desolate june

This june was desolate for us for two reasons. We never posted anything on the blog and we went down the Green River through Desolation Canyon.

First Lys and I went down to Moab to go to our friends, Christa and Verle's wedding reception. While down there I recertified my wilderness first aid course for the trip and Lys and I went on a drive on the La Sal mountain loop.

the view looking down into castle valley where we want to live someday.

We also hung out with the Hazlett kids and rigged the boats and the food for the trip with Mark, our other guide, who went through training with me four years ago.

The drive to Sand Wash (where you put in the boats) takes 5-6 hours with a big heavy trailer.  Unless you want to spend time changing flat tires on the rocky dirt road. We arrived without incident and unloaded the boats around ten p.m. Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning the family showed up (my dad, three sisters, one brother, and a grad student who is living with my folks for the summer while he works for my dad) and another family of four from SLC flew in.  And we launched:

lunch on the water

Desolation canyon is a very remote, very beautiful place. You launch from the Duchesne side of Utah and float along the Ute indian reservation on your east and BLM land on your west. In places it is over 5'000 ft from the river to the top of the mesa. The landscape changes every few hours and it will feel like a new canyon every day. We were floating from Wednesday thru Saturday and covered 84 miles. The first expeditions through these canyons were by John Wesley Powell in the mid 1800's and many of the features in the canyon were named by their group, including the name Desolation. There are 75 marked rapids and riffles in the 84 miles, the largest they get are class III.

down river on the right you can make out 'light house rock', named by J.W.P. you can also see our boats on the water.(click to enlarge)

There are two types of water in Deso. 

Slow:

And Fast:

(enlarge to see how the girls liked the wave that came in the boat)

(not the biggest wave, but Parker thought it was)

Video of the biggest rapid:

two years ago there was a big flash flood that rolled some boulders and turned this rapid from a class II to a III.  The water was so high when we were there that it was more like a IV

Desolation is a great place to see Utah's wildlife. On the Ute land it is common to see wild mustangs and deso is known for bear sightings. We missed both of these this trip although we did find some very large, very fresh bear poopie. The list of animals was still very large: several lizards, ravens, blue heron, turkey vultures, mud swallows, bats, hellgrammite, crawdad, river otter, and desert bighorns. Most of the list is pretty common to see on a deso trip. The hellgrammite was a second for me on a river trip though, and river otters are shy and seeing one was a real treat. It was my first time seeing an otter leave the water and shake himself dry, fortunately the girls on the boat squealed so loud that my 'oh-my-gosh-that's-adorable' whimper was hidden. 

lizards on a wall at the McPherson ranch where Butch Cassidy would hide

hellgrammite. this thing later becomes a flying bug called a dobsonfly. can't imagine this thing with wings.

Now desert bighorns are not that uncommon to see. normally you see a couple females and a youngster or two. This is because the males are not usually with a herd, they leave the raising of kids to the moms. What is really uncommon to see is six or seven different sighting on one trip. One sighting had eleven baby sheep! By far a record for me. Another unusual sighting was three males hanging out together. Desert bighorns were hunted and driven out of their land by ranchers to near extinction. But over the last couple decades the numbers have been coming back up due to conservation efforts. I think this herd shows good promise.

one mom watching eleven babies. enlarge to count.

three rams grazing.

While going down the river you get to stop and see a lot of different things from different time periods.

a moonshiner's cabin from prohibition times

mark searching my soul, or considering a career in alcohol production. 

petroglyphs from the Fremont indians

awesome granary with bent wood and giant stones

old homestead ranch

mulberry picking at the ranch

the canyon was so pretty and the wind was blowing the cotton out of the trees and mark was peeing and I had to take the picture. I did not get permission to post this.

old farm equipment at the ranch where Butch would hide out.

this is the before mentioned grad student Reeve. he was a natural on the oars, great on all the adventures, helpful at camp, and a huge overall asset to the trip. but I choose to show him instead pretending to use an old outhouse. sorry Reeve, I just liked it too much.  

this was our last camp

a human skeleton left in the desert. no one knows the story

the Evans' group