Whayt the Hayell are Them Thangs?

October-November 1998

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

Sea Kayaking the San Rafael River, Utah

by Lilian Alessa

West coast sea kayaks are not a common sight on the San Rafael River

In late May of 1998, after a long winter of seriously hard skiing... I mean work... Dave and I were sitting in a cafe in Salt Lake City plotting how to give our sea kayaks some action. Unfortunately, there's no ocean here. I checked. Twice. However, there are rivers. Big ones, big enough to turn a touring kayak sideways without blocking the flow of water. Our plan to kayak the San Rafael River in sea kayaks was met with snickering disbelief, but we had experienced this type of reaction to our plans before.

It has been said that spontaneity is the mark of the strong, the free and... the mentally unbalanced and, indeed, Dave and I have been called all three. However, there was also some cosmic force looking out for us (probably out of pity or amusement, or both) and the logistics seemed to fall right into place: friends of ours had rafted the river before and were more than eager to watch us paddle it in kayaks, (i.e. run a shuttle). The folks at the Parks desk in the local REI were very amenable to giving us some good advice on campsites and kept their nervous laughter in check until we were well past the sleeping bag section. Actually, I have a feeling we just plain scared them.

So, true to adventure, we loaded up our Trooper with kayaks and headed off into the Desert sunset. There's something comical about seeing the noble bows of sea kayaks set against the backdrop of stark steep canyon walls and juniper trees and more than once we were asked, in classical Utahan accents: "Whayt the hayell are them thangs?!" Our answer of: "Portable missiles" seemed to silence even the most curious of investigator

As usual, upon arrival at the put-in, we had to deal with the phenomenon of desert heat, radiating up from the rocks, the sand, the lizards. Stepping out of an air-conditioned truck was the hardest part of the trip. "Hey!! Who cranked up the heat??! Turn it off, dammit!". Our experience with dry heat read like the beginning of a cookie recipe: "Preheat oven to 350 degrees Celsius. Bake until brown around the edges. Approximately 8-10 minutes for a medium sized person...".

We got our boats off the truck and proceeded to haul way too much gear to the put-in. It was then we discovered that, even though it was the middle of the week, we did not have an original idea. Tap, tap, tap. "Hey dude. Are ya paddlin' THOSE on the river??!!" Enter the river guide: crispy, redolent of 'eau de dust', and always, always willing to exchange river stories for a bottle of beer. Enter the West Coast transplants, hot and trying to figure out how to carry 30,000 litres of water in two kayaks: "Grrrrrrrrr . " Exit river guide.

Finally! We were off. All packed and perched on a muddy river bank, poised for a graceful seal launch. Take one river headed east through incredible red rock canyons, add two Canadians not yet acclimatized to the heat and high on caffeine and stir constantly. (Caution; burns easily.)

"Uh,..Dave?? Heh, heh... I seem to be stuck in this mud, here... could you give me a push?".

Evening cometh and the river stretcheth endless. Not to worry, we would take out at a campsite called, "Virgin Spring Canyon", supposedly one of the most beautiful canyons in the area. We were totally self-sufficient: tent, food, water, antivenon... all we needed now was someplace to set up and siesta. The size of the snakes in the area had been hastily extrapolated from the two dimensional skins which we found shed along the river banks during stops to visit spectacular pictograph panels. Thoughts of marketing Tevas with "snake gaitors" briefly popped into our minds. Our pounding footsteps, hopefully warning any reptiles of our presence surely betrayed us as "visitors" to the area. Damn tourists.

Among other floral and faunal contenders were an assortment of spiders and various plants that had evolved personalities designed to dissuade animals from eating them: Each of these creations of nature would somehow cause you great discomfort in a very short period of time and we took great care when sitting down.

The San Rafael is a gentle soul, interspersed with minor tantrums

Eventually we came to a large wash, hidden behind a wall whose designer had an eye for hues. We quickly assessed the depth of the slough... by getting stuck, and hopped out: of our boats. Okay, we got sucked into bottomless, grey muck. Painfully hot, thankfully hydrated and soaked by the canyon winds which rerouted river water up our nostrils, we set up camp. The glow of the canyon set off the radioactive greens of the cottonwoods along the sandy bottom and stopped us in our tracks.

The night was hot and still and during it we heard everything from squeaks and scuffles to small elves and angels. Next morning we emerged to find two happy little tarantulas conversing on our fly. Welcome to Utah, kids. Make sure you bring your boots... inside the tent.

And so the trip continued. The San Rafael is a gentle soul, interspersed with minor spots of tantrums that aren't worth getting worked up over. Sweepers, dangerous blockades of fallen trees and debris from the heavy run-off, are the real hazards, not the rapids. The topographic maps are pretty good, even though they're constructed aerially, but reading them requires advanced map skills. The river winds its way through the deep canyon, also called "the little Grand Canyon", often hurtling around a bend and slamming into a red wall before ricocheting off at 90 degrees. Thankfully, both Dave and I have spent a great deal of time resigning ourselves to the dynamics (or lack thereof) of sea kayaks in surf and managed to negotiate these sufficiently enough that we didn't end up as wall ornaments.

