Into the Great Unknown: Cloudburst (x2)! And Off We Go.

It was time to begin our journey down the Colorado River, or as John Wesley Powell put it, going down the "Great Unknown". In his day, no one had been down the river. But since Powell's epic trip in 1869, a half million people have made the journey, and there is an entire library of books, maps and guides describing each rapid and eddy in the river. Today the river is "known".

But to me it was still the "Great Unknown". To someone with absolutely no whitewater rafting experience, the Colorado River might as well have been on Mars. Book knowledge is helpful in setting a frame of mind about traveling down the river, but preparing you for the experience? One might as well try to learn Judo from a book. I was quietly apprehensive as we drove north from Flagstaff towards the take-in at Lee's Ferry.

One doesn't exactly drive up and jump into a raft. With so much traffic on the river, there are regulations designed to space groups out, so a trip begins with an afternoon rigging, a night on the banks of the river, and a morning briefing and inspection by a National Park Service ranger. Once cleared by the ranger, the expedition can begin.

As we drove along, we couldn't help but notice the towering cumulus clouds ahead of us. The Arizona monsoons were in full flower, and it looked like we were going to have some serious rain activity.

We crossed Navajo Bridge just outside Lee's Ferry and stopped to have a look at the river, 470 feet below us. This brown water would be our home for the next 16 days. We watched another group float by, thinking how that would be us the next day. The river is calm in this stretch, but we could still see numerous eddies and upwellings that belied the apparent calmness of the river.

We arrived to find a flurry of activity as the rafters prepared their rigs. At this point there wasn't a lot to do except stand ready to hand over equipment and luggage, or fill water jugs. Oh, and cull down the stunning amount of stuff we had in our luggage. I pulled one item after another from the dry bags, and then pulled more, and when we handed them over to be loaded on the raft, they got lifted up, heavily, and eyes rolled. Rookies....

For future reference, Garry, you can get by nicely with perhaps half the stuff you brought this time.

The first storm hit with a vengeance. I was surprised for a moment that no one seemed upset that their stuff was getting all wet. And then I remembered that everything we had was expected to get wet. We were going down a white-water river after all. I took my camera and other sensitive stuff to the big shade structure to wait out the storm.

This storm was big. One maybe needs to understand that I come from California's Central Valley where we get maybe one or two thunderstorms a year, but even our Arizona travelers were impressed with the downfall, the thunder, and the wind, which sent raindrops hurtling sideways. Within minutes there were dozens of waterfalls coming off the cliffs around us.

We would not know it for two weeks, but the series of storms around the beginning of our trip caused havoc in the region. Check out this video of the simply unbelievable flooding at Antelope Canyon and Page, Arizona that took place during these few days. Antelope is a slot canyon 50-100 feet deep, and it was filled over the brim. We would also see side canyons downstream forever changed by debris flows.

For us, the storms brought about beautiful waterfalls, and being the first rainfall of the season at Lee's Ferry, also brought out a veritable zoo of toads, frogs, lizards and bugs along the river. A beaver swam by (I finally realized why saplings around the riverbank had wire mesh wrapped around them).

The storm eventually subsided, and we made our first boat journey...150 yards downstream to the river camp. We set up tents (expecting more rain), and drove down to Cliff Dwellers Lodge for dinner. The night was cool and humid, in sharp contrast to the sweltering August temperatures I was expecting. There was even mist rising on the river (see the picture in this post). I slept...okay.

The morning included an impossibly beautiful calm river with the brilliant Vermilion Cliffs in the distance. The cloud cover promised rain, however. We packed our gear, loaded the rafts, and rowed back to the take-in for the ranger briefing. Once could tell the veterans from the rookies at the briefing: the veterans looked like glassy-eyed airline passengers sleeping through the emergency procedures, while the rookies like me hung on every word with widening and fearful eyes. Scorpions? Rattlesnakes? Deadly Rapids? Flips and upsets? Norovirus? Wait, what the heck is Norovirus? Ah, the reason (among many) for the almost OCD-like compulsion to wash hands over and over in camp. What could be worse than a highly contagious intense gastrointestinal disease spreading through camp, short of broken limbs or death?

