Big Trip - 2001 - Page 13
Sandstorm and Confluence

So we rowed across from the side canyon to a sandbar on the inside of the river's curve.  See we were still pretty concerned about the possibility of mosquito attacks and so were continuing the island living.  We unloaded the boat and started to make dinner.  An occasional breeze launched some sand into the air and we were preparing for a slightly gritty dinner.  As we ate the wind grew stronger and stronger and  more continual.  We thought as we usually do - well, this will quiet down toward evening as the sun goes down.  We'll just wait it out a while.  Angie moseyed upriver to get out of the sandstorm then came back and said something like this isn't going to let up and we should go across the river.  Now across the river was a previously used campsite that wasn't a sandbar.  I'm thinking no way.  No way are we going to pack up the stuff in the middle of a sandstorm.  The wind had picked up and was constant at 30 to 40 miles per hour.  Sand was everywhere.  In our ears, eyes, nose, hair.  It was bad.  Like being in a sandblaster.  I said let me check along the tamarisk back along the shore.  I did walking for 10 or 15 minutes and finding nothing suitable.  I report back.  Angie still wants to go across.  I'm nervous about it.  What makes her think it'll be better on the other side?  What's to stop the wind from blowing things away as we pack them up?  She's firm.  We pack up.  We launch in the dark me with a headlamp on to light the way.  We get closer to the shore on the other side of the river and it looks like a cliff.  How are we going to scale this cliff to get to the campsite?  It only looks like a cliff because of the headlamps lighting.  As we get closer it reveals itself to be stepped.  We land.  Drag the tent up and put it up.  The wind is less.  There is no sand blowing all over. The ground though is hot and the heat radiates up into us and collects under the tent.  We're hot and sweating.  A light rain starts.  Angie wants to put on the flap.  I don't mind the rain for a change.  It is cooling, soothing.  We put the fly on and the rain stops.  Angie gets up to remove the fly and the rain starts again.  We don't have a great night of sleep.

We eat breakfast and head upriver to the side canyon hike to the confluence overlook.  It has three tricky spots where you have to climb in an exposed manner.  One isn't too bad - a gap between the bedrock and a boulder.  The next is up on a pile of rocks (miraculously sturdy) that someone has placed, then a step up of about 3.5 feet accomplished by putting your knee on the ledge and rocking forward.  Scary.  The last was a lip that ran along the face of a rock that got progressively higher off the ground.  Each spot represented a place where we held discussions about the value of going on versus the risk of getting hurt in the middle of nowhere.  Compound that with the knowledge that whatever we climb up we'll have to climb down.  But we reach the top and are as always taken by the huge expanse that lacks the intimacy of the canyon we've been on for a week.  The vastness of it. We are high above the river.  

And there, there is the confluence of the Green and the Colorado.  The Ute consider this the center of the universe. The Colorado is coming from the top of the picture, the Green from the bottom left and they leave as the Colorado heading to the right.