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Show * COVER % |fa) STORY continued The whitewater stretches are technical and fun. Only once in a while does a professional ety Y, A BOAT guide have trouble getting you through. | Tei come ste ies Adventurers and have only seen one boat ever dumped in this .part of the Green and everybody got out of the water fine. Also running the Green through here are Adrift, Holiday and Adventure Bound. Call that travel council number and ask for a copy of Raft Utah Magazine. CATARACT IF We Hap A BOAT ROY WEBB This delightful book narrates the events that have shaped the Green River's history as well as the colorful personalities of the people who have shared the danger, the wonder, and the peace found through the river and its canyons. Paper $14.95 south of Moab. This stretch is very commercial. Big "J rigs” loaded with many tourists power down the river with outboard motors to take rushed customers through the experience in just three days. I can't recommend doing it that way at all. The point of going to the river is to gear down your biorhythms, placing them into a natural time sequence that mirrors river life—"river time," a real biological phenomenon that can do more for you in a week than THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH PRESS 1795 E. South Campus Dr., Salt Lake City, UT 84112 Ao iiss oo FAX (801) 581-3365 info@upress.utah.edu CANYON Elsewhere in the state, the famous run is through Cataract Canyon on the Colorado ten years worth of expensive psy-’ chotherapy. It's true—I have seen some real nasty people change into sweethearts after a week on the river. Of course, for some, like Deer Valley land speculators with Velcro mobile phones attached to their ears, change can't happen. They should take the three-day Cataract motor trip, it's perfect for them. For the rest of you, run Cataract on an oar boat for a week and do a lot of side hik- ing U YT eet ats WORLD to etre unas CMCC) CMA icra ummm acces Se CUCL TN em UCPC EO Cr Cag SR eo RTC aa ree] age oe en Esa arcs TTC SATS BCR TEI] LOT a ea ean Pa oe ass PAGE 10 e JULY 1997 in HAIR WRAPS BY APPT. WRAP ONLY $1” PER INCH like the Dollhouse in Canyonlands National Park. One sunset seen from that perch will burn itself into your mind forever. Too many companies run Cataract. | don't know them all. Check the raft magazine and call around for prices. If you want the finest whitewater wilderness experience you can find in the lower United Colorado APRA ab places States, through you'll want the Grand to run Canyon the on a two-week river dory trip. It's the best experience and also the most expensive. I consider it in the "once-in-a-lifetime” trip category—something that should be experienced if it is at all possible. Some people have planned their runs through the Grand Canyon 10 years in advance—no exaggeration. It's worth every cent. The only problem with the trip is that it must eventually end. No description for the personal way this run affects you can be adequate. It's not a words kind of thing. It's very, very emotional in there. Some of the sights can bring tears to the eyes of even the most hardened corporate soul. It's flat magnificent—thar's all. ro eee eA es Sy SE 00) (WEST SIDE OF SANDY MALL) 576-1755 DESOLATION CANYON Another high quality run is down the Green through Desolation and Gray's Mon.-Fri. 10-7 Sat. 10-6 experience as it slashes through the largest roadless area in Utah and maybe all of the Canyons. This section of the river can't be run in less than a week. It's a true wilderness mountain states. Like the Grand Canyon—it can be lone- PHOTO: JOHN HARRINGTON Boaters take a break in Ladore Canyon. ly. Help is very far away. If you go, you should get in shape before departing. I once floated past a private party in there with a heart-attack victim wrapped in a sleeping bag and covered by a tarp. His companions were helpless when he was stricken and he didn't make it out. So, you're forewarned that running remote, wild rivers is not like going to Lagoon or Disney World. Fortunately, all licensed guides in Utah must take EMT training for just such an emergency and every professional outfitter carries an extensive first aid kit that has saved lives—so the support, short of quick ambu- formerly called the "Wonderboat," to haul canoeists back up the Colorado from Spanish Bottom to Moab after his clients finished their runs. He also built a smaller jet boat for the same purpose. Tex and Millie have now retired—I hear Tex doesn't like retirement, he was always so gung-ho—and the business, still called Tex's Riverways, is run in Meab by Darrin Vaughan and his brothers, 801-259-5101. By the crazy modern-day standards of Moab-as-tourist-trap, the Vaughans run a very low-key operation for canoe folks only. lance service to a big hospital, is there if you go commercial. The isolation of the Deso/Gray run is There great, but the canyon does not offer as much minum Grumman, with paddles vests for only $15.00 per day. variety as the Ladore run, or a week in an oar boat through Cataract, because the geology of the area is markedly different than the Colorado Plateau. Here, the river bisects the Book Cliffs and the side hikes don't have the pop you'll find in redrock country. There's plenty of wildlife, though. Now, I have saved my very favorite river trip in the region for last. It's not on a raft and there is no, that's zero, whitewater. is, as they say in river-running par- lance "no rubber" in the outfit. You can rent your canoe, a 17-foot aluand life The vehicle shuttle service to various putin points on the river with a jet-boat take out at Spanish Bottom back to Moab is $110.00 per adult, $80.00 for kids six to 12, $55.00 for five and younger and no charge for infants. You must supply your own food and camping equipment. Medium sized coolers with dry and water ice work for drinks and It's a canoe trip from Green River, Utah to Spanish Bottom at the confluence of the perishables. You can eat well, because a 17foot canoe leaves plenty of room for two Green and Colorado National Park. adults and theif*stuff. Planning your trip is rivers in Canyonlands so fun, it's almost as good as going. I recommend you put in at Green BEST RIVER EXPERIENCE So far as I am concerned, this is the best mellow river experience I know of in North America, or maybe the entire world. If ever Nature designed a stretch of river for leisurely viewing of spectacular rock formations, wildlife, perfect hiking and swimming and fabulous beach camping—this is it, especially if you go in September or October, when lower flows have exposed glorious sandbars designed for easy camping, I have canoed this stretch of river five times and it just gets better each trip. Tex and Millie McClatchy of Moab, Utah, invented the commercial version of this trip and they threw everything they had into making it the world-class, easy access in and out run it is. Tex spent thousands and thousands of dollars building the most amazing jet boat on the Colorado/Green system, River State Park and you're off. Take a week to reach Spanish Bottom. Going in at places downstream allows for a faster trip—but why would you want to do that? By the end of a week, the ice will be gone and you'll be cooling your beer in the river, but so what. Lukewarm beer beats any alternative to the river. Seriously, this is better than good, drifting in your canoe, or paddling to work up an appetite when the breeze blows against you. You hike the side canyons, look at endless early native ruins, sleep when you're tired, eat when you're hungry, make love in the sand. No pagers, cell phones, newspapers, television...wow. Running rivers, what a thing to do. I may not have a big house on a hill, but I've seen this world from many of its rivers. And that, my friends, is a damn good trade. Go for it. @ |