Far from the busy river of alte spring and early summer when it is running high, the San Juan on the cusp of winter is a quiet place.
After the constant pressure and business of getting married (Yay! but also Yay it is over!) Lindsay and i wanted to get away for a long weekend. Thanksgiving was the obvious choice. We called in a small collection of friends and family to join and before we knew it we had ourselves a proper friendsgiving weekend getaway! Unfortunately, this time of year weather can be fickle in the desert. Throw in the fact that we would be in boats and that complicated things. Several days before we set out, weather models changed and suggested that a major storm would be cruising through right when we would be in the thick of things in the canyon. Things were surely going to get exciting.
We set off from Salt Lake wendesday after work, a contingent from phoenix did the same. We camped, as we often do when heading to this part of the state late after work, at the Sandthrax site, which seems to be getting busier every year and, even with below freezing temps and a storm in the forecast, there were several others already there when we arrived. A short and cold night ended with a beautiful sunrise and we were off continuing south. The drive south of Hanksville to Cedar mesa has to be one of my favorite in the state, the views are spectacular and it is an area that still seems to have a semblance of solitude. After a quick drop of a car at the clay hills crossing ramp, we went back around to Mexican hat. 3 years earlier we finished a winter float of the san juan in mexican hat; it was nice to return and i (and i am sure andrew and lindsay as well) was eager to see what lay down river.
Under grey skies, we set off on the river and within minutes came to gypsum creek, our first rapid. At the water levels we saw, all rapids we encountered were no more than class 2 and were all short and straight forward. At gypsum creek we scouted on the left, walking across the drying bed of gypsum creek proper which was telling the story of this land. The drying but not fully dried clay does an excellent job of capturing footprints in amazing detail.
As we left town, the canyon walls gradually rose around us; i was having flashbacks to the section just upstream 3 years earlier as they were remarkably similar. The lower san juan quickly enters entrenched meanders, at the far end of the first of these, the mendenhall loop, we took a quick warm up break to hike up to the mendenhall cabin. What a place that would have been to try and eek out a living! We stopped for the day a few miles further at the Tabernacle and set up for our feast. Feast we did! After getting the fire going we warmed our turkey in the coals, and enjoyed a proper thanksgiving with our small group of friends and family taking in tangerine sunset.
Black friday was expected to be a dark and dismal day for us. Rain and/or snow was in the forecast, and not just a little of it. When we awoke, thoguh, we were greated to broken skies and the occasional blue patches! Down river, we had our first and only wildlife sighting, a big horn sheep that was running up on a broken ledge alongside us as we went down river. Around our lunch break the weather changed and a driving rain came in intermixed with heavy up and down canyon winds. After pushing through the rain and wind for 4 hours, we finally called it for the day at Ross rapid camp. Coincidentally, things cleared up and the blue sky and sun grazed us to close out the day. At Ross camp the chert and jasper intrusions are particularly prevelant. We explored a bit, finding the memorial to Mr Ross himself, as well as a small structure, likely a somewhat recently constructed hunting blind made when newcomers began to mine the area. As the sun set, the moon rose to perfectly clear skies, painting a scene on the canyon walls and seemingly hinting at better weather to come.
Although winter canyons can be amazing for the solitude they allow, the deep walls, now ~1000 feet above us, and the east-west nature of the canyon meant that sunlight was a rarity, and on the occasion that we got to glimpse some, all would stop and bask in it as long as possible. Leaving Ross camp, we had just come into the sun and the temps had peaked above freezing again, but once on the water we were immediately back in the icebox. Even with the cold and a now constant upwind draft, the clarity in the desert post rainstorm was on full display and the canyon seemed so vibrant. At around 2 we arrived at the fabled Government Rapid, supposidly the "big one". Being potentially overly cautious, we stopped well above the rapid and walked the canyon down to scout. What was supposed to be a somewhat long and difficult Class 3 really was just two drops in quick succession, no more than 2+ at this flow, a straightforeward run down the middle or maybe a slightly more interesting run on the left. We had been leapfrogging another party that had put in shortly before us on thanksgiving, and we managed to catch them just as we were finishing up running all of the boats through government. At Slickhorn B we pulled over for the night. I doubted that we would actually see much sign of the oil exploration that had happened in the area other than some old equipment, but at times the smell of fuel oil was strong hinting that some of the natural seeps were still active.
At Slickhorn the water gets continuously slower. It was tough leacing the pace of this bend in the river in the morning, especially since we had the pleasure of frozen shoes to look foreward to. An hour or so after setting off, we made a stop at Grand Gulch to get out and get some blood flowing. The lower bits of grand gulch hold some pretty amazing pools sheltered under ledges. Some day we will come back and pack out grand gulch, the trip i had initially hoped to do but we didnt have time for. After Grand Gulch the effects of the Dam are particularly apparent. The river channel is 30+ feet above where it used to be, and as a result slowly meanders back and forth covering the entire bottom of the canyon causing consistent frustration. At Oljeto Wash we stopped again to go for a walk. This canyon was probably my favorite of all of the side canyons we explored but was guarded by a fair but of muck and quicksand/mud. We found petrified wood, interesting sand flows, and even some formed smokey quartz from an age long past in the canyon bottom.
At Steer Gulch we stopped for our final evening. I had heard that there was a horrendous mud flat to walk across at Steer Gulch to access camping, but the upper entrance wasnt too bad. Andrew had committed a little too far down river and ended up breaking a paddle blade off trying to get back to the camp, but in the process found the preferred entrance among the tamarisk with some good flow to immediately step into. Steer Gulch was also my favorite camp, very close and intimate with the Wingate walls keeping close company. That night we had a ceremony for andrews fallen friend and granted him first ever use of our spare paddle that had come on so many rivers without ever seeing action. As the fire raged and our shadows danced on the walls, the night grew deep and cold and we eventually retired to sleeping bags under the open sky.
Morning on our final day greeted us with sunlight and a lack of wind that we had battled the prior few days. We slowly left behind the canyon walls and emerged back at Clay Hills where we were the only car in the lot, leaving the river behind to have some time to itself before hustle of the next runoff season.
