Big waves, floods and lightning -- oh my!
It snowed a couple of feet this weekend in the Wasatch because Telejon, TheOtherAmy and I all skipped town. The three of us piled into my Tacoma on Thursday afternoon to drive to Lake Powell for three days of kayak touring. Y'all who skied this weekend can thank us.
The weather forecast for the weekend looked stellar at the beginning of the week, but with each revised forecast it started looking less and less promising. We stuck to our plans nonetheless, arriving in Bullfrog around dinner time on Thursday.
We hit up the only restaurant for miles around -- the Anasazi Restaurant at the marina's Defiance House lodge -- and got dinner to go, two chile verde burritos and one fish and chips that we ate at our chosen campsite at Stanton Creek, a primitive camping area on the north shore of Lake Powell directly across from Hall's Crossing. There are no established campsites in this huge area, so it's really easy to just four-wheel to the spot of your choice.
The others pitched their tents while I prepped the bed of my truck for the night, then we enjoyed a campfire with a few cocktails before bedding down for the night.
Saturday dawned overcast but relatively calm. We loaded our boats, I moved the truck to higher ground (water levels rise quickly at this time of year) and we shoved off.
We headed east along the north shore of the lake as cliffs gradually rose along both shores. Boat traffic is light at this time of year, but the sheer size of the launch ramp at Bullfrog, the rows and rows of covered slips, and the innumerable houseboat moorings at both Bullfrog and Hall's Crossing all speak to the enormous amount of water traffic that will soon hit the lake at Memorial Day. The Hall's Crossing car ferry sat tied up at the slip, awaiting repairs for damage sustained during a training run this spring. It's not expected to be in operation until sometime in July this year.
We explored the mouth of Moqui Canyon and a couple of unnamed slot canyons along the way. Jon and I have spent many multi-day kayak trips together, but this was TheOtherAmy's first time paddling. We gave her a few quick tips as we headed east, and she did her best to adapt. She's one of the guys, an avid dirt biker and mountain biker in addition to a rockin' telemark skier, so I knew that she could hang.
What I hadn't counted on was the tailwind that would eventually kick up 3 to 4-foot waves that would wash across the stern of our boats. You can't see those coming, so you can't shift your body weight in anticipation -- instead, your movements are reactionary. One of mine was almost too late, and because you're paddling along sheer vertical cliffs, should something bad happen you can't crawl out of the hypothermic water for several miles or more. But we all survived, and made a left turn into Hansen Creek Canyon, one of Powell's many side drainages, and found a respectable campsite about a mile upstream.
We found a tiny spot, almost a cove, in which to land and unload our boats. We kept our cooking area near the water but pitched our tents on flat spots up on the slickrock, Amy's and mine about 50 feet above the waterline and Jon's bivy sack about halfway in between.
Amy napped while Jon and I hiked to the canyon rim. Up there the wind was positively ferocious, strong and steady and not even gusting.
I cooked a linguine with clam sauce and we hit the other sauce relatively hard. Shortly after dark we retired to our respective tents and I fell into a deep sleep.
Our objective for Saturday was the Defiance House ruin, a nearly 800-year-old cliff dwelling high in Forgotten Canyon. The beauty of our Hansen Creek camp was that we could leave our gear there, paddle further east to Forgotten Canyon, explore the ruins and then return to Hansen Creek for our second night without having to break and reset camp in between.
The southwesterly wind was already kicking up waves as we worked our way east across the main channel and entered Forgotten Canyon.
We passed a few boaters landing the lake's huge largemouth bass that we would frequently see swim past our boats or jump after a fly. We wound our way up Forgotten Canyon before we beached our kayaks amongst remains of drowned cottonwood trees where we ran out of water, right next to a couple from Denver having a picnic lunch from their boat.
The hike up the wash was entertaining, but I'm admittedly disappointed by the ruins. Lake Powell is entirely contained within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and the Park Service has done extensive renovations on the ruins. In a museum they would have been interesting, but sitting in the middle of nowhere the ruins felt rather Disney-esque. The original mud mortar has been replaced by concrete mortar, and the Park Service has constructed stone-and-mortar stairs to scale the talus slope leading to the ruins. It's believed that two large extended families inhabited the site from approximately 1250 to 1275 A.D.
We explored the underground portion of the dwelling, had lunch at the site and hiked back to our boats, where I discovered that a raven had absconded with the ~$20 of dried fruit that I had stowed behind my kayak seat. The thief went to a lot of trouble to literally break into my boat, discover the bounty and make off with it, leaving a trail of dried blueberries and cherries and shredded plastic bag behind.
By the time we returned to the main channel the wind had increased even further still. We once again had 3 to 4-foot waves, but this time we were paddling directly into them. Forward progress was slow going, but the waves were playful, even fun. I didn't really mind them at all this time. In fact, I enjoyed them.
