Cataract Canyon!!! June '09

Cataract Canyon

Cataract canyon was one of the most intense, wild, awesome trips I've ever been on! The canyon is on the Colorado River in the middle of Canyonlands Nat. Park. There are no roads anywhere so the trip is a 3 day, 100 mile float trip from Moab to Lake Powell. Awesome, huh! The rapids on the river are all between class 3 to class 5, giving the canyon some of the biggest water in the lower 48 states. It also holds the most volume of water, meaning we rafted the river around 40,ooo cfs and the Provo river during spring run off reaches about 1,500 cfs. We had a great time, as you can see from the pics! We went on hikes up to Indian ruins, cliff jumping, we played some mean games of volleyball, horse shoes, and Indian stick. We got to hang out while we floated the flat water and hold on for dear life as we were thrown around on the house sized rapids! The trip was a blast and would recommend it to anyone that needs a little adrenaline rush :-)

The River...

This picture doesn't look too intense, but if you look closely you will see 3 different "holes" those are the things that suck you in and throw you around like a washing machine. This and one other rapid were the two most dangerous in the canyon and of course they were right next to each other making a very intense run. This is also the part of the river with the biggest waves. As I watched our 28' and 21' pontoon boats go down these rapids, they would disappear when they went down and then come back up and be basically vertical, then some how get over the wave and do it again. I was so nervous going down, but we made it and our little raft never flipped while we were on it!

The confluence of the mighty Colorado and Green Rivers! That peak straight ahead... to the right is the green river coming in and to the left is the combined green and Colorado flowing toward Lake Powell.

The raft is actually upside down right here. It hit a wave straight on and it flipped it right over! Luckily everyone held on tight and we were able to get them out of the water and on the big pontoon boat before we hit the next rapid. Don't worry it only took us 3 sets of rapids to finally get the raft to shore and flip it back over;-)

Greg and I rode the 'horns', it was so like riding a bull we were getting knocked around so bad, it made the trip all that much more exciting, like riding the front of a roller coaster, but having to hold on for dear life and not being strapped down!

K, so the 3 pics above this is called the Gooseneck, it's a geological feature that is in every geology book. From the 2 pics above you can see the river flowing up then directly back down to where it was, except for on the other side of the cliffs. We hiked up and over the most narrow spot of the gooseneck. The picture near the top of the entry shows the group on top of the pass. It was a fun hike in which Greg told me that given a million years the river is going to cut right through where we were standing and leave what is called an 'oxbow lake' where the river used to be. (and he says I never listen to anything he says!!! ;-)

One of the two nights we slept on an island (sandbar) in the middle of the river. It was fun, they had some horseshoe games going on, while greg and I tried to fish a little, but as you can see from the murky/ dirty water we didn't have to much luck.

This little red creek is called Indian Creek. It was so full of sediment, but that didn't stop people from sitting under the waterfall and turning all their clothes different colors ;-) It's a tributary into the Colorado; we hiked up about a mile and a half to get to the falls, it was so hot and felt so good to cool off!

This is our group! All wonderful people who had a weekend of intense fun!!!!