Virgin River Gorge May 28

Countless times I have driven through the spectacular Virgin River Gorge marveling at the towering limestone walls above while simultaneously trying to sneak every glance possible at the river below the interstate. Even before I really was a boater the river captivated me. Housed in the desolate corner of Arizona between Mesquite, Nevada and St George, Utah in a lot of ways this abrupt gorge is a literal gateway to many an adventure in Zion and the rest of the Colorado Plateau beyond. More often than not the river was a muddy trickle but occasionally I would spot prime whitewater flows. I knew sooner or later I would need to try to boat the Virgin River Gorge and this finally seemed like a good chance to try if we could sort out a shuttle. 

Between the supreme disappointment of the previous night's hot spring attempt and the exhausted midnight scramble to find camping, I was feeling fairly rundown in the morning but powered through to drive south to the Virgin River Campground, arriving a little after 10:30am. The riverside campground essentially divides the gorge into an 18 mile Class III run above (mostly commonly done as a 6 mile run from the easternmost interstate bridge) and an 8 mile Class IV run below. Numbering only two and unsure of pulling off more complex logistics, we aimed to try to get a hitch to drop us off at the first bridge for the 6 mile run. We made a quick circuit through the campground to have a look at the river and confirmed that there were no kayakers camping that we could corner. We then drove to the small parking lot on the hill at the entrance to the campground, which seemed our best bet to flag down cars leaving the campground or the occasional people venturing off the highway for a quick look. 

We packed up completely ready to go and then asked a few people but nearly everyone seemed to be heading the wrong way towards Nevada. After a bit of a wait we spotted a young Euro-hipster looking couple in a spacious vehicle that went out for a walk that I was getting a good feeling about. Funnily enough right when the couple returned to their car (and we would have asked) the campground ranger drove up to talk with us. The timing! I could hardly believe the couple would be receptive to picking up hitchhikers in front of this ranger and so we were foiled. The ranger was really friendly and curious to hear about our attempt to get on the river, and even quite apologetic when he realized his friendly chat spoiled our best hope of a hitch. Once he left we decided we would stick it out for another half hour or so and see if we had any luck. And luck we did have, finally! 

A couple scruffy guys pulled up in a giant truck and after a few moments of looking them up and down we noticed their apparel- NRS, Kototat, Astral- kayakers! We strolled up and asked if they were going to run the river and could give us a ride. They were not immediately enthusiastic but after a little back and forth decided they could fit us if one of us went in the bed of the truck. It turned out these guys (and later gals) were Springdale locals planning on having a casual run down the longer full 18 miles of the upper gorge. Jackpot for us! I'll admit I had not fully planned for this full run (I know there was a low dam we would have to portage and not much more added whitewater). I did not know this run was 18 miles...I thought it was more like 12...and these guys did not seem to know either. So after a little more monkeying around with cars I was in the back of a pickup going 70 down the interstate. We walked a quick two minutes to the river from near the Ranger Bart Trailhead and met some of the rest of their crew of 8 in a mix of packrafts, IKs, and hardshells. I never did catch their names but many of them had "Dirty Virgin" written on their boats so they are immortalized as the Dirty Virgin Crew to me at least. There were cute frogs at our put-in and I was thrilled by the comfortably warm water temperatures of the Virgin compared to the Dolores the day before. The DVC were ready about 15 minutes before us so we said adios for now. We finally pushed off around 12:30pm. We had a stable 600 cfs, which turned out to be an excellent flow level with good coverage and fun features.

The river was not quite as fast as the Dolores but we still made upwards of 4.5 miles/hour with some deliberate paddling. The first few miles were fairly open as the river traversed Little Round Valley and Big Round Valley. Largely we had continuous banks of willows but occasionally the river would cut past some really interesting folded rocks crumpling here at the western edge of the Colorado Plateau. Some sections had some fun sand waves At one point we spotted someone out riding a horse and another time a family hanging out next to a razor OHV, otherwise it was us, the rocks, and the river. There were a few riffles but the pool-drop nature did not really kick in until the gorge started building around us. We passed underneath some powerlines, our cue to start looking for the horizonline of the dam downstream. Here we caught up to the DVC and easily spotted the portage trail near the lip at river left. We said our hellos and portaged. At this point Heather's boat was having a noticeably difficult time maintaining inflation due to the Dolores camp puncture and so we stopped to do a field repair as the DVC left us once again. After a few attempts I managed to get the emergency patch to reduce to a very slow leak.

After the dam the scenery improved considerably with sandstone and limestone walls growing to over a thousand feet. The slight dip meant the rocks changed noticeably over the many miles in this above-the-highway section. We stopped briefly for a snack and inflation top-off in a shady alcove before continuing on.

