San Juan - May 1999 - Page 1

The second trip down the San Juan was much easier and therefore better for me at least than the first trip this year.  There are two reasons for this.  The first reason is that the water was much higher at 7000 cubic feet per second as compared to under 1000 cubic feet per second during the April trip.  The second reason was that the wind was pretty cooperative as compared to the blowing up stream two days in a row crap we had in April.  Angie had gone back to Colorado Springs which turned out to be a blessing of sorts but in disguise.  I was sad not to have her on this trip - but when she got home, she was able to field a call from Canyon Explorations and get us on a full length Grand Canyon trip (13 days!  But that's another story).

So Tom and I rented an oar rig in Moab and tied it to the top of the truck.  We also went to Arches National Park before launching.  I was a bit nervous about putting the oar frame and oars on top of the truck, but we did and made it down to Bluff with no trouble.  We stayed at the put in, then made arrangements to have a shuttle of the truck down to the take out by Recapture Lodge.

I don't think I've talked about shuttling yet.  It is a pain in the ass.  There's no other way to put it though.  See the problem is that you have to take all of your stuff to the put in, then you raft down the river to the take out.  So you have to have a vehicle at the take out.  You can do that but whoever drives down to the take out needs to go back to the put in.  So you have to take at least two vehicles down to the take out and drive one of them back to the put in.  That means that when you get to the take out - you have to drive back to the put in to get the vehicle left there.  One way to help out in this is to have someone else do the driving for you.  You pay them for it of course.

 In the case of a paid shuttle, you drop all your stuff at the put in, drive to the shuttler, and they drive you back to the put in.  You float down the river and they drive the car to the take out.  You meet them and drive them back up to their business and you are on your way.  Out a few bucks but it's definitely less time consuming.

In our case, we only had one vehicle (my truck) so there was no way that we could do the shuttle without some help.

The area around the San Juan river was populated by the Hisatsinom.  They were an ancient Native American culture.  I think the word Anasazi is actually the Navajo word for these ancestors who the Hopi claim as theirs.  The Hopi word is Hisatsinom.    There are lots of ruins in the area of the San Juan river. The picture to the right is of the Cliff Dwelling that is only a few miles downstream from the put in.