River Rats Return!

We are back from our adventurous river rafting trip. Our journey took 88 miles down the Green River through the Desolation and Gray Canyons. It was filled with history, geology, scenic canyons and amazing fun!

The first night we camped at the put in at Sand Wash, an old ferry site for the river. It is a quick, dusty drive through the oil fields outside of Duchesne to the river. The mosquitoes were beyond ridiculous! Luckily we reserved a screened cabin to cook and sleep in. We got up, rigged the rafts, and headed out on our journey. The first day was mostly flat water, but my husband (gotta love him!) convinced his dad that we needed a motor to speed things up. We camped at Stampede Flat and boy were we surprised to find that there were more mosquitoes than Sand Wash. It was unbelievable. No amount of any kind of bug spray worked. I was wearing 2 layers of clothes covering my whole body and somehow they still got through! We should have motored on through a little further because the farther we got down the river the better the mosquitoes got. During a brief stop, we saw an old iron skiff that had been left on the shore. We also saw wild horses and sure-footed mountain goats.

On day two, we went from Stampede Flat to Three Canyon rapid. Turns out the motor wasn't as good of an idea as we thought.... Going through one rapid, we didn't have enough steering capability and power to have complete control of both the rafts when they were tied together. The combination of the current and the wind pulled us nose first into a huge boulder in the river. Luckily no one was hurt and nothing was damaged. Our camp was great. We had a great amount of flat area for tents right off the river and we could hear the rapids all night. There was a huge aspen, one of the largest I've ever seen. Its twisted roots were exposed in an almost symmetrical ring, creating a great seating area where we placed the firepan in the middle. Above the camp area on the hill was an open meadow with a majestic vista. The three canyons converging on the river creating one of the best views of the trip.

We decided we probably ought to move on down the river a bit to keep a good pace and we had heard that the Joe Hutch Canyon Rapid was now a fantastic rapid especially with the water level and West was very excited to get to it. After a couple of miles we came up on it and pulled off the river to scout it out since the rapid had changed significantly in the last year due to a debris flow from a large mudslide. I have to admit that I was scared and excited to the point of nausea and I wasn't sure how we would fair. The commercial trips and boats flipping all day and the boats with kids were walking all the kids to the other side of the rapid and sending bare bones oarmen through the rapid. We decided to go right of center and then to the left skirting the HUGE hole on the left. There is also a huge wave train. We hit the smaller of the holes on the right and it almost stopped us dead in our tracks. The wake of this rapid is about 8 ft high. You could feel the power of the water rumbling on the floor of the boat and it definitely reminds you of your place in the world! Right at this point, the motor cuts out and Keith and Justun have to get us through this wall of water with their paddling alone. We made it through fine, it wasn't textbook or even pretty, but good enough to get some cheers from the people on the side. Just after Joe Hutch Canyon, we started looking for a campsite and pulled out the snacks. After the excitement of making through Joe Hutch, we let our guard down. This can be catastrophic on the river. Before we new it we were 10 ft away from a rock and being swept right into it. We got the rafts turned to the side and the raft I was on went over the rock, but the rafts were still strapped together. The others didn't fair so well. Their raft got wrapped around a rock, dumping anything not strapped to the rafts (i.e. people) into the river. Then Ross, jumped in after the cooler leaving West, Justun, Jamie, and I to figure this out. We pulled all the gear we could off of the raft by holding JJ over the water by his feet. We tried to separate the straps and it wasn't happening. We got on the high side of the boat to keep the balance when we separated the rafts. When Jamie was trying to get high side, the raft got bumped and Jamie just about fell in. Luckily she got a good grasp on the rope and I grabbed her life jacket and pulled her up. West cut the straps and off the rock we went! Our other raft broke away from the rock and we intercepted it on the side of the river. West jumped in a oared across the river to the other shore where all the lost members of our group had gathered. The rest of us walked down stream and picked up all of the gear that another rafting group had gathered from the river for us. We spun the raft off the shore and motored across the river to meet up with everyone else. As we assessed the damages we discovered we had been very lucky! We had a couple of scraped knees and I had a small cut on my thumb (which bleed EVERYWHERE, you would have thought I severed a major artery!). The only gear we lost was a shoe, a water bottle, and and oar. Pretty dang good, if I say so myself! We bent the frame on the wrapped raft but other than that, that was the only damage. We camped right there on the beach where we pulled out of the river. It was a little out in the open and pretty rocky, but we made due.

We pushed off again the next morning and decided to finish out the river. We skirted Coal Creek the other large rapid and took the safe way through all the rapids. We camped at the pull out at Swasey's Rapid. This is just below Gunnison Butte outside of Green River. We stayed the night and headed for home the next morning. We stopped for an early lunch in Green River and Ray's Tavern. Their burgers are infamous so we thought we ought to try one! They were delish!

All in all it was an awesome trip in the great outdoors with great company. We are planning on going again soon, maybe running up to Jackson Hole for the weekend to run the Snake. Whoever thought that I, afraid of water as I am, would become a river rat, but I think its happening.

We forgot to pick up some waterproof disposable cameras so we didn't take any pictures. But, I found some great pictures on another blog. Follow this link. http://cedarandsand.blogspot.com/2008/09/desolation-canyon.html