Prior to entering Hansen Creek I used the opportunity to check the weather radio before I lost the signal again. The strong spring cold front was expected to push through around midnight, swinging winds around to the northwest and bringing a chance of showers and thunderstorms with it. They were predicting 8-14" of snow in parts of Utah above 6,500 feet, including the Wasatch Front. Amy once again napped while Jon and I once again hiked to a different part of the rim with the wind no less intense than it had been 24 hours before. As we ate the sweet and sour chicken that Jon cooked for dinner and hit a bottle of wine, we concluded that it would be best to get up at around 6 a.m. and break camp, heading back toward the truck before predicted northwesterly winds became too intense.
As the sun set the clouds overhead became darker, and as dusk turned to dark some flashes of thunder sent us scrambling for our tents. Amy secured her tent as best she could, and Jon rigged a tarp with a slipknot and a carabiner to protect his head while huddled in his bivy sack. I had anchored my tent with the fly's guy lines tied to a number of huge boulders, and I lined the inside of my tent with medium-sized rocks around the perimeter.
Nothing, however, would protect us from what would follow. We got hit with the strongest winds that I've ever experienced in a tent. I've never feared having my tent blown away with me in it, but it was a legitimate concern. Wind blew sand beneath the tent's fly, up through the mesh windows and onto my tent floor, my sleeping bag and my face. I turned on some music and fell asleep nonetheless, for once thankful for the quantity of wine and whiskey consumed earlier in the evening.
My alarm went off at 6 a.m., and I was out of the tent by 6:15. Jon emerged from his bivy sack shortly thereafter. I was shocked to see that the wind had actually used my tent to pull some of the huge boulders anchoring it, sometimes by six inches. Jon had actually survived in his jerry-rigged bivy. I started to gather gear next to my boat. As we prepared to break down camp, however, a large flash of lightning was quickly followed by a loud clap of thunder from the dark cloud almost directly overhead. We retreated to our setups with barely enough time to spare before the skies unleashed once again.
The wind was no less than what we'd suffered through the night before, but the rainfall was even more intense. It lasted for about a half an hour before the rainfall rate began to slow and the sounds of the thunder became more distant. I unzipped my fly a bit and began to look around outside when I heard the sound of rushing water. I stepped out and discovered that what had been only a slight depression in the slickrock was now a raging torrent. Amy was frantically trying to dig a channel to divert the water that was eroding ground closer and closer to her tent. I looked down toward the lake and saw the torrent slamming our gear and our boats!
"Oh shit!" I screamed. "Jon! Help!"
Jon scrambled from his bivy and we both ran down to the lakeshore, gathering our gear and our boats as both were being swept out into the lake by the flash flood. Had our boats disappeared, we would've been screwed. There were barely any boats out, especially in this side canyon, and we were 12 lake miles (but many more overland miles) from the truck. Cell phones would've been useless. One of my Keen sandals and my cooler bag were both missing. I surmised that they had likely been filled with desert silt carried by the flood and buried somewhere in the new sandbar just offshore of our campsite. Fortunately, that was all that seemed to be missing, but literally all of our gear and clothing was saturated and coated with a thick layer of wet desert sand.
The flood receded almost as quickly as it had started. Benefiting from a break in the weather, we quickly broke camp, packed our boats and pushed off. Amy spotted my sandal and cooler floating together about a half mile down the lake from where the flood flushed them into the water.
The skies remained threatening, but there was an eerie calm across the water as we paddled down Hansen Creek to the main channel and headed west.
We got an updated weather forecast that was now sounding even more ominous than it had on Saturday. The snow forecast was upped to 12-24 inches at elevation. We encountered absolutely no one in the first three miles or so. The first human contact we had was with a solo kayaker who had been out for a week, and shortly thereafter two houseboats rumbled past en route to Bullfrog, apparently disenchanted by the weather and calling their weekend early. Amy finally had her paddling technique all dialed in, and she was motoring!
About four miles into our 11-mile paddle back to Bullfrong, however, the skies unleashed once again.
Winds thankfully remained calm, but we were pounded by a deluge that would persist most of the way back to the truck. That's admittedly not as bad as it sounds, as long as you keep paddling. Your lower body is kept secure within the boat hull, and with your spray skirt on and a Gore-Tex jacket and hood sheltering your upper body you're really not getting wet.
By some miracle the rain abated right before we got back to the truck. There was no less mud there, however, than there was at camp. We trudged through the muck for 45 minutes as we loaded our gear and motored back to civilization. Ferocious wind and remarkably intense rainfall for a desert pelted the truck as we made our way to Green River for a half-pound burger and a wonderfully cold beer at Ray's Tavern.
