Green River Raft Trip

Prequel

Saturday in Steamboat Springs was dedicated to preparing for our raft trip on the Green River. I put in hours of vegetable chopping/lemon squeezing/garlic pressing to make a huge batch of tabouli. Sally made hummus and brownies and added some sautéed chicken to Kate and Liza’s big pot of curry. Mark labored on mysteries concerning the raft and its equipage. I agonized over what exactly to pack for the trip and what container to put each item in. The great thing about rafting is that you can take tons of stuff on the raft, so it makes for very cushy camping. But you do have to haul stuff up to the campsite and back to the raft each day, so you don't want to pack too much, and you want to be sure you have certain things easily accessible when you’re on the river (e.g., sunscreen, camera, water bottle, warm clothes in case the weather turns or you accidentally go for a swim), so you have to think about where to pack things. Each of us had a large dry bag for our sleeping bag and bulk of clothing, a small dry bag for bulky items you might want while on the river, and an ammo box for little items you might want on the river. All of these are designed to keep things dry if the raft flips or is swamped by a wave, but I know from past experience that they work only to a point. Fortunately, that was not an issue this trip, except one day when my ammo box got splashed too much and the New Yorker inside was waterlogged.

Sunday morning the packed dry bags, coolers, rafts, etc., were taken to the home of friends and loaded onto two flat-bed trailers. By noon, our caravan of pick-up trucks and minivans headed west on Route 40. We stopped in Craig for lunch, nearly doing in the folks at the City Market deli counter with our volume of business. There were 20 of us: 3 teenage girls, one 30-year man, and the rest of us of an age where you don't disclose your age. Of those, there were 5 married couples, 4 men on the trip without wife or S.O., and 2 sisters, both named Ann. Apart from the sisters, all these people had rafted together before and had the process down to an art: each subgroup responsible for a meal; designated rafts for the "kitchen" (large ammo box with cooking equipment), the "groover" (large ammo box for human waste, so named for the grooves it used to leave in one's derriere before they upgraded to having a more normal toilet seat), camp tables, etc.; everyone working in easy harmony to set up camp, take down camp, rig the rafts, wash the dishes, etc.

Ladore

After lunch in the City Market parking lot, we continued west to Maybell, where we turned northwest on 318 to reach the Gates of Ladore entrance to Dinosaur National Monument. That pearl in the nation’s necklace of public lands begins in the very northwest corner of Colorado and crosses into Utah. The Green River has carved a deep canyon into the Uinta Mountains, and for nearly the entire trip we had 2000-2500 foot walls of rock on either side as we floated down the river. We reached the Ladore campground at about 3 pm, and had the afternoon and evening to putter. A number of us went to the end of the campground road to see the "hatchet" stuck in the rock by the river. It turned out it was a rusted pickaxe head, one spike solidly embedded in solid rock. The rock was beyond any human reach. It was a mystery. How did it get there? Why? When? If you pulled it out, would you be king?

Some us continued beyond the pickaxe on the short nature trail, whose pamphlet explained the geology, ecology and history of the area. The end of the trail afforded a beautiful view of the mouth of the canyon -- the Gates of Ladore. They were so named by a member of John Wesley Powell's team when they arrived here in 1869 on their expedition to fill in the last blank spot on the map of the U.S. The Gates of Ladore were so named by a member of the team who was reminded of "The Cataract of Ladore", a poem by Robert Southey. "The cataract strong/Then plunges along,/Striking and raging/As if a war raging/Its caverns and rocks among;/Rising and leaping,/Sinking and creeping,/Swelling and sweeping," etc., etc. You can read the full poem at http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html.

Big Mike and Brad made us a delicious dinner of steak grilled over briquettes, corn on the cob, and baked beans. After dinner, Big Mike loaded logs on top of the charcoal and we created a circle with our camp chairs. Mark had brought along a 3/4-size guitar, a garage sale special whose 5th string buzzed every time it was plucked and which you wouldn't terribly miss if it ended up at the bottom of the river. As on each night of the float, I played and sang while the others chatted. (Well, a few voluble people chatted while the rest of us listened and laughed.) We watched to the east as the light of the full moon increased above a hill. Then, in a trice, there was the first speck of moonlight, like a bright flashlight. Most people headed to their tents, hoping to sleep despite the intense moonlight -- so bright that one's shadow was sharp on the ground and features of the landscape were discernible miles away.

