Deso/Gray May 1999

This is the first trip of the summer on one of our own permits. The San Juan permit was under another guy's name. The permit system for river trips is a necessary evil. Basically, it is used to limit the number of people running the canyons to reduce the impact on it. Most of them work as a lottery system - you put in for a day to launch along with a bunch of other people and the Bureau of Land Management or the National Park Service picks someone at random. That didn't work out for us too well this year - we got one permit out of I think 12 submissions. But there is a second chance. You can call for cancellations and I'm the king of picking up cancellations. All the trips talked about here except for the April San Juan trip and Westwater Canyon were cancellations.

Okay - so Desolation and Gray Canyons. Well first of all the permit is for both canyons and in fact you can't run just one. Most people refer to the trip as Deso/Gray. It's 84 miles of the Green River in Utah starting from Sand Wash and taking out at Swasey's Rapid.

You all know that I quit my job to partake of a summer of rafting. I wasn't sure I would get to raft at all, when I didn't get any permits in the lottery and nothing seemed to ever become available through the raft club I belonged to. Well, Tom (my brother) quit his his job too. Mostly to be with me and to be out west to make a trip with a friend of his. Tom is my brother but don't get the impression that quitting runs in the family! It was only 2 out of 5 that quit! Besides, it's not so much quitting as it is deciding to do something else.

So, my favorite long suffering crew is back together to do the Deso/Gray. Just one raft and three people. Some of you maybe wondering about the crew sizes. In my boat, it's possible to run with as many as nine people on board but if you commit the center section of the boat to gear, food, and water, you're down to 5 people. 4 is my usual minimum but if I have a crew that is strong and knows what they are doing and the river is easy enough - I can go with just 3. So there we are with Angie and Tom again.

We make the long drive out to Utah again. Stay at the take out and when I get there, I look at the Green for the first time up close and personal. Holy @!#!?. I'm laughing out loud. This is big and it seems pretty darned fast too. Oh man. Oh man! What have I gotten into? What have I gotten my crew into? Angie's been around rafting for a while - she knows this is big. Ohhhhhhhh. Okay... Okay... it's just class II+ though, right? No problem. We can handle this. Just like the San Juan - except there is water and it's fast and it's big.

Angie has been on the Colorado through the Grand Canyon so she's seen big before. Me? The biggest I've seen was the Green through Split Mountain (in Dinosaur).. well the same level but that was not as a guide. That was as a paddler with experienced guides on an Outward Bound trip.

We sleep. Some personal stuff happens - (I'm convinced in part due to allergies to mold in our cars and the plants in the area and in part due to not sleeping enough). We drive to the put in. We are the last boat to launch for the day. I get down to the river and holy crap... it's still big. Not as fast through. Just big. I laugh. We get down to rigging the boat. We launch. I figure we have a few days to work out any kinks before we hit anything big.

Desolation and Gray - May 1999 - Page 1