Down the
River Green River Trip: Gates
of Lodore to Split
Mountain
The inflatable rafts were the last thing
onto the boat trailer, and it took 5 people to get them
on. Jeremy stood on the back of the trailer and pulled on
the front as four of us on the ground walked one out of the river
cache and threw it up to him. Then we did it again with
another boat. It was early morning, Sept 9 2001. We loaded
the truck under a depthless blue disc, cloudless, arid. A
desert sky. Soon, all was ready. The truck was carrying
enough food and water for 4 people for 4 days, perhaps
longer. Shovels and clippers were stashed in canvas bags
under the rafts, tools we would use for tamarisk removal
on the river. Melissa and Jeremy were the seasonal
employees of the park service in charge of this trip.
They were weed warriors, group leaders who coordinated
the efforts of volunteers in the task and ultimate goal of
complete tamarisk eradication from certain beaches that
lined the banks of the Green River within Dinosaur
National Monument. They were also pretty good river runners,
and had spent all summer paddling down the Green River and
its undamed tributary, the Yampa. By the time we
got to the boat ramp it was nearing lunch, so we had a
nice meal of Melissas homemade humus with fresh, raw
veggies. The river was clear and low. I watched an osprey
catch a trout thirty feet in front of me as I sat near the
calm river. They werent letting much water out this time of year from the dam at
Flaming Gorge (Flaming George). Snowmelt from the Wind
River Mountains in Wyoming runs into this mammoth pool
of still water and sits until farmers need it for
irrigation, or Pheonix decides they need more water to
fill their swimming pools. The water in the reservoir is
deep and becomes clear as the sediment settles out. For us this
also meant the water was very cold, even after a hot
summer, since they let the water out of the bottom of the
reservoir where the sun never shines.The packing of the
boats took longer than I expected, owing to the
hundred and one boxes and bags required for the trip.
Jeremy and Melissa seem like free-wheeling carefree kind
of folks, but in packing they were as meticulous as
engineers. We hopped in the boats at last and shoved off onto the
slick water. I rode in the front of Jeremys raft since
Carrie was an old friend of Melissas from Arizona and
they wanted to catch up. I was also a seasonal employee at
Dinosaur, but my duties had kept me high and dry on the
river benches a thousand feet up,where the rattlesnakes
live. It was a great job, but I was happy for the chance
to raft a big river and to get down in the canyons I had
looked down on for the last 3 months. This trip was the second
to last of the season, and on it we were not meeting big
groups of volunteers as Jeremy and Melissa typically had
all summer. Instead, this was a trip that we could enjoy,
while performing a valuable public service, of course,
within the confines of our small group. We had put in just
upstream from the Gates of Lodore, a melodramatic name for a
very dramatic spectacle. On a map, the contour lines for
the canyon walls overlap for more than 1500 feet. Here is
where a flat wide river is pressed in between giant drab
walls several hundred feet high at the lowest, and
remains hidden and almost inaccessible for the next 44
miles. I pictured John Wesley Powell guiding his flotilla
into this canyon, with 10 times the water rushing on the
then-undamned river, not knowing when or where he would be
able to get out. Now thats adventure. Jeremy and Melissa
could definitely tell a much more detailed story of the
rivers history than I, and if you ever meet them, be
sure to ask. As the water entered the canyon, we sped up
and encountered little ripples here and there. Before we
hit any major rapids at all, we beached the rafts at Winnies
Grotto and got out to work. For about an hour, we dug up
tamarisk and cut roots.This was mostly cleanup since they
had groups working there all summer. Most of the tamarisk
were already gone and the beach looked very nice. Back in
the water and downstream, through rapids and a day of fun
on the river. We passed by the smoldering remains of
Ecklund Draw (where I had spent a week on a fire engine
watching a fire burn), Upper and Lower Disaster Falls
(so named because it was where one of Powells rafts
broke up), my previous closest descent to Lodore Canyon at
Pot Creek, and a few bighorn sheep curiously watching our
big blue rafts glide by on the surface of the water. I
dont know where we camped that evening. It was a very nice beach somewhere on
the left bank, with deep white sand rolling back into willows and
tamarisk. We had a nice dinner and sat in canvas chairs
until the darkness in the canyon grew complete and the sky
was a silver-dusted strip up above between black canyon
walls. Carrie and I slept on the beach, while Jeremy and
Melissa slept in their boats moored to the beach. I took
great effort to dig a well-fitted hip and shoulder bowl in
the sand before I laid my foam sleeping bad down on the
beach. Very comfortable..better than a sleep number
bed. Several times as I was drifting off to sleep, trying
to take in as much of the stars and beauty as I could, the
pattern of the waves would form a rhythm that almost
sounded like someone walking in the water just off shore.