Day 1

Monday morning I awoke at first light, well before anyone else, and went for a hike on the hill behind the campground. It was thrilling to watch the sun's first horizontal rays light the crests of hills and cliffs on the other side of the river and then advance down their slopes. By the time I got back to camp, Dick and Dana had set out breakfast. They did all the breakfasts for the trip and all were the same tasty selection -- two kinds of Entemann's pastries, 5 kinds of granola, a variety of bagels and cream cheeses, hard boiled eggs, melon, oranges, bananas, apples and orange juice. Each morning, Ken, who doesn't drink coffee, made pot after pot of drip coffee for the rest of us.

We then began the complicated process of loading the 8 rafts and the one "rubber ducky" (kinda an inflatable canoe, or an open-top two-person kayak). Nothing was loaded on Jesse's little one-person kayak. Kayakers get others to haul their stuff, in exchange for hanging around the bottom of rapids in case anyone falls out of the raft. At about 10 am, the ranger came over to do the permit paperwork and verify that we had the proper safety and environmental protection equipment, such as a lifejacket for each person plus an extra for each boat, first aid kits, a screen (to remove solids from dishwash water) and a groover.

Finally we pushed off onto the Green River. Rather than being green, it was a muddy red. This was because heavy rains Friday night had washed red soil into the river from Red Creek and Vermillion Creek. Sally said that, when the water is clear, it is in fact a pretty green. Maybe they should call it the Christmas River, or the Chile River. We had hoped for fairly high water, since it was a huge snow year, but in fact the water was at minimum, the gates pinched tight at Flaming Gorge Dam above us. So we rowed as well as floated into the maw of the Gates of Ladore. We spotted a large insect floating in the water. With fondness, Mark identified it as a Mormon cricket -- he had learned about them on a memorable fishing trip. The cricket had a large brown-red body, very long antennae, and a long, thin tail. Soon we noticed a number of the crickets in the water. Had they been washed in by a spike of dam release in the night?

Shortly after passing the Gates of Ladore, we went through Disaster Falls. Powell's group, having not the benefit of a dam to temper the flow, nor the technique for nimbly rafting whitewater (developed a few decades later), lost one their 4 rafts and lots of their provisions at that point. (Undaunted, they continued on and made their famous exploration of the Grand Canyon.) We had both a dam and rafting technique and bobbed through without incident. After about an hour, we pulled over at a small beach and inhaled the tabouli, hummus, summer sausage, breads, carrots, grapes, chips, and brownies. Then, more rowing between the high walls of blood-red rock, until we reached P0t Creek campground. On the way, we saw three families of geese cross the river and forage in the grass. The goslings were about half grown, their bodies still fuzzy with down. Then we a saw a merganser with 20 tiny babies in tow -- one riding on her back. At times, the group "ran", little puffs skittering across the water.

At Pot Creek we undertook what was the routine for each evening of the trip: everyone first scouted a tent site; a table was set up and adorned with gin, tonic water, limes and ice; someone set up the groover at a site that afforded privacy; and everyone unfolded their chairs in a circle in the shade. We sat around, drank beverages, talked. A group had a cribbage game, using a large cooler as the table, and there was lots of commotion over an insect that joined the game. It was 3 or 4 inches long, had pinchers at its mouth and a long segmented abdomen that dragged behind it like a train for a bride wearing armor. There also were Mormon crickets everywhere -- on the trails, on the rocks, climbing up stalks of grass, on the ground where you wanted to put your tent. At one point I felt a biting sensation on my upper arm, and discovered a Mormon cricket was digging in its claws to perch there. AACCKKKK!

