Self-bailer?

Well, we're toying with the notion of getting a self-bailer this coming year. They're not cheap (even decent used ones), but deep in the not-rafting-season, we're giving it some thought.

Boat. Frame. Oars. Trailer. Cha-ching.

We'll see.

Welp...

Second snow of this still-young autumn is melting reluctantly around town. Several ski areas are open, and I just brought my Head Monsters dow to Ski Deals for their annual tune.

At the risk of stating the obvious...I guess rafting season is over.

Nothin' doin'

Still above 7K. We bagged the weekend, Cleveland trip starts Thursday. Guess we'll hit it when we come back.

grrrr.....

The flow

After teasing us for a few days that the Roaring Fork might subside to marginally sane levels, the crik done spiked agin !!! Passed 8K before dropping in its usual day/night sine wave way. Cooler weather in store the next or so, we'll see what Thurs and Fri suggest.

I'm good at 5K, maybe a tad more. 6K ? Hmmm....

All that water

Historic runoff in Colorado this season has more or less grounded us. The Roaring Ford, which by now is usually in the 1000-2000 cfs range, is still pumping 7000cfs, which is a bit higher than I've done it before. Hopefully it'll come back to the 3-4K range by next weekend. Getting antsy to get wet.

Trip done

And a little hard to believe on a certain level.

Bob Lowery dropped out due to a last minute medical situation (which, while unfortunate, thakfully happened the week before we were to drive out there, rather than on the river, which could have resulted in potentially life-threatening situation), so Carey joined up w/ us.

The drive-out Saturday morning (5/21), we found ourselves faced with a virtual blizzard on Vail Pass. After some scrambling, we decided on the southern route - Denver, Walsenburg, Alamosa, Wolf Creek Pass, Pagosa Springs, Durango, Cortez. Drive time was probably two hours longer, and of course, we left at least two hours later than we expected. We then planned to drive up to Moab in the morning of launch day (since we weren't driving through Moab on the way out) to pick the duckies up. That meant we couldn't run our own shuttle - no biggie, we called Jim Hardin and he accomodated us at the last minute.

Then we decided to scrap the duckies altogether - paid a deposit penalty, and loaded everyone on the two boats. Hands down, after two dozen weeklong trips, this was by far the heaviest I've ever rowed the boat. What a barge.

But no problem - the water would be coming up, right?

Eh, not really, We launched at about 1600 cfs. The river dropped to just over 1K on Day 3, recovered to about 1150 or 1200 on Government Day, then 1100 for takeout.

Odd thing - I spent a good deal of time (too much) worrying about Eight Foot. Low water, they all said, run tight on the right wall to miss the big rock, work back into the center aafterward. I have always run the thing on the left - when we got up there, I looked, saw a slightly scrapey but manageable route on the left side and more or less nailed it. Right side...ha !!!

I relaxed after that - figured the water would gain 600-800 cfs and Gov't would be a breeze. But it never really materialized. When we got down there three days later, we found a fast, boney, pillow-studded mess, with a single line threaded down the right-center.



Carey ran it well, not perfect. I hit my line at the top, whiffed a stroked and ended up taking the front of the boat over the nasty pourover sideways. No big consequence, but an ugly and disappointing performance. No excuses. The boat was heavy but I knew that....I saw the line and drifted off it....I had my strokes more or less memorized, but didn't execute. We'll post the video when we get it up on YouTube.

The row out was a trial....steady 12-15 mph headwinds, gusts to 30, absolutely relentless all day. We beached on three or four sandbars, which were difficult to spot with the heavily rippled water from the wind. What should have taken 4.5 hours from Slickhorn C took close to 8, pulling hard every inch of the way. My back is wrecked and my left hand has some very impressive callouses. I'm not sure if I've ever worked that hard over the course of a single day on the oars. We had spits of wind on and off every day out there, but this was all day. On no water. Left me wondering if I really need to consider an alternative for heavy duty dunnage trips. 16' self bailer?

But overall - the weather was warm to hot, barely two sprinkles of rain, great stars, tons of Bighorn Sheep, wild burros and horses...good company and great camping (for future reference: Chinle Main, Fossil Stop, Mile 37.7, Mile 54.2 and Slickhorn C...all excellent sites.) The kids worked their tails off, seemed to enjoy. Brian burned his feet and a few other minor injuries, but no equipment failures or premature provision exhaustion, even if we had exactly one beer when we hit Clay Hills.

Despite less than ideal conditions, we pulled it off. Glad to be away from the daily madness (back to it tomorrow), even if I can't honestly say the trip left me relaxed and tranquil.

If we're not careful...

...we're liable to get net-obssesed with temperature, sun, cloud cover and runoff gradient at any number of USGS sites feeding into the San Juan.

So far...looks ok. Lots to come down, weather cool today and tomorrow, warming up pretty well in advance of 5/22 launch.

Supporting seven off two catarafts will still be a bit of a trick...

Yeah...work is work

...but then there's



...and for a day at least, the universe smiles at ya.

Well...back

The trip is done, we've been back a week. A few notes.

1) Flows - my obsessive concern about flow, heightened to an absurd crescendo shortly before we left by an absurdly low NOAA forecast, turned out to be (thankfully) unwarranted. I did get stuck, but it was on the first day, downstream from Butler while we were still in cattle country, and it was on a lowly shoal on river left. The flow dramatically spiked (as Ryan Christenson from BuRec indicated) about the third day out there, and when we hit Gov't, it was flowing about 2400-2600.Easy drop into two waves on the left - lasted all of 4 seconds.