Of course, no one was. The cool air swept down the canyon in a
soft breeze and I slept fantastically. The
next day we had to do some more digging and cutting and
spent quite awhile at this labor. The tamarisk germinate,
then years of sand is deposited on them so that the
original soil level that the roots sprouted into is several feet under. Thus,
digging down to the taproot is required to cut and kill the
things. Some of the tamarisk trees form thickets and it
becomes necessary to trim several dozen long shoots from
the base just to get working room. Often, several trees
grow together, and it is a great puzzle which way each
trunk snakes up through the sand. It is also often
difficult to tell where the tap root begins. Jeremy and
Melissa were, of course, very keen at spotting and
predicting these things. I just dug where they instructed to. In
the sun, in the canyon, in the sand, it is hard work. But
I still prefer it to desk work. Settlers brought tamarisk
here on purpose just so 150 years later four bodies could
find a reason to justify a river trip. This beach, like
others, had been worked over most of the summer and we were
there mainly to clean up small pieces left behind before
they rooted, to finish the few remaining stumps not yet
fully unearthed and to pile everything up nice and neat to
slowly cook and die in the sun overwinter. Tossing the
cut branches into the
water would only take them down river a few miles
where they would beach and root and form new thickets. One
must let them cure for a year on shore before dumping them
in the current. After hours of that, we
hopped in the boats and took off down the river. What a nice
feeling it is to be going downriver when you have little idea
what lay ahead. Jeremy let me row the boat for awhile, and
I quickly discovered that rowing is much, much harder than
it is made to look by an experienced rower. I strained and
pulled, but my heroic struggles seemed to not be doing much at all. We
approached Triplet Falls and Melissa went down first. I watched
her go through alright, making it look easy, then Jeremy
instructed me on how I should row to get through. He
shouted several things above the din of the rapids, but no
matter how hard I tried to follow the instructions, I
couldnt. My oars were defective, I think. The current was too
strong,and I got us beached on a flat rock in the middle
of the river up above the current. Jeremy hopped out on
the rock and pushed to get us going again. Thus ended my
stint as a rower. Everyone had a good laugh. We stopped
for lunch just then on a nice little beach, then went on
down the river some more.
Our rafts swept swiftly
past dozens of little side chutes and crevices, shady groves
of willows with hidden rock passages behind Im sure. I
watched with regret the dozens of perfect shimmering
beaches we were passing by, probably all of which Ill
never see again. One could easily spend a couple of weeks,
perhaps years, on the river, taking it slow and exploring
everything thoroughly. We rode over
the largest rapids of the river at Hells Half Mile,
class III or IV, I dont recall which, but probably class
III since it was low water. We stopped at Rippling Brook
and hiked up to a waterfall in a cool, dark,
sandstone alcove some twenty five feet high and same
across, hidden from outside view by large Douglas Fir
(which is neither a fir, nor a hemolck, as implied by its
latin name, Psuedotsuga). A thin spray of water fell over the
ledge far above and splattered on the rock below, spraying
in all directions. It was possible, I was told, to hike
around to the top of the falls and look down. I would have
liked to, but there was not enough time. Always on this
trip, not enough time. Our second camp
was once again some nameless beach on the left side of the
river. Before we even stopped, there was talk of taking a
swim, since the afternoon had been clear and hot. Let me
say again that the water was very cold. We beached the
boats and it was still hot in the shade on the beach and I thought it
sounded good. I waded out into the water up to my ankles, and
instantly felt very cold up to the hair follicles on my
head. The right canyon wall cast a deep shadow on our
beach, but I spotted sunlit-beach several dozen yards down
and around a bend, so I went down there. I began to wade
in the cold water, tempered by the hot sun on my chest,
when I heard a splash, then a scream. Commotion up river.
Jeremy came charging through the water toward me, or
rather, toward sunlight, dripping with water and
holding his hands in clenched fists and laughing. He too
had noted that the sunshine was only downstream, a fact
that became apparent when he jumped into the icy water. He
got into the sun and seemed to feel less hypothermic. I
went out into the current and kicked out my legs from
under me, instantly plunging myself completely underwater.
I came up and gasped and realized what it is like to be so
cold you cant think or breath. I panicked for an
instant, then charged out of the water, gasping and red.
Such cold water for such a hot
place! Immediately following this,
Jeremy, Melissa and I hiked up behind the beach toward the
rock wall of the canyon set far back from the water in this area
on the left bank. We scrambled up tallus slopes and
zig-zagged around to a dry wash of solid rock molded
smooth as glass by millennia of downpours. I was impressed
how Jeremy could scramble up tallus slopes holding a
beer in his hand. The sun still shone up there, and the
warmth after the swim was tantalizing. We were dry in
minutes. The rock was deep yellow, and the needles on the
pinyon pines were brilliant green in front of it.
