Six days on the Green River
August-September 1995
This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
Flat water, square landscapes in Utah
by Tom Poiker
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Coming from alpine areas, square landscapes did not fit |
A conference in Palm Springs was the excuse we needed to spend some time in the "Four Corners", the area around the meeting place of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. We got some good paddling on the way, all flatwater, two rivers and one lake.
This was our first time in the American SouthWest and we were not prepared for what we saw. Having lived for all our lives in alpine areas, we thought that all mountains had to approach the triangular. Square landscapes did not fit into our image of the earth. But more about that later.
Three long days brought us from Vancouver to Needles in Southern California. We camped in Park Moabi, one of the more interesting campgrounds in the SouthWest and the put-in point for our first trip on the Colorado through the Topock Canyon. My wife had never paddled on a river and wanted a practice run before the Real Thing. The Topock Canyon is seventeen miles of slow moving water through red rock which the locals compare with the Grand Canyon. It is pretty, all right, with many shady beaches to stop and Castle Rock, a good place for takeout. The Jerkwater Canoe Company in Topock, Arizona, which rents canoes and services the Colorado River from Hoover Dam down to the Gulf of California, picked us up in the evening and drove us back to our campsite.
The lower Colorado River is really not a river. It is a series of lakes of varying width and depth, sometimes narrow enough -- and with some flow -- that it can be mistaken for a river. Trips are typically one to three days, after that you reach a dam for sure. The best part is the Black Canyon -- a two to three day trip from just below the Hoover Dam (you need a permit for putting in there) to Willow Beach. It is a gorgeous canyon with four hot springs.
A few days after the Topock Canyon, we were in Moab, Utah (no relation to Park Moabi, California), ready to get in the Green River. Here it was Tex's Riverways that drove us to the River and picked us up again at the confluence with the Colorado.
The Green River, the major tributary of the Colorado, originates in the Wyoming mountains, south of Yellowstone Park, and flows many hundred miles through Wyoming and Utah, with a very short visit in Colorado. The two major towns on its shore are both called Green River, witness of the great linguistic inventiveness of the pioneers in the two states. Major John Wesley Powell, the man who made the Colorado famous, actually spent more miles on the Green than on the Colorado. He started in Green River, Wyoming, and it was a blessing for his mind that Green River, Utah did not yet exist.
The flatwater section on the Green starts in Green River, Utah and goes for 120 miles. Powell writes about the first part:
"Now we enter another canyon. Gradually the walls rise higher and higher as we proceed, and the summit of the canyon is formed of the same beds of orange-colored sandstone... The course of the river is tortuous, and it nearly doubles upon itself many times. The water is quiet and constant rowing is necessary to make much headway..."
"There is an exquisite charm in our ride today down this beautiful canyon. It gradually grows deeper with every mile of travel; the walls are symmetrically curved, and grandly arched; of a beautiful color, and reflected in the quiet waters in many places, so as to almost deceive the eye, and suggest the thought, to the beholder, that he is looking into profound depths. We are all in fine spirits, feel very gay, and the badinage of the men is echoed from wall to wall. Now and then we whistle, or shout, or discharge a pistol, to listen to the reverberations among the cliffs."
Powell called this Labyrinth Canyon. The Canyon ends at Mineral Bottom which is the only other place to put in boats. To get to Mineral Bottom, you drive for about 50 miles on a gravel road that is totally flat, with not an inkling of the fact that you are on a high plateau. And then, without warning, the road suddenly dives down into the canyon, in switchback curves which stop your blood-flow. Our driver tells us that this was one of Sundance Kid's favorite (and successful) escape routes and we believe him.
Tex's sells a guide for the river which is excellent. Very clear maps, good history, landmarks, just about everything. The driver also gives a run-down of the river with the campsites of the week, cliff-dwellings, interesting hikes, fresh water springs (one, don't rely on it), and warns twenty times about the quick winds that have blown off many a canoe. Packing is another thing: the canoeists just threw everything into the boat and took off. Packing our Chinooks was a science in comparison. In the mad rush, a little kid threw my wife's sleeping bag into the bottom of another boat, to be returned to us a week later.
The only thing about the trip that annoyed us a little was the deep silt that was everywhere. Silt is wonderful for mudbaths (and mudbaths are the fashionable things to do on the Green) but you never get it off your feet because you always have to step through it. It is very fine and dries your skin in no time. I always thought that moisturizing lotion was for sissies. I had to change my mind.
