Day 1
Starting out, even packing and blowing up boats at the Lodore boatramp was a bit sporty. Some hefty weather was rolling through the Wasatch/Southern Utah/SW Colorado/New Mexico that would lead to 100+ year flood events elsewhere. For us that just meant a nice stout upcanyon wind steadily blowing at 20-30 and gusting higher. My streak of never talking to rangers at a river put in continues, with no one there to go through the permit and info with us. At ~1:30 we set off, fighting for every forward inch; if you stopped paddling you would quickly be blown back upstream, not ideal for packrafts but likely would be even worse if we were in rafts. The goal for day 1 was to paddle ~9 miles to Pot Creek or Kolb campsites, which would mean running disaster falls. After a quick run through Winnies, and a short time basking in the sun downstream from miles of fighting cold wind in the deep beginnings of the canyon, we found ourselves above Disaster and got out to scout. The run through upper Disaster was pretty straightforward, run left of center to avoid the big(er) drop with a good wave followed by a long stretch of rock dodging downstream. Upon coming back to the boats after the scout, i found a wild beer circulating in the eddy, the river provideth. Hannah decided not to run the initial drop so i got the pleasure of running things twice. Downstream, lower Disaster definitely had larger waves but nothing concerning. Even so, we had a moment to gather ourselves and work through things. Hannah was the star of this, overcoming her initial fear and sending it through the waves to camp earning her the fruits that the river provided. We stayed at Pot Creek 1, a beautiful camp with a large beach and a number of sites set amongst sand and grass in the box elder trees.
Day 2
Running Lodore in 5 days instead of the standard 4 meant that we had time to do the side hikes we wanted. The walk up Pot creek was nice and sunny while camp remained in the shade of the large wall across the river, so we went for a short walk to see the canyon and warm up. Although we only had 5 miles of river to Rippling Brook, those 5 included Harp, Triplet and Hells Half Mile, the remaining difficult rapids in Lodore proper. We stopped to scout Harp, which although sounding meaty really had a prety easy line through without much required manourvering. At Triplet, we did the long scout to look at both the upper and lower sections. Lower triplet has a nasty sieve/set of boulders with a slot on the right that you needed to work left to get through. Once again Hannah decided to not run the rapid, so rather than do a LONG portage, we ran in groups of 3 and i ran twice. In packrafts the run is actually pretty easy with tons of time to move around and avoid the problems at the bottom. Finally, Hells Half... At these flows it definitely had some class 4 moves. If you lined everything up throgh the first drop you could avoid the haystack and deep hole following and run clean. If you missed, there were so many laterals, flipping waves, and holes that could easily grab you and send you on a swim for the next ~half mile of rock dodging. 4 of the 6 of us decided to portage around the meat of the initial drop. With boats around, we set Lindsay as in boat safety downstream, Eliza ready to throw a rope, Shane spotting and hannah taking pictures. Sandy and i set of to actually run the rapid. At the top, we tucked in an eddy just upstream of the initial drop to set up for a right to left run on the tongue to run left around the haystack and hole for Lucifer. Sandy ran first and didnt quite make it, ended up going right over lucifer and into the hole before flipping. I ran clean through and was there to help sandy, but she ended up being able to swim over to the mid rapid island downstream with lindsay. I didnt quite make it into the eddy and had to run to the bottom of the island before finding a spot to stop. After years of thinking i would want radios on the river i finally brought them and this was exactly where we wanted them. We had a group of 3 still upstream and out of comms at the bottom of the first drop, Sandy and Lindsay in the water in an eddy at the top of the island and me at the bottom (but walking up). We agreed to run the remainder of the rapid in 3 groups and gather at the beach at the bottom of the rapid. High on the success (no injuries and everyone past the hardest of the water) we finished the mile of water to camp, stopping at Rippling Brook 2, another large beach just downstream of a smaller riffle at Rippling Brook canyon. With just a bit of time left in the day, everyone grabbed a beverage and hiked up to the grotto and waterfall up Rippling brook.
Day 3
a "slow" day of sightseeing. we took our time getting out of camp and ended up leaving irhgt as sun hit the beach/camp for the day. It was 5 miles of boating out to echo park and the confluence with the Yampa as well as "known" river for me. In this last 5 mile stretch, like much of the rest of the canyon, was a lot of geology happening with many layers coming and going. We stopped at echo part to go check out the wind cave which is a pretty sweet sudo arch that you can step in to, and apparently had been flowing in the recent rains. As we got into whirlpool canyon, just like the last time we were on the river, some weather rolled in and we got to paddle most of whirlpool in rain/wind, but right at camp the sun came back out. We ended up staying at Jones 1 adter some discussions about potential rodent issues, and... well.... we had rodent issues. While we were cooking dinner the racoons started coming into camp and roaming looking for food, in the night they would go to town on one of the bear bags we had, not getting any food out of it but stabbing and biting much of what was inside. Seems like this problem has started recently and seems to be escalating, likelky because everyone stops at this beautiful camp area.
Day 4
Another "slow day" we wonke up to prospects of going for a hike up jones. Things seemed a bit colder so the crew was moving slow. As we were about to get out of camp though, some Big Horn rams on the hillside started butting heads which was amazing to see! They were at it for hours so after a bit we let them be and hiked up to the waterfall/petroglyphs. Jones Hole is a pretyt cool canyon on the far side of the uintas and it would be fun sometime to try and make it all the way up to the plateau that seems to feed the Jones Hole creek, as well as potentially float the creek itself as it looked doable for most of the way! Sometime around 2-3 we finally got going, only expecting to go ~5 miles to island park, but, while we were packing we saw another group stop at the creek for water discussing camping there, so we thought to stop at big island instead. Well... i think we ran into every group possible on the river at that time, as not only was big island take, but island park was also... i wonder what the point of requesting camps in your permit is if there is no intention of assigning them. After a much longer than expected slog in the setting sun, we took things to the rainbow park boat launch/campground. Not exactly what i wanted, i would much rather stay on a beach instead of a developed site, but we made the best of things with a nice fire knowing we had a short final day.
Day 5
Through split mountain and out. By mid morning we were on the water after a cold wake up, and once in the canyon things went quickly. Signs of recent floods/blowouts from the rains were everywhere. Knowing that SOB had blown out, we pulled over for that to scout. The river had probably lost ~1/3 of its width from the debris brought down in the blow out and what used to be a run center/left was now a run on the right. We all decided to "play it safe" and run the far right edge with slower water and smaller waves, but once in the water everyone pretty much sent it right through the main meat of the rapid with big waves and a few holes, which were a bit easier and more fun than initial looks seemed to suggest! At the end of split mountain we saw some more Big Horns and all too quicly things were over at the boar ramp. Another great and beautiful fall float in the books!
