Re: Green River Utah, Sept27-Oct7 2011.
Toward the Confluence the canyon walls shut you in.
EEK its time to camp and will we find a sandbar?
Well yah.. These people are getting picked up. There is a mondo huge beach at the Confluence of the Green and Colorado
We run a classII and camp at the elbow at Spanish Bottom. The site of wind havoc to come.
Looking back toward the Doll House. Its about a mile and 1200 feet up. As much as I would like to do it, the trail scares the bejesus out of me.
We watch a misc party float by.. eek.. they camp down just above Cataract Canyon. They do try to help the fellow campers on our sandbar.. later
Sunset... toward the Doll House.
We stayed at Spanish two nights. The intervening day was a hike day and we chose to hike up Lower Red Lake Canyon. We hiked about eight miles. We found some very lush flowers. I don't know what it is.
And brush
And got a real good view of the Doll House without the scary scramble. Our vertical was the same but at a gentler gradient.
There were six other people who eventually camped where we did. We all hiked on the day before the jet boat picked us up. The winds were howling. They got to the top of the Dollhouse and found one of their tents had vanished. Turns out tent, sleeping bag, and pad and clothes went down Cataract Canyon and all that remained was the stakes. Memo..deadhead your tent. Deadhead your canoe. The raft party in the picture tried to reach the tent as they were camped below us but could not get to the tent.
Of course that night the temp plummeted to 20 degrees. The hapless tent owner bunked with someone else and sang the praises to the last night out. Crap happens.
The next day the jet boat picked us up. My pix are awful of that 60 mile journey back up the Colorado to the Potash landing outside of Moab. It rained, sleeted, hailed and snowed the whole way. Marble size hail hurts and we spent most of the trip on the floor under the seats.
Our boats are on the racks above on the jet boat, emphasizing the need for no mud in the boats. At Potash we got off and our boats stayed on the jet boat which was loaded onto a truck and trailer combo for shipment back to the base in Moab.
Desert camping has its own unique set of challenges. We baked and welcomed wet cotton. We also froze and welcomed hats and wool and wish we had brought mittens. That jetboat ride was the coldest I can ever recall being. It also rained most days for a short time. Wet silt is NOT FUN!
But the trip was a LOT OF FUN! And as a native desert rat I loved it.