Green River - Day 1

Sunday, September 23.  We departed Tex's Riverways in Moab for the last forty miles of the road portion of the trip after loading up all the boats, gear, food, and water for 6 days & 5 nights on the Stillwater section of the Green River. The aluminum box behind the trailer is one of the most important pieces of equipment since all solid waste must be hauled out.

This portion of the trip involves a fair amount of dirt road, including this section of steep hairpins. The road is pretty nice when dry, but the clay gets very slippery when wet! Last year, the road was washed out for six months, forcing them to move launches to a different canyon further upstream with a much worse road.

Our river trip started at Mineral Bottom (every flat piece of ground on a turn in the river is a bottom) about 52 miles upstream from the confluence with the Colorado River. We had 2 sea kayaks, 3 sit on top kayaks, 1 short recreational kayak, and a tandem canoe in our group. The canoe got some respect because it hauled the groover (see aluminum box in first photo.) The river flow was the lowest we'd experienced in the years of doing this trip although it came up some during the week.

We stopped for a quick bite of lunch at the arch at the lower end of Woodruff Bottom. A lot of the bottoms are named for people who tried to settle the land. This arch is perhaps the finest example on this section of the river.

BJ always have a wide variety of goodies in her lunch containers. Everything from fresh fruit and veggies to high energy nuts and other things that would not be approved by some of my co-workers.

Camp for the night was a sandbar near Fort Bottom, named for a masonry ruin on a high point across the river from our camp that was apparently constructed as a lookout by the Anasazi. This was the northern edge of their range. (For some reason, none of us took pictures of the "fort" this trip.)  We were amazed to see headlamps moving around the "fort" ruin throughout much of the night this trip.

We did have one short section of strong wind today along Hardscrabble Bottom.  It was sure nice to have Kelli paddling bow with me.  Needed the power to keep the boat headed into the wind and making progress.