We reached a flat rock ledge that dropped off to the wash
25 or 50 feet below and sat and watched the river gliding
imperceptibly along. (Does the river glide or is it only
the water which does so...or is it the same?) Jeremy and
Melissa decided to continue up. The way was steep and I decided
to hang around the flat place. Several minutes later,
Jeremy called down from a boulder directly overhead telling
me I had to see the view. Well, if you say so...So I went
on up, pulling myself up the steep, rocky wall by grabbing
onto tree trunks and branches, trying to forget that I have
no health insurance. I made it to the top and felt so sure
of slipping off to the rocks below I couldnt bring myself to
stand up straight for more than a few seconds. I took some
photos and I recall Jeremy predicting that the shot up
canyon would win the Nobel Peace Price. Im still waiting on that
particular accolade. Back at camp we
ate dinner by the river shore on the sandy beach. The
setup they had for dinner was pretty nice. Folding table
and chairs, a Coleman stove, dishwashing basins, a
dish-dry bag and recycling bags for cans tied to the table legs, and
an array of compact flatware. We ate very elaborate meals. That
night it was cheese and spinach quesadillas with black
beans and salsa. In the river canyon, of course,
everything must be packed out. There were unique leave no
trace practices that I found surprisingly rigid. For
example, food particles could not be disposed of in the
river (crumbs, bits of beans left in the pot, etc.) and
had to be filtered out and stored in a bucket to be added
to the compost bin back at the office. Peeing always took
place directly into the river. Dilute, dont pollute.
Other bodily functions took place in a portable toilet
called the Groover. Acording to Jeremy, the name comes
from early rafting days when army ammo cans were used
for this purpose. After sitting on an ammo can for several
minutes, one had deep grooves imprinted in the flesh of
the bum and legs, hence the name. I rarely failed to find
humor in the name as it invoked an image of some sort of
righteous party dude, living it up. The groover was always
set up in some scenic location away from camp, behind a
willow thicket or something, with a nice view of the
mountains or the river to admire while taking care of
business. The handwashing station was near camp, and consisted of a
bucket with a foot pump that expelled bleach water out of
a thin tap into another empty bucket. On top of the bleach
water bucket was a sign weighted by a rubber Stegosaurus that said Banio
Occupano that one was supposed to place erect on the way to
the scenic outhouse to avoid embarrassing encounters.
The following day we spent all morning
digging tamarisk, and unearthed some champion-sized weeds.
It was sobering to realize how much work it took to pull one
tree out, and then see dozens of beaches along the river
downstream completely choked with them. Near Echo Park,
the tamarisk is so thick you cant even beach a boat in
many places. You cant even walk to the river from
the campground, unless youre a mouse. The entire
Colorado River watershed is infested with tamarisk, and it
comes up so fast from seed that constant attention must be
paid to beaches to ensure they arent taken over in a few
years. The only hope of ultimate control is in biocontrol. One
promising species comes in the form of a beatle being
tested in TX that likes to eat tamarisk. It seems to work
pretty well, but now the holdup is that tamarisk has
replaced willow habitat for an endangered species of
bird in Arizona. Birders fear that reducing tamarisk will
kill off this bird. Damned if you do, damned if you
dont. The rafting that day took us
past Steamboat Rock and Echo Park, where I had camped
just a couple of weeks earlier. This is where the Yampa
meets up with the Green. Echo Park was named by John
Powell in 1869, but was first visited by fur trappers in
1825. I marvel at the ability of fur trappers to have
gotten so far down into the canyons way back in 1825. The
name is fitting, since in every direction there are stone
walls curving this way and that, all at least a thousand
feet high. The water in this area was deep and slow and
required lots of rowing to keep going downriver, so consequently,
it is very quiet here too. Every word echoes. The first
person to live in the area was a hermit named Patrick
Lynch, who moved west after a stretch as a Union naval
captain in the Civil War. He said he wanted to get as far
away from the ocean as possible, and gradually settled down in
the network of canyons and caves around Echo Park (1500
miles from the Pacific). He lived off of jerkied meat from
cows that washed down river in the spring floods and had a
network of caves he lived in, most labeled with his
sign, which was a capital P with an L bottom on it. Steve
told us these are still found carved in the
sandstone walls of Echo Park here and there, if you know
where to look. My friend Dave and I located what appeared
to be one of his old caves just a week before. Our
tiny flotilla of rubber and plastic stopped just inside
Whirlpool Canyon to have lunch on the nicest, largest
beach yet. Because of the time of day, it was
completely in shade (mercifully). It stretched about 50
feet back to the rock wall, where after lunch Jeremy and
Melissa tried to solve a climbing problem on an overhang.
Melissa pointed out ladders high up in the walls,
abandoned over thirty years ago when environmental groups
blocked construction of two dams in this canyon. That was
the first big victory for the Sierra Club. If not for a
few concerned individuals decades ago, the beach we stood
on would be drowned under 500 feet of murky, stagnant water, and Dinosaur
National Monument would be a National Recreation Area with
bathtub rings on the canyon walls just like Lake Powell. I
did some exploring of my own along the beach and found an
inexplicible steel pipe, 2" diameter, jutting out
from the wall about a foot. I also found a thin chute
that led up and up at a steep slope, but harboring trees
that I used for leverage to twist my way up. I got up as
high as I dared in the cool crevice, enjoyed the complete
silence and isolation for a few moments, then slipped
back down the tallus, slowing my descent by smooth
handoffs from tree to tree. Everywhere I went, there were
no human footprints in the sand. We continued on under an unbroken blue sky,
passing Jones Hole where I had swum in the river and seen
a magnificently-sized trout picking at rocks a week before
with Dave. The clear, cold water emerging from Jones
Hole Creek kept to itself for some distance down the
river, forming a clear band of water within the relative
muddiness of the river. Our camp for
the night was at the exit of the river from Whirlpool
Canyon at a place called The Cove. Here we saw the first
people in three days, an elderly man and woman fishing on
the opposite bank. Jeremy, Melissa and I again went
hiking, while Carrie stayed at the beach and read. We
bushwhacked up a steep rock incline that got steeper all
the time. Jeremy disappeared into a slot canyon that led
up so steeply I didnt even consider following. My route
diminished in comfort to the point where I turned back.