Our camp was on a beach on one side of the river; across the river was an immense wall of blood-red Precambrian rock, the vertical face irregularly cross-hatched with cleavage lines. Even when not in direct sun, that wall seemed to glow, as if from an inner light. The campsite was at first hot, but we were soon in shade as the sun dropped below the high wall behind us.

Vickie and Marty provided the delicious dinner of curried shrimp, salad, and rice, with homemade rhubarb cake for dessert. Some of you know I hate rhubarb, but this was quite tasty (al fresco magic?). After dinner there was a ferociously-fought horse shoes competition, and the cribbage folks played well into the night, a battery-powered lantern hung over the cooler-table.

Day 2

I awoke second after Dick, which meant I got to take a cup of fresh coffee with me to a rock perch above the river, stepping over many Mormon crickets on the way. A beautiful blue jay (which I later identified as a Stellar male, with the handsome black crest) squawked in a nearby tree, and other unseen birds chirped away. Buddhism speaks of "the 10,000 things", meaning the huge variety of things in the universe that our personalities get caught up in -- like children bedazzled in an F.A.O. Schwartz store -- distracting us from the stillness of the soul and knowledge of the Oneness of all. I'd always thought of the 10,000 things as referring to all our material trinkets -- cell phones, TVs, Victoria's Secret nighties, Hummers, Adidas, titanium golf clubs, etc., etc. But sitting there in the stillness of sunrise, not an electronic transmission device nor a mall for furlongs around, I realized that even unadorned Nature provides the 10,000 things. The rush of the river, the redness of the rocks, the green of the trees. What kind of bird is that? What kind of insect? What's the name of that flower? How old are those rocks? What's for breakfast? My mind found many distractions from my meditation mantra.

This was the day of lots of rapids, including the dreaded Hell's Half Mile. Big Mike offered to take me in the rubber ducky. At first I demurred, but then talked myself into being more adventurous. Other women seemed concerned for me. Vickie loaned me her dry jacket, since I unquestionably would be splashed. Dana loaned me her gloves to keep my hands from blistering on the kayak oar. I think they really were proffering talismans against the wrath of the white water. After a few practice rapids, we pulled over at a small beach to see if the water level would come up (rapids are easier with more water to take you over the rocks). While we waited, Ken sunk two short sections of PVC pipe into the sand and brought out a selection of large steel washers, painted in sets of 3, for the game of "washers". This is similar to horseshoes, with the goal being to put the washer in the PVC pipe hole rather than the horseshoe around the stake, but the flat washers will slide on packed sand, adding another dimension to the toss technique. I took 3 washers and, within two sets of tosses, leapt to a 5-0-0 lead over Ken and Big Mike. There I remained for the rest of the game while they built their scores up to 21. After another couple of games (without my abashed participation), we gave up on the water level and floated down to the top of Hell's Half. There we all got out and scrambled downstream, scouting the rocks and currents in the river. The men discussed the pros and cons of left or right at length, and then we each went down, one raft (or rubber ducky or kayak) at a time. Big Mike and I came through upright, although the river insisted we go right where the plan had been left, and there was one dicey moment as we took a unique path at the bottom of the rapids. Everyone else also came through fine, some more elegantly than others. Sally, Mark and Liza found a toy truck at the bottom of their run and tied it to the bow of the raft as river booty.

We continued on to Rippling Brook campground for an excellent lunch of Audrey's chicken curry. Dessert was sunbars -- chewy, sunflower seed-laden cookies that compelled me to eat and eat. (Rationalization: I must have spent lots of calories negotiating Hell's Half. Wink, Wink.) A very fat and relatively fearless chipmunk came scouting for handouts. A dunk in the river felt good in the hot sunshine. We finally got back in the boats for the last leg of the day, which required a fair amount of paddling against a stiff wind. Somewhere in this stretch the tops of the cliffs changed from red to buff, and the name of our campsite was Limestone. Here, the Mormon crickets were replaced by small red beetles that were everywhere and quickly made way into your dry bag, your sleeping bag, the tent, etc. Where there was a tasty morsel of dung or other food of interest, they joined in clusters of 20 or so, looking at a casual glance like a single shimmering red insect.

