, we decided to explore an unnamed side canyon. We selected one that I dubbed, informally, Elephant Canyon since it was just above the point where the "Elephant Canyon Formation" makes its first appearance in the main canyon. Hiking a side-canyon is an uncertain proposition--you may get a few hundred feet up the canyon to find it's blocked by non-navigable falls. But we got lucky and found ourselves exploring a seemingly-endless, narrow (not slot-narrow), twisty, gorgeous canyon that featured a small cave and a few easy falls to climb.

About a half-mile up the canyon it opened up into a large park that afforded views up to the White Rim above. The girls found a fabulous perch on which to rest:

And we all enjoyed the expansive views up toward the distant canyon rim:

I could have hiked on and on, but it was clear that the girls were ready to return to the boats so we made our way back from here. Only a few miles after getting back into the boats, we'd reached our destination for the night--Horse Canyon (notice a pattern? Horseshoe, Horsethief, Horse). Once again we reached camp relatively early in the day and had a gorgeous site all to ourselves. We did a little hiking, played some Frisbee on the wide, flat, sandy wash, and the girls went swimming and took a mud-bath:

After drying a bit, they tried to stand up:

Reading, more Frisbee, a dinner of spaghetti, ricotta, and sauce, and a failed attempt to make a chocolate chip cake without eggs (it was truly inedible) rounded out our evening. The girls had planned on making a wood fire, but they opted to skip this and go to the tent and read and talk. I laid out my bedroll on the soft sand and fell asleep while watching the quarter moon glide silently along the canyon rim.

The next morning, with the orientation of the canyon walls, we didn't get direct sunlight until quite late and I let the girls sleep until an unprecedented ten o'clock. I'd been up and reading and puttering about for hours when they finally emerged, well-rested, from the tent. The best food was all gone, and it was granola with powdered milk for breakfast. Since neither teen was interested in the powdered milk and only wanted the cereal dry, I made them the last of the hot chocolate and surreptitiously added a bunch of powdered milk into their drinks.

They ate, we packed up, and we were soon on the river for our last full day of paddling. It was another gorgeous, warm (but not too-hot) day, and we had roughly fifteen miles to go, leaving us with five quick miles for the final morning. We enjoyed many breathtaking views of the White Rim on the upper canyon walls, such as the one visible in this photo of the girls in the canoe:


That sixth day, around noon, we reached Jasper Canyon, where I knew there were ruins. I saw that another group had their canoes beached at Jasper Canyon, so our 72 hours of solitude was officially at an end.

We piloted our boats up the backflow into the wash. The other party had beached along the outer canyon, so we essentially caught up to them while still in the boats and joined them at the 200-foot-high falls in the upper canyon. We said our polite hellos (each party disappointed to see the other) and they pointed the girls to a 200-foot droplet shower falling in one corner of the circular falls. Here the girls are enjoying the cold clear droplets:

On the way back down the canyon we stopped at the ruins of an ancient cliff-dwelling:


Another eight miles of beautiful, serene paddling would bring us to our final camping spot of the trip, at Powell Canyon. While the access to the site was steep and rocky, it was actually quite a nice site, with several excellent places for tents and a pleasant riverside lounging area. Unfortunately, though, the orientation of the canyon at that point left us exposed to direct sunlight well into the evening, and the girls had both suffered painful sunburn on their upper thighs. I encouraged them to wet some t-shirts and drape them over their laps. This seemed to afford them some relief. After setting up camp, I opted to go for a swim and the girls felt compelled to snap a photo of my post-swim hair:


Red ants were also a potential problem at this site, but, though there were millions roaming about, they seemed completely disinterested in bothering us loitering humans. Nobody felt much like hiking that evening, so we basically ate our remaining dinner food (spaghetti again--no cheese this time since I'd let the Parmesan get soaked by river water--don't ask), read, and hung out by the cool riverside. Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, the sun passed below the canyon walls and we had some much-coveted shade. Shortly thereafter, we were all asleep.

The final morning we had to get ourselves five miles downriver by 11 am. I told the girls that they could sleep as late as 8:30. Isabelle was up by 7:30, but Aliy used all her alloted time and had to be woken (which, inevitably with her, means for some grumpy-time). As we were breaking camp, Isabelle announced that she had to use the "Growler" one final time (on river trips, this is the official name for the toilet).

As a linguistic aside, it was curious to me how quickly they adopted the unusual term "growler" while they resisted my every concerted effort to get them to properly refer to our daily activity as "paddling" rather than their preferred (and maddeningly wrong) "rowing."

Anyway, there was no suitably private place for the growler at this particular campsite, and just as she was settling in to her business, the party we'd seen at Jasper Canyon the prior day came paddling around the bend, bringing her nearly into full view. She finished up in world-record time.