For those interested, here are some maps:
View attachment Lake Powell kayak.kmz
It snowed a couple of feet this weekend in the Wasatch because Telejon, TheOtherAmy and I all skipped town. The three of us piled into my Tacoma on Thursday afternoon to drive to Lake Powell for three days of kayak touring. Y'all who skied this weekend can thank us.
The weather forecast for the weekend looked stellar at the beginning of the week, but with each revised forecast it started looking less and less promising. We stuck to our plans nonetheless, arriving in Bullfrog around dinner time on Thursday.
We hit up the only restaurant for miles around -- the Anasazi Restaurant at the marina's Defiance House lodge -- and got dinner to go, two chile verde burritos and one fish and chips that we ate at our chosen campsite at Stanton Creek, a primitive camping area on the north shore of Lake Powell directly across from Hall's Crossing. There are no established campsites in this huge area, so it's really easy to just four-wheel to the spot of your choice.
The others pitched their tents while I prepped the bed of my truck for the night, then we enjoyed a campfire with a few cocktails before bedding down for the night.
Saturday dawned overcast but relatively calm. We loaded our boats, I moved the truck to higher ground (water levels rise quickly at this time of year) and we shoved off.
We headed east along the north shore of the lake as cliffs gradually rose along both shores. Boat traffic is light at this time of year, but the sheer size of the launch ramp at Bullfrog, the rows and rows of covered slips, and the innumerable houseboat moorings at both Bullfrog and Hall's Crossing all speak to the enormous amount of water traffic that will soon hit the lake at Memorial Day. The Hall's Crossing car ferry sat tied up at the slip, awaiting repairs for damage sustained during a training run this spring. It's not expected to be in operation until sometime in July this year.
We explored the mouth of Moqui Canyon and a couple of unnamed slot canyons along the way. Jon and I have spent many multi-day kayak trips together, but this was TheOtherAmy's first time paddling. We gave her a few quick tips as we headed east, and she did her best to adapt. She's one of the guys, an avid dirt biker and mountain biker in addition to a rockin' telemark skier, so I knew that she could hang.
What I hadn't counted on was the tailwind that would eventually kick up 3 to 4-foot waves that would wash across the stern of our boats. You can't see those coming, so you can't shift your body weight in anticipation -- instead, your movements are reactionary. One of mine was almost too late, and because you're paddling along sheer vertical cliffs, should something bad happen you can't crawl out of the hypothermic water for several miles or more. But we all survived, and made a left turn into Hansen Creek Canyon, one of Powell's many side drainages, and found a respectable campsite about a mile upstream.
We found a tiny spot, almost a cove, in which to land and unload our boats. We kept our cooking area near the water but pitched our tents on flat spots up on the slickrock, Amy's and mine about 50 feet above the waterline and Jon's bivy sack about halfway in between.
Amy napped while Jon and I hiked to the canyon rim. Up there the wind was positively ferocious, strong and steady and not even gusting.
I cooked a linguine with clam sauce and we hit the other sauce relatively hard. Shortly after dark we retired to our respective tents and I fell into a deep sleep.
Our objective for Saturday was the Defiance House ruin, a nearly 800-year-old cliff dwelling high in Forgotten Canyon. The beauty of our Hansen Creek camp was that we could leave our gear there, paddle further east to Forgotten Canyon, explore the ruins and then return to Hansen Creek for our second night without having to break and reset camp in between.
The southwesterly wind was already kicking up waves as we worked our way east across the main channel and entered Forgotten Canyon.
We passed a few boaters landing the lake's huge largemouth bass that we would frequently see swim past our boats or jump after a fly. We wound our way up Forgotten Canyon before we beached our kayaks amongst remains of drowned cottonwood trees where we ran out of water, right next to a couple from Denver having a picnic lunch from their boat.
The hike up the wash was entertaining, but I'm admittedly disappointed by the ruins. Lake Powell is entirely contained within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and the Park Service has done extensive renovations on the ruins. In a museum they would have been interesting, but sitting in the middle of nowhere the ruins felt rather Disney-esque. The original mud mortar has been replaced by concrete mortar, and the Park Service has constructed stone-and-mortar stairs to scale the talus slope leading to the ruins. It's believed that two large extended families inhabited the site from approximately 1250 to 1275 A.D.
We explored the underground portion of the dwelling, had lunch at the site and hiked back to our boats, where I discovered that a raven had absconded with the ~$20 of dried fruit that I had stowed behind my kayak seat. The thief went to a lot of trouble to literally break into my boat, discover the bounty and make off with it, leaving a trail of dried blueberries and cherries and shredded plastic bag behind.
By the time we returned to the main channel the wind had increased even further still. We once again had 3 to 4-foot waves, but this time we were paddling directly into them. Forward progress was slow going, but the waves were playful, even fun. I didn't really mind them at all this time. In fact, I enjoyed them.
