After a whirlwind of last minute planning activities, a final trip plan email was sent out to friends and family and we set off for Hanksville. The plan was to float Muddy Creek from I-70 through the swell to the Hanksville bridge, its entire navigable length before becoming the Dirty Devil river just south of Hanksville. After dropping a car off at the end of an old paved road that mother nature was slowly reclaiming, we drove away to the put in. This area of southern/central Utah is tough to navigate, there are not many paths through the San Rafael Swell, a ridge of uplifted rock that forms an impassible barrier for 75 Miles, with a single dirt road and the blasted path for I-70 passing through its steeply tilted rock layers. Our Journey would take us through some very lonely country indeed, this area was one of the last areas to be put on a map in the continental 48 with some of the slot canyons having not been navigated until the early 2000's (decades after most of the canyons in the greater central/southern Utah area).
Boats are just about packed!
This particular 'river' trip had its own difficulties. We were not expecting to find any drinkable water en-route (the Muddy is... well, extremely muddy, it is also quite saline, the Dirty Devil, the lower continuation, accounts for a disproportionate amount of salt and silt inflow into lake Powell for its small size), so we were planning on packing some 60 Liters or so of water with us along with the rest of our gear which would lead to heavy and fully loaded boats (we opted to not use any internal cargo storage- storing items inside the rafts, due to the possibility that the extremely silty water might prevent the zippers from fully re-sealing). On top of that, we expected some class 2-3 rapids, a shallow river bottom, and miles and miles of unknown floating. What could go wrong? Other than the river drying up on us that is...
Andrew running through his first rapid on the Muddy shortly after putting in
After tucking a car on the side of I-70 We began the re-packing and boat inflating process. The muddy was not as muddy as we had expected and was flowing fast and cool, a welcome relief from the heat. At the beginning of the packing process i heard an ominous hissing sound. Shit some inflatables are gone already? Turns out we had just punctured a beer and a cider, time to down them before we loose em! Turns out these initially lost beers would foreshadow what was to come. Pretty much every day was punctuated in some way with one of our containers - beverage, water, or air holding (boats, seats, pads) would pop.
Setting out between the I-70 Bridges, the muddy was flowing narrow, fast, and as deep as we could ask for. Before long we were greeted with a steady stream of easy rapids in the narrow channel. At this point we were mostly in flat open desert, the rapids were a welcome diversion to help pass the time. Nearly immediately though, it was apparent that Lindsay was having a boat problem. Turns out one of the reinforcement seams had begun to let go because i had not properly welded it. This resulted in a steady stream of air being let out of her tubes. I tried to temporarily patch it with some tape and we set back off. Pretty much immediately we ran into a class 3 drop that snags Andrew. We float on a bit more but it is clear that we are going to have to end early on day one, Lindsay's boat just isn't holding air and Andrew was a bit shaken up by the rapids. So, with only 1.75 miles under our belt and an estimated 70+ (in reality it would be 80+) miles still to go, we pull over to camp, lick our wounds (figuratively), repair a boat, and decide what we are going to do. After some patchwork, a few afternoon thunderstorms, some beer and a few brats we all decide to push on tomorrow and see how it goes. We can bail at a road if we need to and hike about 20 miles back to the car.
The view from Camp on Day 1
Cooking dinner
Day 2: Morning came and with it all of our boats seemed to be in OK shape. The patchwork done on Lindsay's boat was holding so we packed up camp and set off. Expecting another few miles of class 2-3 rapids, and then some easier floating afterwards. What we ran into offered a bit more excitement and some interesting problem solving. The remaining class 3 rapids came and went without issue and we began to enter into some shallow box canyons that were choked with vegetation. At one point the watercourse was completely impassible due to downed wood requiring a guided shuttle of the boats which was made more difficult by the heavily eroded 6 ft deep banks choked with vegetation. In several other instances, large logs completely crossed the watercourse with no option for exiting the water to set up a shuttle, instead we had to hop out, swim under the logs, then pass the boats either over or under them. After a long morning, we finally reached the road crossing. Lonely country indeed, it didn't look like any one had crossed on this road in some time. After a pause for lunch and a group consensus, we decided to continue down. At this point, if we ran into more problems, our best bet would be to just finish the complete river descent as an alternative exit would require 50+ miles of HOT road walking just to get back to the highway with little chance of seeing anyone. Coincidentally, my seat decided to blow out, one more thing to patch.
Admiring the scenery from my boat
The afternoon seemed to drag on as we floated lazily through a wide, flat, and slow section of the river and relatively uninteresting scenery. By early evening, however, we were beginning to enter the Navajo Sandstone and scenery improved. Camp was set up about a half mile upstream from Enigma Canyon so we could potentially run it in the morning if we chose to. The site was on the edge of a fault canyon that ran transverse to the muddy creek gorge. The Geology of this part of the world always amazes. To finish off day 2, some 20 miles into our expected 80 mile float, we had not seen any sign that people had been there in quite a long time which is entirely possible as access would require either a trip down the river (which i am learning is perhaps not as popular as i thought it might be) or else a long trip down dirt roads and hot and ill defined trails. Also, at some point during the day a 4L water container decided to let go in my boat, there went all of our contingency water.