Shortly thereafter we were on the river for our final bittersweet five miles of (what's it called, boys and girls?) paddling. After one quick mile we reached the convergence of the Green with the more voluminous Colorado river. At this point you could see the two rivers, with their different silt compositions, and thus different colors, swirling together, becoming one. Aliy snapped a perfect self-portrait with the canoe in the background just above the convergence:

Below the convergence there is four miles of swift water with a few standing waves down to the takeout at Spanish Bottom. The girls had a blast going through these and Aliy did a great job keeping the kayak upright through these only real rapid-like sections of the trip. Just below one particularly swift section the perfect take-out spot revealed itself to us. I knew I could easily get the canoe into the eddy, but Aliy was a little downstream, and I worried that she might not be able to fight the current into the protected waters of the sandy, beach-like eddy. Isabelle and I were screaming at her to paddle hard into the eddy, and she made it back in like a pro (just barely).

Once ashore, we set to unpacking our gear, cleaning the canoe, and disassembling the kayak in preparation for the jetboat's expected arrival in one half hour. I was surprised that the other party, whom I knew to be going out on the same jetboat, had not come ashore at this perfect spot. I saw one of their boats at a lousy, awkward takeout on the other side of the river and couldn't figure out where their other two boats were.

A few moments later, two waterlogged men wandered up-river on the shore and told us that they'd flipped their canoe in the large standing wave, and swam their boat to shore a few hundred yards downriver from our perfect take-out location. In the ensuing confusion, one boat had gone ashore on the other side, and the other was with them. They decided to carry their gear upriver to our beach since it was clearly perfectly suited for a jetboat landing.

Soon enough the jetboat arrived, Driven by the charismatic Darren. After we all got our gear and boats securely stowed on the water taxi, we settled into our seats for the two-hour, fifty-mile ride up the Colorado to Potash boat-ramp near Moab. Here is Isabelle relaxing on the jetboat:


And here are Aliy and I:

Here is a photo of the jetboat being trailered at Potash:

One final photo follows of me on the bus back to Moab from Potash. As we made our way back on the bus, I became increasingly convinced that I knew the guy driving the bus. After about fifteen minutes racking my brain, I homed in on his possible identity--he looked a lot like a guy I'd taken a few philosophy classes with sixteen years ago at the University of Montana. I didn't know him at all well (and liked him even less), but somehow I pulled the name Andy out of thin air.

When the bus parked I was the last to disembark and I asked him on the way out if his name perchance was Andy. Turned out he was the guy. He clearly had only a fuzzy memory of me, but we knew many of the same people and reminisced about friends and professors for a few minutes.

Perhaps some people might think this an unimpressive life for an intelligent and thoughtful college graduate, but I thought, in all sincerity, "driving a shuttle bus for river trips is about the best possible job for a philosphy graduate--certainly better than being an actuary." No slight to happy actuaries intended. Anyway, here's me on the bus:


And, finally, for all those who've been wondering "What's the deal with the subtitle to this post?" This photo should make it crystal clear:

To wrap up, forgive me for making a sweeping and unprovable claim about this trip (anybody who's read my prior trip reports knows I'm prone to such rhetorical grandiosity), but I hereby assert that nobody has ever taken two pampered, comfort-loving city girls on a more successful week-long wilderness trip of any kind, to any destination, in the history of humankind.

Three Days in the San Rafael Swell

I brought the girls out to visit their grandmother in Fruita, Colorado for Spring Break with the intention of spending five days bushwhacking up canyons in East-Central Utah. An outbreak of Strep throat amongst Peyton and the Colorado cousins forced me to reallocate some solo desert time to parental nursing and coddling duties, leaving me with three or four days starting Wednesday the 26th of March.

After verifying that Peyton was on the road to rapid recovery that morning, I headed out at approximately nine am. I had chosen to do the Cottonwood Wash hike from Steve Allen's classic guide to the little-visited San Rafael Swell, Canyoneering. I had done a couple of day hikes from this book in 2007 and was looking forward to a rugged, extended outing in this remote high desert landscape.

The Cottonwood Wash route was suggested as a four-day trip, with possible side excursions available to extend the trip up to a week or longer. Originally, pre-strep, I had planned on combining this trip with the East and West forks of Red Canyon day hike for a five-day excursion, but now I was resolved to just stick to the primary route, knowing that I might finish in three days if my tendency towards an aggressive pace and long days held the day.


The forecast for the following four days called for highs in the sixties and lows in the mid-thirties--just about ideal weather for an early-spring trek into the high desert of Utah. On the hundred-mile drive to the trialhead, I listened to a wide selection of favorite songs from my iPod, including two of particular significance. The first was a 1984. release, entitled "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)" by the British Neo-Psychedelic rock band, The Icicle Works. I was initially introduced to this song by my friend Craig K. on my first trip to Colorado and Utah at the age of fourteen.