Powell called this part of the river Stillwater Canyon. To the casual observer, there does not seem a break between the two canyons but who is to argue with Powell? He writes of this part:
"We continue our journey. In many places the walls, which rise from the water's edge, are overhanging on either side. The stream is still quiet, and we glide along, through a strange, weird, grand region. The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock -- cliffs of rock; tables of rock; plateaus of rock; terraces of rock; crags of rock -- ten thousand strangely carved forms. Rock everywhere and no vegetation; no soil; no sand. In long, gentle curves, the river winds about these rocks.
"When speaking of these rocks, we must not conceive of piles of boulders, or heaps of fragments, but a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms carved on it: cathedral-shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet; cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast, hollow domes, and tall pinnacles, and shafts set on the verge overhead, and all highly colored -- buff, gray, red, brown, and chocolate; never lichened; never moss-covered; but bare, and often polished. . . ."
Powell's Green of 1869 had not changed much by 1994. We had the feeling that using his writings as a guide would not mislead us. And, at least in early May, there were so few boats on the river -- we encountered a total of eight canoes in those six days -- that we felt the same solitude as he must have felt. Everything seemed to be either straight up or completely flat, right angles everywhere. Only the layers of sandstone rose out of the water ever so lightly -- which gave me the optical illusion of the river -- straight and undisturbed as it was -- going downhill at an angle of about five degrees.
By early May, the canyon is warm but not yet desperately hot. Still, we were glad that most of our campsites were shady. Snow had started to melt in Wyoming and the river had risen a few feet but had maintained its gentle speed of three miles/hr. Within another two weeks, the river would rise another six feet and obliterate most of our campsites. It would also be much hotter by then.
The season on the Green starts in March and the second-best time is from then to the middle of May. Initially, the river is low with interesting meanders and many campsites. Temperatures are nice for paddling and hiking but the water is cold. In early May, the river rises, many campsites disappear and the journey gets straighter. By the middle of May, the river has filled much of the valley and camping becomes difficult. It also gets hot. Come July, the water is much lower and getting warmer but the air-temperatures have reached unbearable levels. Everybody warns of this period, yet it attracts the masses. Hiking must be a torture. September and October are Green heaven: the river is low, the campsites are plentiful, the weather is acceptable for long hikes, the water is warm to swim and for frequent mudbaths, the silt is dry and not so much bother for your feet and the masses have left. One advice: Do NOT go on the river on Memorial weekend, late May. Whereas usually the motorboats are rare (we didn't encounter any), the so-called friendship race takes place on that weekend where five hundred motorboats race the 170 miles from Green River to Moab (and back, I guess), filling the echo-friendly canyon with their roar and doing all the macho things that are connected with motor boating -- like drinking beer and scaring canoeists. Not a pretty sight for our HPWV (humanly powered water vehicles).
On day five, we started our last and longest day of paddling in a light breeze which quickly accelerated into a solid storm. Water blew all over us, sand especially into our eyes. Things got really bad when we entered the Colorado and encountered three-foot waves that moved upriver. We stopped at the first small campsite that we could find and gave up on Spanish Bottom, the official terminal of the Green River trips five miles down from the confluence and just at the start of the Cataract Canyon with the most dangerous rapids of the river. Across the Colorado from our campsite, we made out Paul's boat. Paul, a photographer from Chicago, was blown across the river and he had to wait until the next morning to get back to the good side. The next day in Moab we heard that we had worked through the region's worst storm of the year.
On the last day, we broke camp and waited for the Jetboat to pick us up. Nothing much to do but lay under a tree and take the occasional swim -- still cold but what the heck. It was a beautiful trip through a part of North America that is so totally different from what we are used to in Western Canada. I always thought that my memory is black-and-white, but now I know that I remember in technicolor. I still can see vividly the red and brown layers of sandstone, the green river, etc. And the river is easy; there is not a single rapid, not even varying water speeds.
At noon, Tex's RiverJet picked us up, a 45 by 12 foot aluminum monster which, when in full 25 mph motion, does not have more than 8 inches draft. In three hours we went almost as far as on the last five days. And it was a lot noisier. But it was worth the trip. Another canyon, wider and busier, but as colorful.
Tom Poiker is with the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University, near Vancouver.
IF YOU GOThe Lower Colorado (South of Hoover Dam) is serviced by the Jerkwater Canoe Company in Topock, Arizona which rents canoes and services the Colorado River from Hoover Dam down to the Gulf of California. Trips are typically one to three days The best parts are the Black Canyon, starting just below the Hoover Dam (you need a permit for putting in below the Dam) and Topock Canyon. Canoe rental, transportation, etc. |
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