As the ranger finished her briefing (it wasn't really brief, by the way), the second massive cloudburst hit. It was more intense than the first, and within a few minutes the insignificant drainage next to the take-in was flash flooding. In the picture below, you are only seeing the overflow portion. I could hear cobbles bouncing along the streambed in the main current. A couple of kayakers couldn't resist playing in the surf.

Once again we retreated to the shade structure and waited out the storm. When it cleared, we were clear, too. Clear to go.

I donned my lifejacket, had a "before" portrait taken, and we took our places on the rafts. I was the sole passenger on Pete's 15-foot NRS self-bailing raft (self bailing is a wonderful feature). Pete is a professor at a small college where he is now a dean, but he also teaches a class in literature of the outdoors. He also has a farm. And to my delight, I found out he had brought along a guitar and collection of harmonicas.

We determined the order of the six rafts (we were to be last, as we carried the biggest first aid kit), and one by one the boats were pushed off, and our journey had officially begun.

At that was that. With a last look toward the loading area at Lee's Ferry, we left behind all trappings of civilization for the next week. We would have no contact with society until we reached Phantom Ranch in the depths of the Grand Canyon in 8 days or so.

Out in America's Never Never: Barriers and the Thin Line of Civilization

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

In math, getting from Point A to Point B is hardly a problem. It's a straight line most of the time, or an arc, determined by some kind of equation. Getting from point A to point B can be a problem in a city, since buildings are often in the way, yet a good map or a vocal GPS unit gives you plenty of routes and choices to avoid traffic and delays.

Out in America's Never Never, the vast desert encompassing the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range provinces, getting from Point A to Point B becomes a true challenge. Mountains may block the route, as the Forty-Niners found during the California Gold Rush (and earlier settlers like my ancestors, the Donners). There might be flat, open ground between one point and the other, but there might be no water. In a pre-automobile era, that was a serious problem. But out of all these examples the Colorado Plateau has one really impressive barrier: the Colorado River.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

What's the problem? It's a fair sized river as such things go, the biggest of the American Southwest, but it is hardly a trickle compared to many rivers back east and in the Pacific Northwest. Those rivers were barriers to travel, but numerous ferries and bridges soon solved access problems a long time ago (and numerous boats used the rivers themselves as a highway). The Colorado, though, is a geologically young river. It is rapidly cutting downward through the sedimentary and metamorphic rocks of the recently uplifted continental crust, and the consequence of this is an unnavigable rapid-filled river ensconced in a deep vertical gorge along its entire pathway through the plateau country. Until the Navajo Bridge (above, left) was constructed in 1928 the only place to cross the river between Moab, Utah and Needles, CA, a river distance of 600 miles, was at Lee's Ferry, about five miles upstream of Navajo Bridge (the completion of which put Lee's Ferry out of business). The ferry was the only spot on the river whose approach was not overly complicated by vertical cliffs.

There are more bridges today, but there is still a 300-plus mile stretch between Navajo Bridge and Lake Mead at Hoover Dam where there are no crossings (except the footbridge in Grand Canyon near Phantom Ranch). Travel through the Colorado Plateau country is still complicated by this fact (and frankly, it should remain so).

The paved highways give us a somewhat false sense of easy access, as they must also surmount or circumvent barriers in the landscape formed by river canyons and vertical cliffs. As long as there is gas in the tank, a working air conditioner, and properly tuned engine, we give little thought to how tenuous our control is over our localized environment. A flat tire on a deserted road on a blazing hot day can be life-threatening. And small geological events can have far-ranging consequences.

The original plan for our trip (conceived a year earlier) was to leave the North Rim of Grand Canyon and scoot down the slopes of the East Kaibab Monocline into the Navajo Section of the plateau country. We would cross the Colorado River at Navajo Bridge, turn at Bitter Water onto Highway 89 to Page, Arizona, where we would have a slow-paced tour of Horseshoe Bend, Glen Canyon Dam, and the incredible Antelope Canyon. From there it would be a fairly quick drive to Navajo National Monument, where we would be camping for the night. It was meant to be the most leisurely day of the trip.