In time, we became comfortable with the rush of the water, the towering of the walls above our heads and various tactics for pulling out along steep banks to look at pictographs and petroglyphs. We also saw other people, mostly in rafts loaded down with coolers and dogs. Much as I've held a negative image of your average rafter, I had never seen one up close. The skill required to maneuver some of these behemoths is admirable. Particularly when one realizes how many beers have gone into the driver. Amazing. Whenever we landed in an area which coincided with some of these raft people, we were treated to the usual queries of the origins of our strange crafts. That, and the dogs who liked to stuff themselves into our gear compartments. May have been the smoked trout we were carrying, or it may have been the horseflies. Alas, kids, they're here, too. I'm convinced that there are few places on earth where you can escape these flying jaws of agony; insects so completely evil that they scare the mosquitoes. But back to the canine phenomenon:

"Uh, Lil? If we're taking the dog, we're gonna have to deck load her, okay?"

"No, no hang on. I'm not taking the dog. Just sec' ". The easiest way to remove a dog hiding in the bow of your boat is to find the tail.

"O.K. Got 'er. Ready to run?" Yank. Tug... "RUN!". Let's put it this way, this doesn't put the dog in the best of moods.

"So, do you want to double check my distance estimate?" (snicker, snicker). We're basically trying to identify one canyon wall from another on a topographic map whose contours are so close together they look like licorice. Therefore our expectations am simply this, it would be nice not to miss our next campsite and have to line our boats upstream. Luckily, we had underestimated our map skills and were bang-on for the next habitable canyon: Cane Wash, supposedly where we would be able to find an entire petrified forest sticking out of the contorted sandstone walls. We were optimistic, though, since Virgin Spring Canyon lived up to its name: it consists of three levels or steps of canyon floor each of which ends in a magnificent pour-off down to the next one, finally terminating in the wash which connects to the San Rafael river. Along points, freshwater springs in deep bluegreen mock the desert which thrives only metres away. The result is that microcosms are supported throughout the canyon, each of which may differ greatly from another in the same vicinity. For example, large bullfrogs are not generally fauna one expects to find in the desert, neither are small fish which spend their entire lives in a single puddle and, toward the end of summer, burrow into mud in order to tide themselves over until the next "rainy season"... no pun intended. Here we saw screech owls, like ghosts at dusk, calling to each other, no doubt saying: "Whayt the hayell are them thangs??!", while cocking their heads toward our boats.

And so, it was with mounting expectations that we pulled into Cane Wash for the night.

Each canyon has a personality. You can feel it the minute you pull in off the river. Some are sweet and green with cottonwoods shading cacti and desert flowers whose smells rival the best perfumeries; others glare at you as you start unloading, daring you to find a soft spot on their oh-so-tough surface. Cane Wash is one such as this. We set up camp under a glowing overhang of red rock, graced by a pictograph panel depicting a group of people holding hands. We took this as a good sign, a sign of community and comfort. Apparently, what such a pictograph REALLY describes is a group of people forming a blockade for the obnoxious rodents who know no fear. "Red rover, red rover... send the rat over...". Walking up Cane Wash is the only way to really appreciate the forces which created it. Sculptures in stone that moved us to silence and... trees! Well, the remains of trees, sticking out of the sandstone. Thousands of them, most at least a metre or four in diameter! Indeed, millions of years ago, a forest had stood here. Further up the canyon, interspersed amongst the fossilized trees, were veins of ochre and purple. Such mineral dyes were used by the various ancient peoples to create the pictographs in the region. Beautiful, stunning colours, seemingly bestowed with a light of their own... possibly the work of aeons of heat and pressure... possibly the work of aliens. We are in Utah after all.

The next morning, Cane Wash was showered by the morning sun, its features softened somewhat by gazing upon the infant day. But it was time to leave. The next section would bring us down to our take-out and the waiting truck. We would also leave the steep sided main canyon of the San Rafael Reef and emerge into a mesa punctuated by huge buttes and towers. It was important that we did pull out where we were planning to since, below that, the San Rafael River becomes the wicked witch of the west as she funnels her entire flow into a slot called the Black Box, an opening only a few metres wide. The terrain we had travelled through was majestic and diverse. The sensation of following a river through such country evoked a myriad of emotions which can only be experienced rather than conveyed. Before the super highways of today granted us access to the far reaches of North America, this continent was explored by rivers. Even today, these life veins of our Mother Earth remain the only way to access some of her more private parts. To many peoples around the world, rivers are sacred. Here and today, we don't see them for what they are: the blood of our planet, the streams upon which life depends, gateways to wonders which have stood for millennia ....waiting and watching the passage of creation carve the world around us.

Lilian Alessa has moved from Utah and is now teaching outdoor education at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia