Colorado River :: Westwater Canyon, UT :: Trip #10

Thursday-Friday, July 5-6, 2012

River: Colorado - Westwater Canyon, UT
Put-in/Take-out: Westwater Ranger Station to Cisco   53 miles

Flow: 2500 cfs
Weather: Day One - overcast w/a few sprinkles felt great w/temps in the 80s, cleared out by late afternoon. Day Two - Beautiful! Sunny, dry, hot, high 90s.
Other boaters: Toby & Nicole w/Kayla & Casssidy; Dave & Maura w/Caleb & (?)Joshua(?) boys; Nancy with her "Flippy Me."

Nestled deep in the sandstone cliffs between Grand Junction, Colorado and Moab, Utah, Westwater Canyon rocked my world.

Late on the 4th of July, we all drive to the Westwater Ranger Station arriving after dark, set camp, ready to get an early start the next day. Ran shuttle and stopped by the Cisco Disco. Interesting backroads in Utah...if you didn't know where you were going, you'd swear you're on an unmaintained, dead-end, deserted dirt road. Thank goodness I knew where I was going, even though it was my first time running shuttle on these unknown roads. Felt sketchy at times, but we did it fine.
Day One had a few thrilling rapids, but nothing like what we were about to get into the 2nd day.Campsite: Hades. Just above the canyon entrance to the big water.
As the Colorado River descends into Westwater Canyon, the walls begin to close in, while rising to 1,200 feet in height. Due to the narrowness of this rock strewn channel with its fast water and high canyon walls, the rapids in Westwater Canyon are challenging at anytime during the boating season, great news for this low-flow water season in much of Colorado.

Marble Canyon Rapid, the first in the inner gorge, gets the action started. My first lap full of water. Then as Marble Canyon ends, we enter Staircase Rapid for a series of deep, trough waves that had me smiling from ear to ear. That smile wouldn't leave my face for much of the day. A short distance downstream was the entrance to Big Hummer Rapid, with a wild splash and a big hole, then Funnel Falls Rapid, a truly breathtaking drop that offers the best of adrenaline rushes and I popped a wheelie. The pace of the river runs even faster now, as the next two rapids Surprise and No Name go flashing by. Then it was time to regroup and prepare for the one everyone talks about...Skull.
Skull Rapid is formed as the river makes a tight, hard turn to river left. The rapid has a narrow approach where the idea was to drop in, catch a small eddy on the left, then go left of the big rock. I watched TL Toby attempt the move, then got snagged on the big rock in the middle ("high side!!"). Following, I pulled left & saw the passage too tight, then made the poor last minute choice to go right... as I'm watching the big rock come up to my boat dead center, right between my feet, the exact same rock Toby just hit. (Don't look at the rock, look at the water where you want to go... just like tree skiing, you don't look at the trees!) Now pivoting off the rock, I'm sideways, facing the middle of the river going thru Skull... with no problem. Gave me a great vantage to watch Nancy flip her Mini-Me and swim the left side of the rock (where I was aiming). Those large and powerful waves try to wash everything over the top of Skull Rock and into the monstrous hole at the bottom of the rapid. My mission was to grab Nancy's flipped boat & gear, Toby & Nicole were on rescue for Nancy. Grabbed the boat as I hit the Rock of Shock, a solid rock wall dead ahead of Skull, flanked on river right with a powerful back eddy that flushes everything into the Room of Doom, a large cavern scoured out of the rock. Sounds exciting? Well, not so much if you can't muster enough oar power to get out. I was attempting to tow a flipped mini-me raft out of the back eddy, but it felt like I was anchored solid when I hit the current with the flipped boat. After a few unsuccessful tries, nearing the point of exhaustion, Nancy was delivered by boat part of the way across the river, then swam into the Room of Doom. The only way to get her boat out was to flip it upright. Since I did not have a flip-line (bad boater, bad!), Nancy used my bowline as a flip line and uprighted her boat. Much easier getting out of the Room of Doom in a solo boat. They say a successful run thru this rapid takes some precise maneuvering... I have some precision to strive for on the next attempt. The river still offers three more major rapids, before exiting the canyon - Cross Bones, Sock-it-to-Me and Last Chance. These last three rapids offered fantastic runs, before the flat water. 

Popping a wheelie and burying the front tubes of my boat underwater with a nice lapful of water, going sideways thru Skull and just hopping on those wave trains for fun... that's my boat. Stable, quick and sleek. The biggest water so far for my boat and I now have a lot more confidence to run my local Colorado rivers when the water gets flowing big again.