Melissa went on up ahead, holding onto the slope that was
almost vertical with hands and feet. I used shrubs to help
lower myself down, after which I struck off in a
new direction, across the draw and up a sandy hill. I had
to circle it 180 degrees to find a path to the top through
the loose dirt and rocks. This hill is clearly visible on
the map near the campground. I found a footpath at the
summit and trotted back to camp. I walked up the river into
the canyon as far as was feasible without swimming for it.
I found an unopened can of Diet Coke lyng in the rocks by
the current, bleached almost beyond recognition by sun and
water. Some relic of a river trip, years ago. How long?
Perhaps someone wiped out and lost their drinks in the river.
How long does it take for a non-floating can of pop to
wash down the river to beach outside the canyon? I walked
back to camp and grabbed my book and found a nice sandy
shallow enclosed on three sides by juniper to relax in.
The opening to my little room faced the beach, although the view was
interrupted by willows and tamarisk. I heard
Jeremy and Melissa hiking back, talking quietly in the
orange evening sun. They walked just past my little
room and stopped about 10 feet in front, looking at the
beach, their backs to me. Jeremy whispered furtively and
grinned a toothy smile, and I knew what he was up to. He
found a rock and was craning his neck over the junipers to
find Carrie and I, presumably sitting on the beach. Just as he
pulled back his arm to let fly, I smacked the ground at
his feet with a large rock I had silently hurled from the
shadows. A look of utter surprise with wide eyes came over
his face as he jerked back and looked wildly around. Then
he saw me in the shadows and laughed. You got to get up pretty early in
the morning to pull one over on me. It was hot, so
we all took a nice swim in the water, which was warmer
than the day before owing to the extra 35 miles of solar
charging. We also noticed that the water was muddy and
brown, probably an effect from a surge of water
being released from the dam. After that, we ate dinner on
the beach, as always, just a few feet from the water. We
stayed up much later that night, enjoying the last night
on the river. Jeremy espoused his theory on how
cloning would save the world by destroying the human race.
Other topics were equally intellectual. The canyon was
behind us, and the whole open sky of stars was open above
us. By bedtime, the only lights were the soft glow of
the stars, and the glow from Jeremys hand rolled
cigarette. Crickets formed the tenor voice to complement
the ever present river-ripple bass. I slept under the arch
of a willow thicket on the sand, twenty feet from
water. The next morning I discovered mouse tracks
completely circling me and, tracing their paths, found
they went up and over my bag. The last day of the trip
led us through flat river areas where the surrounding terrain
was flat and dry. We cruised through Island Park, and saw
a bald eagle and a huge black bull moose. The moose was
especially out of place since ten feet from the river lay
nothing but sagebrush and cactus. He must be looking for a
way out. The late summer dryness had sucked all the green out
of the surrounding hills and flats, and it looked
desolate. We passed by Ruple Ranch and Rainbow Park, where
I had burned and sweated under the sun doing veg
monitoring way back in June. It was poignant to remember back to
the carefree days of early summer spent just beside the
river, now to see that place again with the end of summer
in sight. We entered Split Mountain
Canyon, and had a few last big thrills on Moonshine and Warm
Springs rapids before coasting on in to the takeout at
Split Mountain. I don't have any photographs of
any of the rapids we coasted over on the trip because I
tucked my camera into the dry
box whenever I heard the roar of whitewater up ahead. We pulled
the boats up to the empty concrete ramp and beached them.
Then we ate lunch in the shade and unloaded all the gear
from the rafts and stacked it on the ramp. We sat in the
shade and waited for Vanessa to pick us up in the trailer.
Someone commented on how odd it was to be returning to
civilizationafter so long out of contact. Jeremy told
a story of how the usual pickup guy would always come up
with some bullshit story to tell people just getting off
the river, such as Well, we declared war on Canada while you was
gone,or some other such nonsense. Thus it was that none
of us took Vanessa seriously when she told us that the
World Trade Center towers had been destroyed by airline
jets the day before. I mean, how ridiculous does that
sound? We didnt believe her, despite her serious attempts
otherwise, until we stopped at the Sinclair in Jenson for
shakes and saw the TV sets replaying the disaster again
and again. I figured that at about the time it
happened, we were busy digging up tamarisk on a sandy,
shady beach without a care in the world. A very strange
thought, that. We emerged from that bliss of ignorance to
a whole different animal. And Id have to say that
not seeing another person outside our group for 4 days was
the best part of the whole experience. Even great places
lose their charm when youve got to share them with other
bipeds. Anyway, thats how the trip ended, the trip of a
lifetime, really. It was a fantastic ending to my summer at Dinosaur. I
packed up and left for home one week later and Ive been dreaming
of going back ever since.