Camp views on day 2
Day 3: At some point during the night, Andrew's pad decided to let go and was now leaking, yet another thing to patch, but we will deal with that later. With boats packed we set off from our beach site for Enigma, which we reached in no time at all. As always it seems, the mouth of enigma was choked with vegetation and after wading for a few minutes through it, we reached the slot! unfortunately, walking up canyon, we could only go for about 5 minutes before we were stopped by a dry fall. Oh well, more river miles today! The goal was to run from our spot near the beginning of the Muddy Creek Gorge all the way past the typical daily run put in area at Tomisch butte and potentially through the Chute itself! When we were here in June the day use area was jam packed with people. I guess the wonder faded a bit as we were most definitely alone out here. The river seemed to be flowing slower but a bit cleaner than when we were here last which made rock identification a tad easier, but my estimated travel times were off. Hoping to have run through the chute on Day 3, we instead found a beautiful sandy perch right before the Chute to camp. In my opinion it was the best site of the trip! Rather than run through the chute which might take a few hours, we camped early to patch a pad and explored the canyons nearby, and dipped into the whisky and tequila we brought along ;)
Andrew checking out Enigma Canyon Deep in the Muddy Creek WSA
Lindsay taking her boat out for a walk. A few days later we would be doing a lot of this.
Psyched to be in this amazing part of the world with some amazing people.
Beach camp on Day 3
The muddy just before the Chute, what an amazing place!
We noticed a canyon coming in across the creak from camp and decided to explore at sunset.
Day 4: The Money! Immediately after camp, we ran through the Chute which is truly an amazing run! Unfortunately during this section i got pinned on a rock, Andrew tore the bottom of his boat, and a 10L water bladder decided to let go. We emerged from the Chute excited but rather concerned, we still had some water in the 10L that let go but it was now suspect after having mixed with the river water. Over lunch, we discussed strategy and i patched Andrew's boat as best i could (tyvek tape can be a lifesaver here). We set off from Hidden Splendor Mine with an expected 25 miles remaining; we were hoping to get through the reef and out onto the flats, eating as much as possible into any remaining miles due to our dwindling water (something like ~16L of clean water at this point, likely more than enough but i like to keep the margins in my favor). The float through the San Rafael Reef, in my opinion, was the most stunning section of the trip! I am glad we got the opportunity to descend through this section which it seems was not often traveled. The rock is steeply turned and over the course of about 5 miles, we quickly 'ascended' back out ofall of the rock layers we had spend the past few days descending through. At one point, we did have to portage because the creek disappeared underneath an extremely low rock undercut- it looked more like the creek just disappeared into a wall! Once through the reef, the interesting section of our trip was over and we had an expected 20 miles of flats to run through back to the car. This was hopeful at best. We opted for a later day on the now shallow and braided river channel- it was often tough to find where float-able water was which resulted in a short walk required every few minutes. We were making slow progress, and as the day dragged on the bitching increased from all members of the group- well if you are going to bitch about it, you might as well wine too! Happy hour wine on the river with our few remaining cans of wine greatly raised spirits as we began the search for an adequate site to camp. The wind was picking up and we were in a flat, open desert- we would need some sort of wind break for camp, preferably with no sand up wind, something we learned from last year's river trip when a late evening storm rolled through after we had set up camp and Andrew and i got sand blasted all night. Some number of miles later we finally found a suitable site and pulled over- this site was actually my second favorite of the trip.
Ascending? Descending? reversing back through the various rock layers as we pass through the San Rafael Reef, definitely the most scenic section of our float.
Chasing shade on the Muddy
Andrew taking his boat for a walk
Andrew admiring the sunset from camp on day 4
The Sunset from camp on day 4
Andrew chillin
Stack o'boats
Night falls on the desert
Day 5: Water reserves running low, we set off for what we thought should be 10 to no more than 12 miles left. The creek, however, had really began to turn back on itself and one linear mile might actually be 3 river miles or more. As we went on the water got ever warmer and the quality ever worse- half way through the day it was so bad and began to start to smell enough that i no longer wanted to use it for cooling off- its all we had though. The river continued to get shallower and wider resulting in ever more walking- at some points post holing in fluidized sand. By lunch we had covered 12 miles and were seemingly no closer to our exit point. Spirits continued to degrade to an all time low a few hours later as slowly had to walk more than we could float. Some time around 5 PM the car FINALLY came into view and our river float had ended. The flat section had been 10+ miles longer than expected for a total trip length of about 86 miles!
Turd sandwiches for lunch, apparently this particular dish is called "grunch"
Lindsay walking her boat as the Muddy braids out and starts to disappear
Amazing water quality, i guess that's why they call it "Muddy creek"
After hours of grueling boat dragging and walking, we made it back to the car! I was equally glad to be done with the trip as i was that we had been able to go on it.
After retrieving my car from the side of I-70, we set off for green river, a hopeful "bath" in the green river and some food. The green was flowing at ~18,000 cfs, roughly 6-7x normal flows so we decided not to enter the water and found other ways to wash off. With one day remaining in the trip, we decided a quick run through Leprechaun canyon would be a great way to finish the week-finally get a canyon in after having floated nearly 90 miles with canyon gear without ever using it.
Day 6: Leprechaun is a great, albeit very narrow canyon. What made this trip interesting was the spiders. I have never seen so many and such large daddy long leg spiders. hundreds, thousands of them in the canyon, some lone rangers, others in groups of twenty to hundreds, bobbing and weaving as if they were at a techno rave with one leg in the air. It was kind of a crazy sight! One last destination before we went back to Salt Lake, a quick dip in lake Powell to clean off and cook dinner was much deserved! We drove down to Bullfrog, set up some tarps between the cars, went for a dip in the nice clean water and reveled on the experiences of the past few days. Another trip in the books!
The Milky Way rising over the cottonwoods at the Sandthrax camp
I guess you could say it was narrow
Sandstone Glow
Striations and grains in Leprechaun Canyon
Cooking dinner in the shade at lake Powell
Looking forward to what the next float trip will have in store for us!
