Sunday, October 5 - We left our last Green River camp on the Mile 8 sandbar about 10 a.m., doing everything we could to drag out the last paddling day of the trip.
Ian's 15' Coleman canoe was the slowest boat of the group so we put him in the lead, allowing the rest of us to spend more time watching the cliffs continue their change as we moved downstream.
It was a bit surprising to not see any boats around the mouth of Water and Shot canyons. Often times, it is a relatively busy location.
There was a multi terraced sandbar in the Mile 3 corner that became a spot to stop for a snack. The low edge on the upstream side had a layer of slippery mud, but the higher downstream portion was dry.
The area around river mile 2 is a favorite because it is often glassy calm with great reflections. Just around the corner in the distance on river right is Powell Canyon. It is supposed to have a high water camp, but I've never found a kayak friendly landing area.
When we see the turtle (left) and iguana (right) on top of the cliffs, we know we're almost out of river. The cliffs that support these markers are on the left side of the Colorado river which flows from left to right at the confluence.
About two miles down the Colorado from the confluence with the Green, we spotted the warning sign which also serves as the point to sign up for campsites along Spanish Bottom.
I landed near the sign to see what sites might be available and to sign up for one. I was surprised to see that the previous user had left the lid open on the register box but since it didn't rain last night it wasn't a big deal.
Meanwhile, the group decided that the steep sand bank just upstream would be adequate and that there was no reason to continue further downstream. We were able to create some flat tent pads and erected our tents and then got started cleaning our boats.
John West took a picture of the rest of the group once we got the boats cleaned, stacked on tarps, and tied off in preparation for tomorrow's jet boat shuttle up the Colorado river. It was important to get the boats clean so that we didn't have dirt and sand blowing from the boats on the upstream trip.
Once again, Beth fixed a massive meal that fed six of us. This time it was based on tortilla soup with a bunch of other things added to the pot. The end result was excellent!
We traveled about 10 river miles with the Green flowing about 5000 cfs today. We didn't see any other boats during our time on the water. The other shuttle company headed downstream while we were cleaning our boats and returned an hour later with a group of 10 who had stayed at Lower Red Lake the previous evening as well as the kayaks we'd seen the previous couple days.
About 4 p.m., a group of three canoes and an inflatable kayak arrived to sign in. They continued downstream to stay at the Upper Spanish Bottom site and will be on our shuttle tomorrow.
The weather continued clean, calm, and warm all day.
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