The second was the recent Eddie Vedder song "Hard Sun" written for the soundtrack of Sean Penn's excellent film adaptation of Jon Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, about Christopher McCandless, the young man who met his demise in an abandoned, gutted bus in the shadow of Mount McKinley.

I left the interstate just West of Green River, and headed north on a well-maintained gravel county road. I followed this for eleven sinuous miles, then turned right onto a more rugged road--one that the average small sedan owner might think twice about negotiating. I had to open, pass through, and then close a wire gate to start down this road, and a second one after one mile.

Finally, after four and a half miles, I reached the foot of Cottonwood Wash. I saw no one since leaving the interstate, and bottomed out my car twice in the final two miles. I got out of the car, assembled my gear, and snapped the following photo of myself about to depart:

It was about noon as I headed up Cottonwood, and I snapped the following photo in the first half-mile of the broad, inviting canyon:


Allen's book suggested that there were some aging and badly-faded pictographs up on the northern wall just up-canyon from where the preceding photo was shot. After about a half-hour of scanning the upper canyon walls, I was able to make them out. I scrambled up the canyon walls without my pack to get a better look, and the following photo is representative:


After scrambling down from the pictographs, I saddled backup with my pack and started the more arduous journey up the canyon. The lower part of the wash soon narrowed, and was often clogged with rough and spiny vegetation. The canyon divided a number of times, and with the help of my topographic maps and guidebook, I was able to have constant awareness of my location and the proper route to take up the canyon. The following photo shows a formation at a split in the canyon. I had stopped to take a look at the map:


I was carrying two and a half liters of water at the start. Indications were that at this time of year there should be active springs and available water further up the canyon. I had noted some remaining snow patches down low in the canyon and comforted myself with the knowledge that, even were the springs to be dry, there would likely be at least some snow available up at camp.

During the first day's hike, I was resolved to try to make it to camp without eating any food. Mind you, there was no good reason for this--it was just one of those silly little notions I got fixated upon. So as I made my way up the increasingly-narrow and steep canyon, hunger became my constant companion. Higher up, approaching the area where there was supposed to be an ideal site for camp and an active spring for water, there were a number of small falls and chutes to negotiate. While they were all very easy, the addition of a full pack did add to the challenge. The following two photos give some idea of the scrambling involved. The first shows me mid-way up a fall section, carrying my pack:



And the second shows a chute that was a little more challenging to ascend:


Soon after this chute, I reached the flat sandy area between two falls where the first night's camp was suggested. I was dismayed to discover that the reported spring was dry, but had noted some snow up against the canyon walls on the south (north-facing) side, and knew that I would be able to melt snow for the night's cooking and drinking, and for the next day's initial needs.

I was famished and exhausted, so quickly set up the tent and ate a quick round of cold foods--a bagel with cream cheese, some almonds, and a big hunk of summer sausage. After snapping the following photo of my camp-site, I lay down for a brief afternoon nap to let the food rejuvenate my morale:


I awoke as the sun was getting low in the sky and realized that I had much work yet to do. I gather up my cooking supplies and my food and, carrying these items in a large stuff-sack, headed up the canyon's south walls towards the visible patches of snow. They were not too difficult to reach, and, once there, I set to melting snow on for cooking and drinking. The hard, icy snow was challenging to break apart, and took some time to melt. I soon realized that this not-planned-for and fuel-hogging exercise would rapidly deplete my fuel supply, making it impossible to cook four days' worth of hot foods. So at this point I decided to complete the hike in three days rather than four.

The initial supply of melted snow went towards the cooking of spaghetti, and after I consumed my pasta dinner, I melted enough to fill by belly with water and replenish my two-and-a-half liter supply. Then I headed back down to camp just as the sun was setting. The following photo, snapped earlier in the day, shows the general location of camp, from above:



I slept well that night after reading a few chapters from the giant book, Anna Karenina, which I had chosen to lug along.

I woke with the sun and quickly packed up camp and ate a large bowl of granola with powdered milk, and a big mug of hot chocolate. It was cool that morning, but not uncomfortable so. I also melted enough additional snow that morning to fully replenish my supply. I wasn't certain whether I would be able to find any water until late in the day, after crossing over a high plateau and entering another canyon. Shortly after setting out I snapped the following self-portrait:


As I climbed up the final half-mile or so to the saddle of Cottonwood Canyon, passing through a broad parklike region where the upper canyon walls were twisted and misshapen, I encountered the skeletal remains of a Bighorn Sheep. The following photo shows his head, but his entire spinal column and ribcage lay nearby:



It was at this point that I realized that the fine sand of the desert had polluted my camera's inner workings, and the camera only worked sporadically through the remainder of the second day, and virtually not at all on the third day.