Just upstream of the first highway crossing we passed the DVC for the last time, lounging on a beach. They were definitely in chill mode between the cans of beer and pungent smell of smoke. I was quite pleased by the scenery and pleasant river up to this point. The pool-drop Class III rapids began right beneath the bridge and would continue all the way to the campground. I could feel Heather tensing up which heightened my senses. I paddled towards the horizonline of the rapid and then in the shadow of the bridge I could finally see down; at this flow this was a nice read-and-run requiring only minimal maneuvering. 

Somewhere Heather read there were about a dozen rapids and so she counted them down as a way of mentally coping with the remaining whitewater. Unfortunately her definition of a rapid seemed to include some riffles and she quickly ended up with a count greater than 20. On one of the bigger rapids she took some unplanned lines and fought to stay upright, clearly getting a little tired after the many river miles. I thought the whitewater was a lot of fun with some nice longer low consequence read-and-run rapids. There were a few holes, rocks, and bigger waves sprinkled throughout. The river infrequently bent towards the interstate such that much of this run actually felt like fairly isolated wilderness. At one point the river had a really nice corridor cut through temple-like steps of bedded limestone that was probably my favorite. The scenery was fantastic and noticeably more varied than our Dolores run; I was thoroughly impressed.

Around 4:45pm we pulled into the little beach at the campground having gone 18 miles in a little over 4 hours. I thought it was a very worthwhile run and would love to see the lower gorge through at some point. We packed up and decided to push on for home. It was a lot of driving but it was great to get on 67 miles of new river.

Dolores River May 26-27

The Dolores River last had boatable flow in 2019 and so was on many people's radar to try to run this snowmelt season. A tributary of the Colorado, it drains a curious corner of southwestern Colorado including outliers of the San Juans. It cuts through a V-shaped ponderosa pine lined valley at 6500 ft elevations and then ends in a steep-walled sandstone canyon with sweeping meanders down to 5000 ft elevation, an interesting mix of scraggily forest and plateau desert river. The Dolores' flow is controlled by McPhee Reservior, which in most years does not release boatable flows but ample snowmelt this year actually meant a long season. We worked hard to line up our work and family schedules to be able to string together enough time to [semi]justify the !24 hour! round trip of driving. We watched the ever-evolving flow schedule for weeks ahead of time. Surprisingly if anything the river was going to be too high and we saw lots of reports of flooded banks, too low bridges that might need to be portaged, and overgrown or missing campsites. Our original plan was to run the upper Ponderosa section (47 miles, Class III-IV) and the lower Slick Rock section (49 miles, Class II-III) back-to-back but the reports of challenging high flow whitewater conditions on Ponderosa (notably Snaggletooth Rapid) and the fact that we were only a team of two, reduced our ambitions to just the Slick Rock section. I did what planning I could and Heather arranged our car shuttle. The driving was predictably long but thankfully uneventful, making it through the Flagstaff gauntlet upright this time and finding a nice roadside campground halfway between Blanding and Monticello. In the morning we left the flanks of the Abajo Mountains and drove east through flat farmlands and then north into the deep trough of the Dolores River. There was not much to speak of at our Slick Rock put-in other than plenty of cars parked for the river and a few raft groups that managed early rigging starts. Overall not as busy as we thought it could be given the holiday weekend. We fairly efficiently organized our gear in the clifftop parking area and carried stuff down an iron staircase to the water's edge. We inflated, suited, and pushed off. 

In almost no time at all we passed an old uranium mine on river right, a weird human-blasted stream piracy tunnel on river left and then an out-of-place tower house on river left as the canyon began to narrow and sandstone walls began to build. At 3000cfs we found the banks of the river to be completely submerged; there were essentially no eddies and getting out of the current was a very deliberate endeavor. We found the rapids to be mostly washed out at this flow but there was a surprising amount of boils and whirlpools. The water was near freezing in temperature, opaque from suspended sediment, and had a gritty quality that unpleasantly dried our hands. There was no complaining about our 5.5-6 miles per hour pace with next to no paddling!

After 10 river miles the canyon relented for the wide open Gypsum Valley. The river more lazily snaked its way through river flats here, some stands of large cottonwoods being the most notable features. We almost imperceptibly past the first named rapid, Gypsum Valley (II) and then a few boater opting for a Gypsum Valley put-in. We floated under a low bridge and then entered the run's main canyon at a sweeping right turn (I think I spotted some Paradox Formation exposed here?). We stopped briefly at Shaman Cave, a riverside alcove with a few nice pictographs including a prominent figure. Bull Canyon actually had a riffle. Virtually every named camp seemed to be occupied which we noted for later. Overhang Camp probably had the most impressive swooping alcove of the whole trip.