Oh well....

The picture above gives a hint about how geology made our day a constant exhausting race against time. The Vermilion Cliffs are a prominent part of the Grand Staircase, revealing early Mesozoic formations, including the Chinle, Wingate and Kayenta. The Chinle, at the base, is composed of easily eroded shale and siltstone, and is subject to slope failure. In the picture above, looking across House Rock Valley, the lower slopes look tilted because they are part of a huge rotational slide.

If you take a big group through this region, you will need to make the camping reservations five or six months in advance, and even at that I nearly missed getting reservations for Arches National Park and the North Rim of Grand Canyon. As such, once the schedule has been established, it can't be easily changed.

But geology can change. Highway 89 from Bitter Water to Page starts out in spectacular fashion, climbing a slope of Chinle to a big cut through the Echo Cliffs, composed of the Wingate, Kayenta and Navajo formations. The view from the upper highway is a stunning panorama of Marble Canyon, the Vermilion Cliffs, and the East Kaibab Monocline that forms the margin of the Kaibab Plateau and Grand Canyon.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

The problem for the road engineers was getting across the Chinle slopes. The Chinle doesn't like highways on the flatlands (swelling and settling of the clays turns the best planned highways into roller-coasters), but it especially doesn't like roads on slopes.

Ultimately they chose to put the road across an ancient landslide not unlike the one in the Vermilion Cliffs above. It is especially visible in Google earth images, where a white outcrop of Navajo Sandstone can be seen well out of place next to the highway (below).

Source: GoogleEarth

In February, a portion of the old slide gave way, destroying a significant stretch of the highway. This wasn't the kind of slide that could be fixed easily, and the road will be out of service for a long time. The Echo Cliffs constitute a significant barrier to east-west travel, and between Bitter Water and Tuba City, only one dirt road crosses it. The state is in the process of paving the track, but it was nowhere near done when we passed through.

Source: Lee Allison, at http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/2013/03/adot-estimates-35-million-to-repair.html

If we were going to see the Navajo Bridge and the Colorado River, we would need to make a 140 mile detour to get to Page and our other objectives. And then backtrack around 70 miles.We barely made it to our tour appointment at Antelope Canyon at 3 PM. We got to see Horseshoe Bend, but the visit to Glen Canyon was cut very very short, and we didn't reach camp until well after dark.

Source: Arizona Department of Transportation

It was a long day...but spectacular, just the same. More later!

For more information about progress with Highway 89, check out http://www.azdot.gov/us89/

The Abandoned Lands...A Journey Through the Colorado Plateau: The River Red, a little red goes a long way

 Today's subject is a short distance from our last post at Wupatki, but we are separated in time...I'm back on the plateau for various reasons today, and yesterday we crossed the Colorado River ("the Red River") at Navajo Bridge. The last few times I was here the river was green and clear, having just been released from Glen Canyon Dam a few miles upstream. I was shocked yesterday to see the river living up to its name! It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but there have been some heavy monsoon storms the last few days. I was aware that the main source of sediment these days is the Paria "River" that drains the Bryce Canyon region, so I realized I wanted to see a raging flash flood.

 We quickly drove to Lee's Ferry where the Paria comes into the Colorado. The Ferry was once the only river crossing for 600 miles when it was built in the 1870s. It was abandoned when the first Navajo Bridge was completed in 1929. I wasn't disappointed. At the confluence there was a striking juxtaposition of red and green river water. The red completely took over in less than a half mile of river flow. Wow...the Paria itself must be stunning!

 We drove to the bridge across the Paria (would the bridge still be there we wondered?) and beheld the mighty Paria...

Wow, indeed. It seem a little red mud goes a long way. That 10 foot wide creek completely transformed the Colorado River!

Here is the explanation of my "abandonment" theme for this series: http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2012/06/abandoned-landsa-journey-through.html