Imagery
from this trip location, and others, is available for sale
in the Utah album at LandscapeImagery.com
The inflatable rafts were the last thing
onto the boat trailer, and it took 5 people to get them
on. Jeremy stood on the back of the trailer and pulled on
the front as four of us on the ground walked one out of the river
cache and threw it up to him. Then we did it again with
another boat. It was early morning, Sept 9 2001. We loaded
the truck under a depthless blue disc, cloudless, arid. A
desert sky. Soon, all was ready. The truck was carrying
enough food and water for 4 people for 4 days, perhaps
longer. Shovels and clippers were stashed in canvas bags
under the rafts, tools we would use for tamarisk removal
on the river. Melissa and Jeremy were the seasonal
employees of the park service in charge of this trip.
They were weed warriors, group leaders who coordinated
the efforts of volunteers in the task and ultimate goal of
complete tamarisk eradication from certain beaches that
lined the banks of the Green River within Dinosaur
National Monument. They were also pretty good river runners,
and had spent all summer paddling down the Green River and
its undamed tributary, the Yampa. By the time we
got to the boat ramp it was nearing lunch, so we had a
nice meal of Melissas homemade humus with fresh, raw
veggies. The river was clear and low. I watched an osprey
catch a trout thirty feet in front of me as I sat near the
calm river. They werent letting much water 
out this time of year from the dam at
Flaming Gorge (Flaming George). Snowmelt from the Wind
River Mountains in Wyoming runs into this mammoth pool
of still water and sits until farmers need it for
irrigation, or Pheonix decides they need more water to
fill their swimming pools. The water in the reservoir is
deep and becomes clear as the sediment settles out. For us this
also meant the water was very cold, even after a hot
summer, since they let the water out of the bottom of the
reservoir where the sun never shines.The packing of the
boats took longer than I expected, owing to the
hundred and one boxes and bags required for the trip.
Jeremy and Melissa seem like free-wheeling carefree kind
of folks, but in packing they were as meticulous as
engineers. We hopped in the boats at last and shoved off onto the
slick water. I rode in the front of Jeremys raft since
Carrie was an old friend of Melissas from Arizona and
they wanted to catch up. I was also a seasonal employee at
Dinosaur, but my duties had kept me high and dry on the
river benches a thousand feet up,where the rattlesnakes
live. It was a great job, but I was happy for the chance
to raft a big river and to get down in the canyons I had
looked down on for the last 3 months. This trip was the second
to last of the season, and on it we were not meeting big
groups of volunteers as Jeremy and Melissa typically had
all summer. Instead, this was a trip that we could enjoy,
while performing a valuable public service, of course,
within the confines of our small group. We had put in just
upstream from the Gates of Lodore, a melodramatic name for a
very dramatic spectacle. On a map, the contour lines for
the canyon walls overlap for more than 1500 feet. Here is
where a flat wide river is pressed in between giant drab
walls several hundred feet high at the lowest, and
remains hidden and almost inaccessible for the next 44
miles. I pictured 
John Wesley Powell guiding his flotilla
into this canyon, with 10 times the water rushing on the
then-undamned river, not knowing when or where he would be
able to get out. Now thats adventure. Jeremy and Melissa
could definitely tell a much more detailed story of the
rivers history than I, and if you ever meet them, be
sure to ask. As the water entered the canyon, we sped up
and encountered little ripples here and there. Before we
hit any major rapids at all, we beached the rafts at Winnies
Grotto and got out to work. For about an hour, we dug up
tamarisk and cut roots.This was mostly cleanup since they
had groups working there all summer. Most of the tamarisk
were already gone and the beach looked very nice. Back in
the water and downstream, through rapids and a day of fun
on the river. We passed by the smoldering remains of
Ecklund Draw (where I had spent a week on a fire engine
watching a fire burn), Upper and Lower Disaster Falls
(so named because it was where one of Powells rafts
broke up), my previous closest descent to Lodore Canyon at
Pot Creek, and a few bighorn sheep curiously watching our
big blue rafts glide by on the surface of the water. I
dont know where we camped that evening. It was a very nice beach somewhere on
the left bank, with deep white sand rolling back into willows and
tamarisk. We had a nice dinner and sat in canvas chairs
until the darkness in the canyon grew complete and the sky
was a silver-dusted strip up above between black canyon
walls. Carrie and I slept on the beach, while Jeremy and
Melissa slept in their boats moored to the beach. I took
great effort to dig a well-fitted hip and shoulder bowl in
the sand before I laid my foam sleeping bad down on the
beach. Very comfortable..better than a sleep number
bed. Several times as I was drifting off to sleep, trying
to take in as much of the stars and beauty as I could, the
pattern of the waves would form a rhythm that almost
sounded like someone walking in the water just off shore.