We stopped again at the Anderson Mesa archaeological site and had another mild riffle just after. I recognized The Notch, a place where the river has a three-leaf clover shaped series of bends where the river travels a circuitous 3.5 miles with a lateral distance of only 400ft! Here we passed The Grotto Camp, which looked to be tops but of course was occupied. After the backside of The Notch we drifted around one more horseshoe bend to where we spotted a shallow alcove we thought worth examining. Since we were only two people and every named camp so far had been taken it seemed to our advantage to find our own campsite. This one has spiny plants at the shore but other a nice patch of sand beneath an overhang with a nice view of the river so we called it camp, going 29 miles for the day. As we lounged in camp, two more groups passed us almost at dusk, undoubtedly others that gambled and failed to find an open campsite. Despite borderline wind I briefly flew my drone over the neck of our meander.

After a good night's sleep we awoke to daylight. As we readied to get on the water Heather noticed an unfortunate tear in her boat due to the spiny plants so we dedicated some time to patching it up.

We made good miles as the previous day. There was a few places I was considering stopping (Spring Canyon, Coyote Wash) but the lack of easy landings with all the overgrown shores deterred us and so we floated onward through more great canyon country scenery. Spring Canyon Rapid had a few splashy waves. The river had a few nice sections where we had to navigate around mid-river house sized boulders (notably Pirate's Cove) and we got a few good views of a prominent butte shaped like a ranger's hat.

We made one last stop past La Sal Creek to see hike up the river left bench to see several boulders coated in petroglyphs and a single upturned boulder with rather good dinosaur tracks imprinted into a rippled dune surface. A close contender for the highlight of this stop was a handsome collared lizard watching guard over the dino tracks.

The last few named rapids had no more bite than the previous ones. We made it to the takeout a little before 2pm and worked to quickly pack up so the we could work our way west and find some food. We stopped for a meal in Moab and drove on, fueled by a hopeful promise of a not-too-crowded Meadow Hot Springs. We arrived there around 9pm finding the place absolutely disgusting with people. Probably 50 cars parked haphazardly, the best hot springs filled with more than 50 people with two dueling speakers blaring music. It was highly disappointing and so we drove on bummed out. Near exhaustion managed to find a place to camp off the highway north of Cedar City. It was a pretty unpleasant way to end the nice start to the day but at least this driving push would place us well to get another river run in the next day. Overall the flows were great for a scenic mild float down this rarely running river. 

EF San Gabriel River May 7

Realizing it might be our last opportunity to do local boating together, Heather and I drove early morning Sunday out to the East Fork San Gabriel River. I stopped briefly at the take-out to check water levels and annoyingly saw a group damming a channel with logs. Happily the river still had plenty of water (450 cfs?) though it was noticeably lower than a week previous. We found one of the last prime parking spots at the Bridge to Nowhere trailhead and walked the old road down to the river which put us on about a hundred feet below the nastiest log sieve on the whole run.

 

I led the way. We had a few miscommunication issues on this first 3.5 mile paddle but otherwise had no major mishaps. I stopped to cut some obscuring tree branches at one spot and we still had to do one portage around a river-wide log strainer. We stopped a few times to catch our breaths and Heather wanted to scout the rapid under the highway bridge that she flipped on in 2020 (it was a much different and more straightforward rapid this time). Arriving at the Graveyard Canyon takeout I was quite annoyed that a giant church group was the culprit in damming the river to create a baptism pool. They completely blocked the trail to the parking area with their canopies, AV gear, and chairs and so we had to find a different way up. It was only slightly humorous that they had giant speakers that required a giant generator, and the speakers were only barely winning the battle for noise. I ran the roughly 3.5 miles back to the car and we loaded everything up at about noon. It took us about 1 hour 15 minutes to do the run so now we were debating whether to try another lap or not.

Heather voted for another lap after we visited the small general store and this time we put on at the Cattle Canyon bridge for more straightforward access and a 3 mile section. This lap we did non-stop other than the quick portage, taking us 35 minutes total, overall much more satisfying to blast through without stopping. We noticed considerably more people hanging out along the river this second lap. The church group was still in our way at the takeout. I ran back to the car in 30 minutes and then we were off, happy to get some more whitewater and exercise. We both agreed the second lap was a good choice. 

I always find the roadside East Fork section to be bittersweet. It is great to have a local sometimes-river but I always see so much evidence of disrespect for the land and for other people. There are trash and graffiti everywhere, crime-scene toilets, and it is generally a well used and abused section of river. And yet hopefully not everyone trashes it and there are always plenty of friendly faces and kids waving, excited and surprised to see people paddling by them on their local river.