Charlie and Clare provided the dinner of marinated salmon grilled over charcoal, couscous with pine nuts, and green beans with sliced almonds. Everyone needed a break before the dessert of cream puffs and bing cherries. It was excellent, but foreshadowing of the next day occurred when stiff gusts of wind blew sand into our plates. Exhausted by the thrills of whitewater, I went to bed shortly after sunset.

Day 3

I again woke with first light and went for a hike on the steep talus slope above the camp. The trail at first was stair-like, to get atop a layer of rock, but then went horizontally along the rock, paralleling the river upstream. Eventually it came to a pretty side canyon that was filled with greenery and the sound of a stream. I didn't go down into the canyon, but learned that Brad had done so and had found columbine and other wildflowers down there.

Sally, Mark and I were in the last raft to push off. As we did so, a strong gust of wind blew a cloud of sand around us. It was the weather throwing down its gauntlet. For the rest of the day, the wind blew without surcease. A ranger at our camp that night said he had measured the wind at 47 miles an hour. I doubt it was ever below 8 mph, seldom was below 15-20 mph, and sometimes was at least 80 mph. Mark's strenuous paddling at times did no more than keep us from going upstream, and at times not even that. A couple times we got out and pushed/pulled the raft against the gale. We thus made our way to the point that the Yampa River joins the Green. Opposite the mouth of the Yampa is a sheer rock wall. The Yampa makes a Y at that point, with one small stream flowing in on the upstream side of the Green, and the bulk coming in on the lower leg. We initially tried to row down the Green between the rock wall and the island created by the Y, but the wind pushed us 2 feet up for each foot rowed down. Finally we went with the wind back up to the smaller leg of the Yampa and pushed/pulled the raft up that leg (I felt like Kate Hepburn in The African Queen). This enabled us to use the greater flow of the other leg to take us back downstream into the Green (there was no dam restraint on the Yampa, so that its waters provided a strong current). So, to those of you who asked if I would be on the Yampa as well as the Green, the answer is yes.

After this accomplishment, we rested at a flat rocky island in Echo Canyon, along with other rafters from both our group and another group who had battled hurricane force gales and 3 foot waves. We waited in vain for the wind the die down, and then adventured on. We thus slowly made our way past Mitten Park Fault, where you can clearly see layers of rock turned nearly vertical by upthrusting. Next to it is Steamboat Rock, a narrow upright slab of rock vaguely in the shape of a steamboat, around which the Green makes a hairpin turn. On the far side the wind was less ferocious, and the extra oompf of the Yampa contribution made our progress more rapid. That is, until the oar became stuck in the bottom mud in a shallow area. Mark dived off the raft and vainly attempted to swim upstream to the oar. Sally gamely leapt into the rowing seat, unfastened the extra oar, inserted it in the oarlock, and rowed us to the shore. Fortunately, Charlie and Clare were above us and were able to row to the oar and retrieve it. Charlie dryly pointed out that the wind had been pushing us upstream all day, but right at the moment the oar was lost, the raft happily swept downstream. Mark took off his wet shirt and was happy to row hard against the renewed wind to stay warm.

In Whirlpool Canyon, Sally and I were swamped from head to toe as the raft plunged into some deep troughs of rapids. It therefore was fortunate that we very soon afterward pulled over onto a little beach, where I could put on dry clothes and soak up heat from the sun-warmed sandstone walls and white sand. Ann and Mikey-Mike provided lunch of make-it-yourself wraps of ham, hummus, olives, onions, red peppers, etc., etc. Another stretch of rowing against the wind, and we finally reached Jones Hole camp, a spot we had had no confidence of reaching earlier in the day. It had been colder after lunch, and was overcast by the time we made it to camp. Although I was weary, everyone said the Jones Hole Canyon was worth exploring, so after pitching the tent and putting on some warm clothes, Sally and I followed the spring-fed Jones Hole Creek a ways up, through more beautiful sandstone canyon.