Of course, no one was. The cool air swept down the canyon in a
soft breeze and I slept fantastically. The
next day we had to do some more digging and cutting and
spent quite awhile at this labor. The tamarisk germinate,
then years of sand is deposited on them so that the
original soil level that the roots sprouted into is several feet under. Thus,
digging down to the taproot is required to cut and kill the
things. Some of the tamarisk trees form thickets and it
becomes necessary to trim several dozen long shoots from
the base just to get working room. Often, several trees
grow together, and it is a great puzzle which way each
trunk snakes up through the sand. It is also often
difficult to tell where the tap root begins. Jeremy and
Melissa were, of course, very keen at spotting and
predicting these things. I just dug where they instructed to. In
the sun, in the canyon, in the sand, it is hard work. But
I still prefer it to desk work. Settlers brought tamarisk
here on purpose just so 150 years later four bodies could
find a reason to justify a river trip. This beach, like
others, had been worked over most of the summer and we were
there mainly to clean up small pieces left behind before
they rooted, to finish the few remaining stumps not yet
fully unearthed and to pile everything up nice and neat to
slowly cook and die in the sun overwinter. Tossing the
cut branches into the
water would only take them down river a few miles
where they would beach and root and form new thickets. One
must let them cure for a year on shore before dumping them
in the current. After hours of that, we
hopped in the boats and took off down the river. What a nice
feeling it is to be going downriver when you have little idea
what lay ahead. Jeremy let me row the boat for awhile, and
I quickly discovered that rowing is much, much harder than
it is made to look by an experienced rower. I strained and
pulled, but my heroic struggles seemed to not be doing much at all. We
approached Triplet Falls and Melissa went down first. I watched
her go through alright, making it look easy, then Jeremy
instructed me on how I should row to get through. He
shouted several things above the din of the rapids, but no
matter how hard I tried to follow the instructions, I
couldnt. My oars were defective, I think. The current was too
strong,and I got us beached on a flat rock in the middle
of the river up above the current. Jeremy hopped out on
the rock and pushed to get us going again. Thus ended my
stint as a rower. Everyone had a good laugh. We stopped
for lunch just then on a nice little beach, then went on
down the river some more.
Our rafts swept swiftly
past dozens of little side chutes and crevices, shady groves
of willows with hidden rock passages behind Im sure. I
watched with regret the dozens of perfect shimmering
beaches we were passing by, probably all of which Ill
never see again. One could easily spend a couple of weeks,
perhaps years, on the river, taking it slow and exploring
everything thoroughly. We rode over
the largest rapids of the river at Hells Half Mile,
class III or IV, I dont recall which, but probably class
III since it was low water. We stopped at Rippling Brook
and hiked up to a waterfall in a cool, dark,
sandstone alcove some twenty five feet high and same
across, hidden from outside view by large Douglas Fir
(which is neither a fir, nor a hemolck, as implied by its
latin name, Psuedotsuga). A thin spray of water fell over the
ledge far above and splattered on the rock below, spraying
in all directions. It was possible, I was told, to hike
around to the top of the falls and look down. I would have
liked to, but there was not enough time. Always on this
trip, not enough time. Our second camp
was once again some nameless beach on the left side of the
river. Before we even stopped, there was talk of taking a
swim, since the afternoon had been clear and hot. Let me
say again that the water was very cold. We beached the
boats and it was still hot in the shade on the beach and I thought it
sounded good. I waded out into the water up to my ankles, and
instantly felt very cold up to the hair follicles on my
head. The right canyon wall cast a deep shadow on our
beach, but I spotted sunlit-beach several dozen yards down
and around a bend, so I went down there. I began to wade
in the cold water, tempered by the hot sun on my chest,
when I heard a splash, then a scream. Commotion up river.
Jeremy came charging through the water toward me, or
rather, toward sunlight, dripping with water and
holding his hands in clenched fists and laughing. He too
had noted that the sunshine was only downstream, a fact
that became apparent when he jumped into the icy water. He
got into the sun and seemed to feel less hypothermic. I
went out into the current and kicked out my legs from
under me, instantly plunging myself completely underwater.
I came up and gasped and realized what it is like to be so
cold you cant think or breath. I panicked for an
instant, then charged out of the water, gasping and red.
Such cold water for such a hot
place! 
Immediately following this,
Jeremy, Melissa and I hiked up behind the beach toward the
rock wall of the canyon set far back from the water in this area
on the left bank. We scrambled up tallus slopes and
zig-zagged around to a dry wash of solid rock molded
smooth as glass by millennia of downpours. I was impressed
how Jeremy could scramble up tallus slopes holding a
beer in his hand. The sun still shone up there, and the
warmth after the swim was tantalizing. We were dry in
minutes. The rock was deep yellow, and the needles on the
pinyon pines were brilliant green in front of it.
