Thu 6/9 - The Calm Before The Storm.

     The plan for today was to float through the remainder of calm waters of the Colorado all the way to the confluence with the Green River where the river doubles in size and begins to narrow.  We would then camp right before the rapids begin and tackle them all tomorrow.  Dave and Brad decided to add an early morning hike back up to the camp overlook ledge to watch the sunrise, and in what I consider an even better decision Eric and I decided to continue sleeping.

     Once the sun actually did rise us sleepy heads woke up in time for breakfast, which was French Toast with Bacon and various fruits.  After the usual routine of breaking down camp and loading up the boats we pushed off and motored a ways to our first hike of the day.  "The Loop" is an area where the Colorado river doubles back on itself twice.  We pulled over at the beginning of the first loop and were given the option to hike a trail that went up and over the ridge separating the river from itself and the boat would meet us at the other side.  Almost everybody went along on the hike, but a few people elected to stay with the boat.  Once again on this trip, I was reminded that my cardiovascular fitness it not really where I would like it to be, but I eventually managed to huff and puff my way to the top where yet another spectacular view awaited.  After a short time at the top enjoying the view, we headed down the other side to rejoin the boat, finding some Anasazi pictographs along the way.

After the hike everybody was hot and sweaty, so nearly everybody spent some time floating in the river alongside the boats as the floated away from the Loop Hike.  Eventually we all climbed back in and continued motoring downstream to the confluence with the Green River.  This area was known as the "Center of the World" by the John Powell expedition which originally surveyed this canyon.  From this point on we were officially in Cataract Canyon and were required to wear life jackets at all times while on the boat.  We attempted to pull over here for lunch, but it was decided that the riverbank was too steep to haul the lunch equipment up so instead we would continue down to the check in station for Cataract Canyon where the guides had to fill out a trip plan and reserve our campsite for the night.

 There were already several other boats at the sign in box so the beach was a little bit crowded.  The guides decided that the best way to get the boats tied up was the ram the beach at high speed to attempt to slightly beach the boat, which is not an uncommon tactic for the extremely durable S-Rigs, although not really something that the smaller paddle boat that we are in usually does as we would learn in fairly short order.  After a few minutes on the beach where our guides reserved out campsite and chatted with the guides from the other boats about the plan for the rapids we headed downstream once more.

It was about now that we found out why the oar boats were not meant to be rammed into the shore, as we noticed that our front tube was getting soft.  Dana immediately busted out an air pump to get it reinflated, but it was leaking out nearly as quickly as it could be pumped in.  Fortunately our next stop was just few more minutes down the river so we were able to keep our boat afloat by taking turns manning the pump.


We soon arrived at our stop for lunch, which it turned out was also going to be our campsite for the evening so we had a long time to spend at this camp.  While the guides got started on lunch we setup camp.  Fortunately, this turned out to be the best camp so far.  Partially because it had the fewest bugs to date, but mostly because at such high water levels a good chunk of the beach was submerged.  This made for a nice shallow area with a soft silty bottom and no current where we could swim and wade freely to keep cool.  There was also a nice breeze blowing almost all day that made it feel much cooler.  We setup the umbrellas from the S-Rigs and the camp chairs and most of us wound up staying cool in the water for most of the day.

After lunch the guides got work on repairing our boat, which had gone completely flat by now.  It turned out that the gash was pretty large, and most likely could not be repaired.  They used the satellite phone to coordinate how to extract the raft back to Moab, while we would have to ride the S-Rigs through the rapids.  I was pretty disappointed since we had booked the oar trip specifically because it would be more fun in the rapids, but understood that sometimes these things happen.





As it began to cool off, we decided to take a hike down river a bit.  We could hear the roar of the 1st rapids and just barely see them from our camp and wanted to go take a look.  We lucked out that just as we arrived an S-rig from another company was coming through.  While the 1st rapid had looked pretty small from our viewpoint, our perception was immediately corrected as the S-rig entered it and immediately disappeared behind the waves.  Our excitement for tomorrow had just gone up a notch.

By the time we returned to camp, the guides had succeeded in attempting a patch on our boat.  They were not confident that it would hold, so held off on making a decision as to whether to attempt to run the rapids in it tomorrow, or to have the boat extracted upriver and just use the J-Rigs.  We would find out how well it held air in the morning.

About this time the final S-Rig arrived carrying the final 7 passengers.  They wound up setting up their kitchen area and chairs directly behind mine and Eric's tent which we had setup on the outskirts of camp to be in a nice quiet area.  We wound up having to move our site across the camp to avoid the newly established high traffic zone.

Dinner tonight was chicken or beef fajitas.  Normally this would not be an ideal dinner for me, but everything was laid out for us to assemble ourselves so I was able to make a vegetable free fajita with chicken, rice, and cheese which was quite tasty.  The guides outdid themselves on dessert tonight with freshly made donuts that they fried in the dutch oven.  As has become the standard on this trip, we headed to bed shortly thereafter as the sun set.  Tomorrow morning at 6:30am a hiking group will be setting out for "The Dolls House".  This 3 hour hike climbs over 1200 feet above the river, roughly four times the height of the Loop hike that we did the other day.  Both because I prefer to pretend that 6:30am isn't a real time and because the Loop hike was already strenuous enough, I elected to skip this option, as did Eric and Brad.  Only Dave was crazy stupid  motivated enough to get up at 6:30am for an unncessary death march up the side of a mountain.  I was actually surprised that Brad did not go.  I knew that Eric and I were too lazy, but I thought Brad was made of sterner stuff than either of us.