The teenage girls -- Kate, Liza, and Emma -- were in charge of dinner. Kate and Liza had raided their dress-up box and created 20 bags of costumes for the traditional dress-up night. Everyone had to grab a bag (contents unknown), and put on whatever was in it. Of course, several of the men got dresses. Mikey-Mike got a flaming fuchsia satin dress that fit him perfectly and became the diva of the evening. He had a soul-mate in reserved Vermonter Brad, who transformed into an suave entertainer in his Michael Jackson gold lame skin-tight shirt and his one white glove. We also had an Alpine racer, a Frenchman, a cowboy, some colorful bag ladies, a devil, and several who-knows-what. I was amused that aprons my mother had made and worn during my childhood were components of several costumes. After we had spent considerable time laughing with and at each other, we decided to parade over to the next-door campground, which was inhabited by a group also from Steamboat. There was much prancing, parading, flirting, uproar and laughter, and then we returned for our dinner of chicken curry. As we began our dessert of strawberry shortcake in the dusk, there was a sudden uproar from the first persons to see that our next-door neighbors had decided to one-up us by giving us a parade of their naked bodies. Throughout the trip, Sally had prompted "Family trip!" whenever an adult used a foul word or made a ribald reference. All such pretensions were now defeated. After much laughter, the exhibitionists departed and we finished our desserts, admired the last rays of light on distant cliffs, and went to bed. The ranger had predicted rain in the night and more high winds the next day, so we went to sleep with some misgivings.

Day 4

I again awoke early and went back a little ways into the Jones Hole Canyon for meditation and a little walk. Around a corner I came upon a mule deer that, after staring a bit, decided I was harmless and went back to eating grass by the stream. It let me come closer than any other deer I've ever met. Lots of little birds were driving me crazy by singing loudly but appearing invisible. I finally spotted one perched on a high branch and swung up my binoculars, only to discover the lenses were black from water that had gotten inside. Does anyone know what bird goes "dat-dat-dat fwee - ee - ee - ee - eet"?

The ranger's predictions fortunately were wrong. It had not rained, and there was no wind. It was overcast most of the day, which may have been our salvation from the wind (keeping the sun from warming the canyon and causing hot, rising air). We first floated and rowed through the placid and tranquil Rainbow and Island Parks. DEET drenching was necessary to combat the many mosquitoes, but it otherwise was beautiful. Sally was bummed we missed the bison petroglyph on one of the sandstone walls, but I considered this more than compensated for when a hummingbird flew up and hovered a couple seconds right in front of us. (Perhaps it thought our red raft was a flower.)

Back into canyon, we stopped for a lunch of leftovers and a final washers competition. Another very fat chipmunk appeared and begged for handouts. At one point, it had disappeared, and I looked for it beyond some bushes. It did show there, but then was chased off by a rabbit who apparently hoped to have precedent in receiving any treats.

We then had a final set of rapids. Because the water was so high, they were all easily negotiated. (After each rapid, Sally or Mark would proclaim that they usually had to pick their way through rocks at that point, whereas we had sailed through unimpeded.) At about 2 pm, we reached the takeout ramp at Split Mountain. There then was a long process of unloading the rafts, deflating and folding the rafts, and loading the trailers. Once loaded we drove out to Route 40 and headed back east to Steamboat. Along the way we saw a coyote, an elk, a moose, and some buffalo (the latter were being raised domestically). We stopped for dinner in Massadona at a roadside establishment that advertised steaks and seafood. The seafood was shrimp, shrimp, shrimp or cod. The food was fine, but our group of 20 completely overwhelmed the kitchen. So it was about 10 pm when we arrived home, tired, dirty and happy, our heads and hearts full of canyon beauty and river calm.

A note: The other Ann sister was from Boston and New Hampshire. This was her first time West, her first time on a raft trip, and her first time eating curry. If you were counting, we had three curry meals -- 4 if you include leftovers on the last day! Fortunately, it was all to her liking.

Many thanks to Dana, Dick, Emma, Marty, Vickie, Jesse, Charlie, Clare, Ken, Audrey, Mikey-Mike, Ann, Big Mike, Brad, Clark, Mark, Sally, Kate, and Liza for a wonderful time!