We reached a flat rock ledge that dropped off to the wash
25 or 50 feet below and sat and watched the river gliding
imperceptibly along. (Does the river glide or is it only
the water which does so...or is it the same?) Jeremy and
Melissa decided to continue up. The way was steep and I decided
to hang around the flat place. Several minutes later,
Jeremy called down from a boulder directly overhead telling
me I had to see the view. Well, if you say so...So I went
on up, pulling myself up the steep, rocky wall by grabbing
onto tree trunks and branches, trying to forget that I have
no health insurance. I made it to the top and felt so sure
of slipping off to the 
rocks below I couldnt bring myself to
stand up straight for more than a few seconds. I took some
photos and I recall Jeremy predicting that the shot up
canyon would win the Nobel Peace Price. Im still waiting on that
particular accolade. Back at camp we
ate dinner by the river shore on the sandy beach. The
setup they had for dinner was pretty nice. Folding table
and chairs, a Coleman stove, dishwashing basins, a
dish-dry bag and recycling bags for cans tied to the table legs, and
an array of compact flatware. We ate very elaborate meals. That
night it was cheese and spinach quesadillas with black
beans and salsa. In the river canyon, of course,
everything must be packed out. There were unique leave no
trace practices that I found surprisingly rigid. For
example, food particles could not be disposed of in the
river (crumbs, bits of beans left in the pot, etc.) and
had to be filtered out and stored in a bucket to be added
to the compost bin back at the office. Peeing always took
place directly into the river. Dilute, dont pollute.
Other bodily functions took place in a portable toilet
called the Groover. Acording to Jeremy, the name comes
from early rafting days when army ammo cans were used
for this purpose. After sitting on an ammo can for several
minutes, one had deep grooves imprinted in the flesh of
the bum and legs, hence the name. I rarely failed to find
humor in the name as it invoked an image of some sort of
righteous party dude, living it up. The groover was always
set up in some scenic location away from camp, behind a
willow thicket or something, with a nice view of the
mountains or the river to admire while taking care of
business. The handwashing 
station was near camp, and consisted of a
bucket with a foot pump that expelled bleach water out of
a thin tap into another empty bucket. On top of the bleach
water bucket was a sign weighted by a rubber Stegosaurus that said Banio
Occupano that one was supposed to place erect on the way to
the scenic outhouse to avoid embarrassing encounters.
The following day we spent all morning
digging tamarisk, and unearthed some champion-sized weeds.
It was sobering to realize how much work it took to pull one
tree out, and then see dozens of beaches along the river
downstream completely choked with them. Near Echo Park,
the tamarisk is so thick you cant even beach a boat in
many places. You cant even walk to the river from
the campground, unless youre a mouse. The entire
Colorado River watershed is infested with tamarisk, and it
comes up so fast from seed that constant attention must be
paid to beaches to ensure they arent taken over in a few
years. The only hope of ultimate control is in biocontrol. One
promising species comes in the form of a beatle being
tested in TX that likes to eat tamarisk. It seems to work
pretty well, but now the holdup is that tamarisk has
replaced willow habitat for an endangered species of
bird in Arizona. Birders fear that reducing tamarisk will
kill off this bird. Damned if you do, damned if you
dont. The rafting that day took us
past Steamboat Rock and Echo Park, where I had camped
just a couple of weeks earlier. This is where the Yampa
meets up with the Green. Echo Park was named by John
Powell in 1869, but was first visited by fur trappers in
1825. I marvel at the ability of fur trappers to have
gotten so far down into the canyons way back in 1825. The
name is fitting, since in every direction there are stone
walls curving this way and that, all at least a thousand
feet high. The water in this area was deep and slow and
required lots of rowing to keep going downriver, so consequently,
it is very quiet here too. Every word echoes. The first
person to live in the area was a hermit named Patrick
Lynch, who moved west after a stretch as a Union naval
captain in the Civil War. He said he wanted to get as far
away from the ocean as possible, and gradually settled down in
the network of canyons and caves around Echo Park (1500
miles from the Pacific). He lived off of jerkied meat from
cows that washed down river in the spring floods and had a
network 
of caves he lived in, most labeled with his
sign, which was a capital P with an L bottom on it. Steve
told us these are still found carved in the
sandstone walls of Echo Park here and there, if you know
where to look. My friend Dave and I located what appeared
to be one of his old caves just a week before. Our
tiny flotilla of rubber and plastic stopped just inside
Whirlpool Canyon to have lunch on the nicest, largest
beach yet. Because of the time of day, it was
completely in shade (mercifully). It stretched about 50
feet back to the rock wall, where after lunch Jeremy and
Melissa tried to solve a climbing problem on an overhang.
Melissa pointed out ladders high up in the walls,
abandoned over thirty years ago when environmental groups
blocked construction of two dams in this canyon. That was
the first big victory for the Sierra Club. If not for a
few concerned individuals decades ago, the beach we stood
on would be drowned under 500 feet of murky, stagnant water, and Dinosaur
National Monument would be a National Recreation Area with
bathtub rings on the canyon walls just like Lake Powell. I
did some exploring of my own along the beach and found an
inexplicible steel pipe, 2" diameter, jutting out
from the wall about a foot. I also found a thin chute
that led up and up at a steep slope, but harboring trees
that I used for leverage to twist my way up. I got up as
high as I dared in the cool crevice, enjoyed the complete
silence and isolation for a few moments, then slipped
back down the tallus, slowing my descent by smooth
handoffs from tree to tree. Everywhere I went, there were
no human footprints in the sand. 
