The big rapid today was "Water Hole". While it has large waves, it is just a fun rapid and did not pose any of the technical challenges that we faced yesterday. After "Water Hole" and a few smaller rapids we reached the slower waters where Lake Powell has risen into the canyon. We lashed both of the S-rigs and our smaller boat together to motor down river. The current slowed significantly and we had several hours of motorized travel remaining to reach the takeout ramp. It was enjoyable to simply lie on the raft and enjoy the scenery floating by, which seemed if anything even more spectacular that what we had seen over the last 4 days. I suspect that this long float without a stop was not quite as much fun for Eric, however. He was apparently unable or unwilling to use the time tested method of peeing off the back of the raft, and wound up holding it an impressively long time since we were motoring and he could not jump in the water.It was fascinating to see the effect that Lake Powell has had on the canyon. The water level is much lower than it used to be, and has deposited so much silt when the level was higher that the entire bottom of the canyon had been covered. As the water level dropped, the swifter waters began to carve a new channel through the silt covering the canyon floor. As a result, the river banks as we saw them were cliffs of loose crumbly sand. We could actually watch showers of sand eroding away from the river bank due to the winds, and at one point even saw a large section of the bank give way and crumble into the river. Slowly but surely, the canyon is cleaning itself back out.
As we approached the takeout we slowed down to have a quick lunch of Chicken Caesar Wraps served on the boat as we floated. (My emergency backup protein bars came in handy for the 2nd time!) This also gave us an opportunity to swim once the motors were turned off, a fact for which Eric seemed immensely grateful. He seemed in a much better mood after his swim.
Once we pulled over to the boat ramp and unloaded we transferred our personal belongings into trash bags provided to take with us on the return flight. (The dry bags we had used all week had to go back with the rafts.) A van made 2 quick trips between the boat ramp and the tiny airstrip where 3 planes were awaiting us while the pilots played frisbee on the runway. There were two Cessna Stationair 207s, and a Quest Kodiac. We wound up getting split up with 3 of us on the Kodiac, and Eric by himself on one of the 207s.
The flight back took us over many of the landmarks that we had seen from the river or hiked to over the last 5 days. It was fun to see these landmarks from a different perspective. The flight lasted about 40 minutes, so we soon found ourselves as Canyonlands field where we rejoined Eric. He later expressed that of all the extreme activities we have done so far on this trip, the flight was by far the most terrifying for him so far.
A bus returned us to the river outfitters shop where I found that the crack in my windshield had NOT been repaired. Apparently the glass company brought the wrong glass and were not able to get the correct one in time. This means we will need to drive all the way back to Austin with the crack and get it repaired there.
We all wanted to get cleaned up so returned to the rental house and checked back in. After 5 days in the wilderness, it took 3 attempts to shampoo my hair before I was even able to get the shampoo to make any suds. As much as I loved spending time exploring the wilderness, a return to civilization does have it's upside as well.
Since today was Brad's last night in Moab we gave him the choice of dinner and he elected to return to the Moab Brewery. Afterwards, we walked around downtown a bit and headed back to the house. We finally managed to get in touch with Zac (the river guide who took the video of us on the Big Drops) and went back to the outfitters both to get a copy of his video, as well as provide him a copy of my GoPro footage of the same rapid.
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