Saturday we loaded up Bill's new van - the Great White Hope - with the remaining goods and personal gear and got on the road, only to return half an hour later because Bill had forgotten his dry bag containing all his clothes for the trip! Altogether an hour was lost. We started down 285 and passed through Saguache, Center, over the famous Wolf Creek Pass (remember C B McCall?), Pagosa Springs, Durango, Cortez, and finally Bluff, Utah. Two miles past Bluff was our put-in point, Sand Island. During the trip down Bill, Darren and Paul had discussed tentative plans to go up to Moab and run a section of the Colorado River named Cataract Canyon. From what I've heard since, that would have been a much more adrenalized adventure. This one was fine by me.
As we approached Bluff we could finally see the river. It didn't look good - rushing water it wasn't. Bill complained about all the water being taken out for irrigation in the area. I didn't see that much water being used at that time though the river valley was cultivated, but I guess if a river isn't that high in the first place, irrigation could make a dent in the flow rate. At Sand Island, Bill made the decision we were going on the San Juan rather than the Colorado. With that decision made, the vehicles were all unloaded and the five hour ferry trip to position two vehicles at the Clay Hills take-out was run by Kara, Dave, Jen and Nad.
The gear and beer had been unloaded earlier as were the rafts. These had to be inflated first. Each raft had four chambers in the outside tubes, two thwarts and the floor. Bill uses self-bailing rafts. If you ever get a chance to go on a raft trip, try to ensure you do it in a self-bailing raft. I've watched bailers at work on the Arkansas, and it looks like they get a harder workout than the paddlers. The pumps we used were home made, built from plastic plumbing pipe, and based on a commercially available design. Even though they were large volume, it took a hundred strokes per tube section to get them fully inflated (to about two to three psi). Altogether, it took nearly 20 minutes to inflate each raft.
Norm and I got into a discussion about the moon phase that evening - this after several beers on my part and a couple slashes of cactus juice on his. Neither could persuade the other to his position no matter how loudly we spoke, but it did provide some laughs with other parties waiting to launch the next day. (It was a first-quarter moon, by the way.)
By the time the ferry runners had returned at 9:30, almost everything had been stashed in the rafts outside of the tents and some snacks and beer. And the wind had come up! All along the river there is sand. Fine sand. The slightest breeze moves it about. The wind got it into everything.
Kara, Dave, Jen and Nad traveled without tents - just sleeping pads, blankets and maybe a bag. Kara said she woke up the next morning with her nose and mouth full of sand. Norm and I hadn't put the rain fly on his tent that night and we woke up with a thick dusting of sand on top of everything, some of it down into our bags. It was a daily ritual for us to pick up the tent, put the door down and shake the sand out.
Originally written Oct 96. Last updated 26Jan01.
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