After the sheep, I soon found myself at the apex of the canyon, looking down on Big Hole Wash, as shown below:



I picked my way down the slope to the flat area below, then headed left (south) up that shallow wash to a large and unclimbable fall. Just below this fall, a cow had apparently broken its leg and lay in a crumpled, bloated, fetid mess of twisted limbs. I backtracked from the fall to find a lower cliff that was easy to ascend, then traversed along the cliff-top to just above the fall. From here, I picked my way south to the large unbroken expanse of Box Flat:


From the south end of Box Flat, visible between the two plateaus in the photo above, the routefinding difficulties began in earnest. Using only compass and map, I had to make my way through a confusing landscape around Nates Ridge to a nearly anonymous vantage point from which I should be able to see the entrance to my descent route through Sulphur Canyon. After some confusion and consternation, I made my way to a point that I strongly suspected was the proper point-of-entry to the canyon. Later, more sober analysis after returning home would convince me completely that I had identified the correct spot, but I did have some doubts as to my precise location at the time.

Due to these doubts, I decided to backtrack slightly and descend a different canyon, the North Fork of Spring Canyon, which I believed (mistakenly it turns out) to be easily navigable. Well, after a few hours of pleasant descent and some mildly challenging chutes and falls, I came to the following 150-foot high, non-descendable fall:


I looked for a reasonable descent route from higher up on the rim, lower down the canyon, but nothing looked too doable with a full pack without taking undue risks, particularly as
I was all alone out there and off-route from my itinerary. At one point, in order to reach the higher rim I located one place where I was able to throw my pack up-and-across a level, but was unable to ascend myself. Then I found another place where I was able, with some difficulty, to jump up and grab a shelf, do a pull-up, and then mantle myself up. I traversed across to retrieve my pack, and snapped this photo down and across the canyon from approxiamtely that vantage point:


At this point, I resolved to back-track and descend either by the originally-planned Sulphur Canyon, or take the next canyon up, Nates Canyon. Of course, this meant several hours of backtracking, never desirable in my world, but it seemed the most prudent course. Fortunately, I had encountered several potholed filled with water higher up in Spring Canyon, and was able to replenish my water supplies there.

By the time I climbed back out of Spring Canyon, it was getting late, so I decided to camp at the original vantage point above Sulphur Canyon. I dropped down a level to attempt to get out of the wind, but it proved fruitless. I ate a cold supper due to my desire to conserve fuel in case I would need to stay out a fourth day or melt more snow for water. After dinner I read for a few hours and then lay awake for hours contemplating the increasingly-violent winds. I felt confident that the intensity would at least die down a few notches after sunset, but it was a good two am before the furious, tent-compressing power of the winds died down and I was able to fall asleep, no longer fearing that I would be blown from my desert perch in a swirling mass of wind-shredded tent.

The next morning, I managed one final photo looking southeast from camp toward Mexican Mountain and the Mexican Bend in the San Rafael river below. Mexican Bend takes the river around Mexican Mountain, which is barely distinguishable in the midground of the photo:



That morning I eschewed hot chocolate and took a good look at the topographical maps and the guidebook. I decided that a descent via Nates Canyon would maximize the chances that I could reach the car on that third day. I therefore circled around the upped reaches of Spring Canyon and entered the next canyon to the north.

Nates canyon proved delightful and challenging in its upper reaches. Several falls had to be navigated around with some difficulty and creativity. In general, the falls are most easily bypassed from the south rim, or the right-hand-side as you look down-canyon. There were some lovely spots and fantastic views that my now completely-broken camera was unable to capture.

After the steeper upper reaches of the canyon, it flattened out for a few miles and the course of the wash was twisty through a wide-open expanse where the canyon walls had retreated to either side. When the canyon narrowed once again, I knew that I would come to a panoramic fall, and that I would be exiting the canyon through a chute just above this fall. Before reaching this point of exit, however, there were some unexpected challenges. Several smaller falls required me to navigate along a steeply-sloping middle shelf between the central wash and the upper canyon rim. Footing here was challenging, and finding a viable route around some smaller towers and other obstacles proved time-consuming but fun.

Finally I reached the high falls, and was disappointed that I was unable to resurrect my camera for one final photo. i exited the canyon through the class two-plus gully, navigated around some higher plateaus, and found a vantage point from which I was able to see my car about 1.5 miles to the northeast, down about 1,000 vertical feet.

This last portion of the route was another unexpected challenge. The landscape was a maze of descending canyons and rims, both of which would occasionally dead-end. The former in non-navigable falls, and the latter in cliff-top peninsulas. Eventually, though, I was able to piece together a viable route and made my way back to the road, intersecting it about one-half mile south of my car.

After reaching the car, I retraced my route back to interstate 70. From the time that I left the interstate to the time I returned to it, I saw neither another human being nor another automobile.