We continued on under an unbroken blue sky,
passing Jones Hole where I had swum in the river and seen
a magnificently-sized trout picking at rocks a week before
with Dave. The clear, cold water emerging from Jones
Hole Creek kept to itself for some distance down the
river, forming a clear band of water within the relative
muddiness of the river. Our camp for
the night was at the exit of the river from Whirlpool
Canyon at a place called The Cove. Here we saw the first
people in three days, an elderly man and woman fishing on
the opposite bank. Jeremy, Melissa and I again went
hiking, while Carrie stayed at the beach and read. We
bushwhacked up a steep rock incline that got steeper all
the time. Jeremy disappeared into a slot canyon that led
up so steeply I didnt even consider following. My route
diminished in comfort to the point where I turned back.
Melissa went on up ahead, holding onto the slope that was
almost vertical with hands and feet. I used shrubs to help
lower myself down, after which I struck off in a
new direction, across the draw and up a sandy hill. I had
to circle it 180 degrees to find a path to the top through
the loose dirt and rocks. This hill is clearly visible on
the map near the campground. I found a footpath at the
summit and trotted back to camp. I walked up the river into
the canyon as far as was feasible without swimming for it.
I found an unopened can of Diet Coke lyng in the rocks by
the current, bleached almost beyond recognition by sun and
water. Some relic of a river trip, years ago. How long?
Perhaps someone wiped out and lost their drinks in the river.
How long does it take for a non-floating can of pop to
wash down the river to beach outside the canyon? I walked
back to camp and grabbed my book and found a nice sandy
shallow enclosed on three sides by juniper to relax in.
The opening to my little room faced the beach, although the view was
interrupted by willows and tamarisk. I heard
Jeremy and Melissa hiking back, talking quietly in the
orange evening sun. They walked just past my little
room and stopped about 10 feet in front, looking at the
beach, their backs to me. Jeremy whispered furtively and
grinned a toothy smile, and I knew what he was up to. He
found a rock and was craning his neck over the junipers to
find Carrie and I, presumably sitting on the beach. Just as he
pulled back his arm to let fly, I smacked the ground at
his feet with a large rock I had silently hurled from the
shadows. A look of utter surprise with wide eyes came over
his face as he jerked back and looked wildly around. Then
he saw me in the shadows and laughed. You got to get up pretty early in
the morning to pull one over on me. It was hot, so
we all took a nice swim in the water, which was warmer
than the day before owing to the extra 35 miles of solar
charging. We also noticed that the water was muddy and
brown, probably an effect from a surge of water
being released from the dam. After that, we ate dinner on
the beach, as always, just a few feet from the water. We
stayed up much later that night, enjoying the last night
on the river. Jeremy espoused his theory on how
cloning would save the world by destroying the human race.
Other topics were equally intellectual. The canyon was
behind us, and the whole open sky of stars was open above
us. By bedtime, the only lights were the soft glow of
the stars, and the glow from Jeremys hand rolled
cigarette. Crickets formed the tenor voice to complement
the ever present river-ripple bass. I slept under the arch
of a willow thicket on the sand, twenty feet from
water. The next morning I discovered mouse tracks
completely circling me and, tracing their paths, found
they went up and over my bag. The last day of the trip
led us through flat river areas where the surrounding terrain
was flat and dry. We cruised through Island Park, and saw
a bald eagle and a huge black bull moose. The moose was
especially out of place since ten feet from the river lay
nothing but sagebrush and cactus. He must be looking for a
way out. The late summer dryness had sucked all the green out
of the surrounding hills and flats, and it looked
desolate. We passed by Ruple Ranch and Rainbow Park, where
I had burned and sweated under the sun doing veg
monitoring way back in June. It was poignant to remember back to
the carefree days of early summer spent just beside the
river, now to see that place again with the end of summer
in sight. We entered Split Mountain
Canyon, and had a few last big thrills on Moonshine and Warm
Springs rapids before coasting on in to the takeout at
Split Mountain. I don't have any photographs of
any of the rapids we coasted over on the trip because I
tucked my camera into 
the dry
box whenever I heard the roar of whitewater up ahead. We pulled
the boats up to the empty concrete ramp and beached them.
Then we ate lunch in the shade and unloaded all the gear
from the rafts and stacked it on the ramp. We sat in the
shade and waited for Vanessa to pick us up in the trailer.
Someone commented on how odd it was to be returning to
civilizationafter so long out of contact. Jeremy told
a story of how the usual pickup guy would always come up
with some bullshit story to tell people just getting off
the river, such as Well, we declared war on Canada while you was
gone,or some other such nonsense. Thus it was that none
of us took Vanessa seriously when she told us that the
World Trade Center towers had been destroyed by airline
jets the day before. I mean, how ridiculous does that
sound? We didnt believe her, despite her serious attempts
otherwise, until we stopped at the Sinclair in Jenson for
shakes and saw the TV sets replaying the disaster again
and again. I figured that at about the time it
happened, we were busy digging up tamarisk on a sandy,
shady beach without a care in the world. A very strange
thought, that. We emerged from that bliss of ignorance to
a whole different animal. And Id have to say that
not seeing another person outside our group for 4 days was
the best part of the whole experience. Even great places
lose their charm when youve got to share them with other
bipeds. Anyway, thats how the trip ended, the trip of a
lifetime, really. It was a fantastic ending to my summer at Dinosaur. I
packed up and left for home one week later and Ive been dreaming
of going back ever since.
