Sunday, September 30, 2012

Green River Friends

A memorable trip with a wonderful group of friends!

Before (Clean)
.
After (River Clean)

And some of our other animate and inanimate "friends"


Studious photographer and the custom flag.  The flag has significance to Edward Abbey fans.
 Had quite a few toads on this trip.
 What can we say?
The lizard showed up in various places, always with the beads.
 Might be cold, but it was comforting.
Devon, one of the owners of Tex's Riverways, giving his preflight safety speech - complete with a seatbelt.







Float Pictures


 Kelli at Mineral Bottom
 Kathy & Willy at Mineral Bottom
 Willy was the leading expert for relaxed "paddling"
 Candice
 Ian
 John
 BJ
 Shari
 Kathy & BJ

Camp Pictures


 Cooking in the rain
 Blowtorch lady!
 Beats working
 Somebody has to do it
 Mother & Daughter
 Just exploring
Dinner time








Shuttle Pictures


  


  




Green River - Day 6

Friday, September 28 - The sunrise is reflected on the western wall of the Colorado River at the confluence on jetboat day.


This year the whole crew got shirts.

We got everything organized and folks had just settled in to wait when the jetboat arrived and started loading.

Boats load first, then the freight.

The 46 mile trip up the Colorado River to Potash now takes a bit over 2 hours depending on how long  the optional stop at Lathrop Canyon takes.  The Colorado side of Canyonlands National Park is just as beautiful as the Green River side.

At Potash, the jetboat blows up onto the trailer for the trip to town.

All the passengers get the yellow limousine for their trip from Potash back to the office in Moab.

The boats are unloaded from the jetboat when we all get back to the office.  It's a very efficient shuttle system owned and operated by great people.  The jetboat is a great summary to a wonderful week.

Green River - Day 5


Thursday, September 27 -- We woke to a beautiful day and no rain last night.  After breakfast the boats were packed and we headed downstream, knowing that it would be our last paddling day.

We waved at the structure in the mouth of Jasper Canyon as we went by.

Folks started realizing that we were running out of river, and paddling was replaced with lots of drifting.

With no wind, the reflections were wonderful!

About mile 4, Kelli & Kathy switched places for the last few miles.

All too soon, we were spotting the turtle at the top of the rim on the east side of the Colorado river, signifying the confluence was only about 10 minutes away.

We picked a spot on the sandbar just below the confluence where it would be easy for the jetboat to land the next morning, and proceeded to set up camp and then cleaned and stacked the boats on a tarp to avoid getting sand in the shuttle boat.

  This year, the glow sticks were joined by soft rubber balls with strobe lights - really tough to catch a ball in the dark when it's lit by a strobe!

Last night on the river -- at least the last night on this river for this year.

Green River - Day 4

Wednesday, September 26 -- No rain last night but the high humidity from the wet sand left the inside of the rain fly dripping wet. We left the tents set up to dry while some of us went for a hike. Perhaps bushwhack would be a better term! We found an old beaver slide that helped for the first 10 feet. Then it got interesting!

We eventually worked our way through the tamarisk (also known as saltcedar) thickets that grow along the river, and left a bright bandanna so we'd know where to start on our way back.

One of the reasons this area was important to the Anasazi was because of the abundance of chert which they used to make tools and arrow points.

If you kept your eyes open, you'd spot lots of interesting things. Here a chert scraper lies near a stone for grinding grain.

Some of the structures still have hand prints in the mud used to seal the walls.

In addition to the obvious historical artifacts, the view across to Soda Springs Basin is beautiful, even if it is raining lightly -- so much for dry tents!

Even with the bandanna flag to indicate our starting point, we managed to lose the earlier path through the tammies and popped out about 50 yards closer to camp.

After a bite of lunch, we loaded the boats and launched for parts unknown, looking for a nice sandbar somewhere between mile 14 and mile 11. The river was running red from the runoff resulting from yesterday's storm.

Camp ended up on river right just past the mile 12 corner. It was a high class camp, complete with warm showers for the ladies.