Prior to entering Hansen Creek I used the opportunity to check the weather radio before I lost the signal again. The strong spring cold front was expected to push through around midnight, swinging winds around to the northwest and bringing a chance of showers and thunderstorms with it. They were predicting 8-14" of snow in parts of Utah above 6,500 feet, including the Wasatch Front. Amy once again napped while Jon and I once again hiked to a different part of the rim with the wind no less intense than it had been 24 hours before. As we ate the sweet and sour chicken that Jon cooked for dinner and hit a bottle of wine, we concluded that it would be best to get up at around 6 a.m. and break camp, heading back toward the truck before predicted northwesterly winds became too intense.
As the sun set the clouds overhead became darker, and as dusk turned to dark some flashes of thunder sent us scrambling for our tents. Amy secured her tent as best she could, and Jon rigged a tarp with a slipknot and a carabiner to protect his head while huddled in his bivy sack. I had anchored my tent with the fly's guy lines tied to a number of huge boulders, and I lined the inside of my tent with medium-sized rocks around the perimeter.
Nothing, however, would protect us from what would follow. We got hit with the strongest winds that I've ever experienced in a tent. I've never feared having my tent blown away with me in it, but it was a legitimate concern. Wind blew sand beneath the tent's fly, up through the mesh windows and onto my tent floor, my sleeping bag and my face. I turned on some music and fell asleep nonetheless, for once thankful for the quantity of wine and whiskey consumed earlier in the evening.
My alarm went off at 6 a.m., and I was out of the tent by 6:15. Jon emerged from his bivy sack shortly thereafter. I was shocked to see that the wind had actually used my tent to pull some of the huge boulders anchoring it, sometimes by six inches. Jon had actually survived in his jerry-rigged bivy. I started to gather gear next to my boat. As we prepared to break down camp, however, a large flash of lightning was quickly followed by a loud clap of thunder from the dark cloud almost directly overhead. We retreated to our setups with barely enough time to spare before the skies unleashed once again.
The wind was no less than what we'd suffered through the night before, but the rainfall was even more intense. It lasted for about a half an hour before the rainfall rate began to slow and the sounds of the thunder became more distant. I unzipped my fly a bit and began to look around outside when I heard the sound of rushing water. I stepped out and discovered that what had been only a slight depression in the slickrock was now a raging torrent. Amy was frantically trying to dig a channel to divert the water that was eroding ground closer and closer to her tent. I looked down toward the lake and saw the torrent slamming our gear and our boats!
"Oh shit!" I screamed. "Jon! Help!"
Jon scrambled from his bivy and we both ran down to the lakeshore, gathering our gear and our boats as both were being swept out into the lake by the flash flood. Had our boats disappeared, we would've been screwed. There were barely any boats out, especially in this side canyon, and we were 12 lake miles (but many more overland miles) from the truck. Cell phones would've been useless. One of my Keen sandals and my cooler bag were both missing. I surmised that they had likely been filled with desert silt carried by the flood and buried somewhere in the new sandbar just offshore of our campsite. Fortunately, that was all that seemed to be missing, but literally all of our gear and clothing was saturated and coated with a thick layer of wet desert sand.
The flood receded almost as quickly as it had started. Benefiting from a break in the weather, we quickly broke camp, packed our boats and pushed off. Amy spotted my sandal and cooler floating together about a half mile down the lake from where the flood flushed them into the water.
The skies remained threatening, but there was an eerie calm across the water as we paddled down Hansen Creek to the main channel and headed west.
We got an updated weather forecast that was now sounding even more ominous than it had on Saturday. The snow forecast was upped to 12-24 inches at elevation. We encountered absolutely no one in the first three miles or so. The first human contact we had was with a solo kayaker who had been out for a week, and shortly thereafter two houseboats rumbled past en route to Bullfrog, apparently disenchanted by the weather and calling their weekend early. Amy finally had her paddling technique all dialed in, and she was motoring!
About four miles into our 11-mile paddle back to Bullfrong, however, the skies unleashed once again.
Winds thankfully remained calm, but we were pounded by a deluge that would persist most of the way back to the truck. That's admittedly not as bad as it sounds, as long as you keep paddling. Your lower body is kept secure within the boat hull, and with your spray skirt on and a Gore-Tex jacket and hood sheltering your upper body you're really not getting wet.
By some miracle the rain abated right before we got back to the truck. There was no less mud there, however, than there was at camp. We trudged through the muck for 45 minutes as we loaded our gear and motored back to civilization. Ferocious wind and remarkably intense rainfall for a desert pelted the truck as we made our way to Green River for a half-pound burger and a wonderfully cold beer at Ray's Tavern.
For those interested, here are some maps:
View attachment Lake Powell kayak.kmz