2) Weather - Excessive wind, the first three days. I couldn't safely keep a fire burning the third night. The first few miles after Mexican Hat were a struggle - massive upstream blasting out of Pontiac Wash, then downstream for a few miles. Then hard upstream again, then some down. We got a little on Day 4, but it eventually stopped and we had a nice fire. Day 5 and 6 were essentially windless...but 100 degrees.

3) Camping:
Big Stick - the ranger asked us not to take a large site, but the trwo or three she recoemmended were all taken. We took it anyway.
Pouroff - a nice pre-MH site, river right. Only two decent tent pads, but located just downstream from a beaver lodge. Sharon got great pics.
Mile 42.3 - Navajo side, a sandy and fairly broad campsite, good landing but little shade. We considered laying over there, but I felt a little uncomfortable, largely due to wind, with a commitment to do almost 24 miles in one day to last campsite. It was the right decision.
Mile 54.7 - Navajo side, awesome spot. Sandy and easy landing, tent spots high on a sandy terrace above the beach, plent of room for fire/chairs/kitch at water's edge. Early shade in afternoon, late shade in morning.
Slickhorn A - Never been before; a very nice spot. Four or five decent pads, probably first Slickhorn in shade in afternoon, nice view. Would happily take this one again.

4) Equipment - Broke a tent pole first evening setting up. Annoying but we rigged it and it worked. Sharon left the silverware at home accidently, we borrowed from another party. Platform cracked, working now on a solution to that one. No issues otherwise.

5) Misc - We took about 1400 pictures. The flats had plenty of water, saw a few sandbars but didn't hit a single one. Stayed way right most of the way down. Trimble is gone. Actually saw 4ft Rapid for the first time - water was lowish early in the trip. Ran Ross too far left. 8 Foot jogged right at the top, straightforward center-left run, big rock/hole near bottom in center. Ledge was a few strokes, no big deal. Not a drop of rain. Beaver, bighorn, cattle, horses, toad, deer, herron and usual lizards.

Excellent trip, wasted after the driving but already looking fwd to next year's.

On a better note

Managed to string together a couple of permits for San Juan. Launch 5/9 (yes, early) for a SI-MH run, then 5/10 for a MH-CH run. Six days total.

Little worried about the weather, since the cool-spring to hot-spring divide seems to typically hit the area about a week later. Question will be if it comes early this season (hello, global warming?), or if not, how cool the cool part will be.

Right now, it's snowing here in the People's Republic, so yeah, a little worried.

Here's some stoke.

Desolation

I felt, a little bit ago, an oddly embracing 'ok-ness' about running Desolation with Sharon this year. Like...late August.

Yes, the date is significant.

I expect I'll snap out of it...but maybe I won't.

Alright...rafting season is over

We got some measurable snow a week or so ago, but this weekend turned out to be warm and sunny, so we loaded up and headed off for an unspeakably nice day on the Upper Colorado. Cool when we launched and very chilly water (someone said 44 degrees), but the air temp rose to mid sixties and the colors out there, while well past their peak, were stunning. Cloudless, warm, empty river, about 1000cfs. Eagles, beaver, blazing riparian reeds and cottonwood of fading yellow.

Just doesn't get any better than this.

Desolation Canyon, reborn with an attitude

There's been a thread at the whitewater rafting internet forum Mountain Buzz for several weeks now, brimming with tales of rafters' first experiences with Joe Hutch Canyon Rapid, after a massive flash flood in Aug 2008 turned a splashy and straightforward Class II drop into a long, gnarly, technical, boat-flipping challenge, worthy of Class IV designation and, by at least one account, fully eligible for comparison to the keester-kicking Class IV's of the Grand Canyon.

Based on sheer guessing, there have probably been more flips (rafts, anyway) at this rapid in the last four weeks than the entire river has seen in years. It is now a full grade harder now, maybe more than a full grade, than anything else on the 84 mile run.

Deso, of course, was my old stomping ground with Karin - we ran the river together 11 or 12 times between 1992 and 2003, twice in 1999 alone. Neither of us were Class IV junkies, although we had done water at that level several times safely (Brown's Canyon, Main Salmon, Westwater), and my thoughts about the run now are tangled and unsettled.

I genuinely love the place - the vibe, the pace, the huge canyon expanse...and the whitewater, which for me was never more than I could really handle, and usually less than my rattle-prone sensibilities would stress over. We probably burned more worry calories over campsite competition and fretting about upstream winds than we ever did over the whitewater, and even now, a year and a half removed from my last trip down there, I can still describe the line at all the major rapids. It is unquestionably part of my history, a very significant vestige of my life with Karin, and a deep engraving upon my river-running DNA.

But this...wtf is this? The river is now essentially a III- run with a IV - IV+ rapid, just past dead-center of the trip.

Does it make me more excited to go back...or less? True enough, the stories I'm reading now are accounts of the rapid at 12-16K cfs, a level we never ran it at. What's it like at 2500 or 3000? Even 4000 - no rapid I could think of could flip my dunnaged boat by waves alone at 4000cfs.

And another piece of this is that fact that Sharon prefers (truly loves, in fact) the San Juan - a mellow, decidedly river-easier trip. And would be more than happy not to repeat our Sept 2007 Deso trip, which was troubled by weather issues and left her on the downhill side of ambivilent about the place.

We have no long river trips planned for the remainder of 2009, so at this point I'm just watching the thread, taking it in, accepting reluctantly the fact that the trip that Karin and I did so much is...changed, at least, and forever gone, at most.

Things change by degrees, this is changing by degrees. I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that I'll never go back there. But that may, in fact, be the case.

I just don't know.