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The Green River Part 3: Flaming Gorge Dam to Ouray, Utah
Segment 3A Summary—2 Days, 39 Miles. From the Flaming Gorge Dam Spillway, Utah, to Crook Campground, Colorado.
Segment 3B Summary—3 Days, 72 Miles. From Split Mountain, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, to Ouray, Utah.
Overall Summary—20 Days, 347 Miles.
Day 16: Dam! Rapids!—10 miles
Back on the actual Green River as opposed to the reservoir now. I put in at the Flaming Gorge Dam Spillway. It is an impressive dam, size-wise, extending more than 450 feet above the valley below. Kind of makes you feel small to be down in the canyon. Just as impressive in size were the rapids below the Dam for the first eight miles of paddling. Lots of sudden drops and rocks. Class I to Class III rapids. Ideal territory for a raft, not really for an open canoe. I ran most of the rapids successfully, only needing to bail in-between sets. The water finally caught up to me and swamped me after I broadsided a rock, whereupon I took my first involuntary swim in the Green. Aside from the loss of my water bottle and bail bucket, I emerged unscathed. After the dip in the river, being in the dark shadows of Red Canyon grew a little bit chilly. Though the weather had turned cool and rainy in the previous few days, it was still a sunny clear day in the canyon. I called it an early day and dried myself and my gear out in the dwindling sunlight.
Day 17: A Float through the Park—29 miles
Started the morning playing the ‘rain, rain, go away game.’ Off-and-on drizzle had moved in overnight, dampening whatever the river had left dry. No sense in waiting around feeling miserable, so I bundled up to brace the cold and rain. I was past the major rapids, but the river still drops as it leaves Red Canyon, creating many long sections of significant riffles that keeps a canoer on his toes. The needed vigilance was a needed distraction from the cold weather. Past the point where Red Creek runs into the Green River, the river makes a distinct transition in appearance. Red Creek, aptly named, flows with a ruddy silt-laden flow into the Green, transforming the clear Green into its historical chocolate-brown hue. Upstream, the Green is a product of the dam and reservoir system which only releases clear, cold water. The clear cold water is ideal for a trout fishery, but is actually nowhere near what the river was like ecologically before it was tamed. As Red Canyon winds down, the Green enters a flat section called Brown’s Park. It was named a ‘park’ in 1869 by John Wesley Powell, who though the cottonwood flats in the midst of the mountains resembled a park. Once in Brown’s Park, the river flattens and widens out, making it a real float through the park. As a testament to how slow the river flow becomes and how silty the water gets, I constantly got stranded on sandbars I couldn’t see in the lower section of the river. With the water an opaque brown, you can never tell the transition from paddling in feet of water to inches of water. Though Brown’s Park is sparsely populated today, back in the wild west of the late-1800’s, Brown’s Park’s isolation made it a notorious robber’s roost. One well-known resident was the general store owner John Jarvie, whose ranch and store I visited along the river. Jarvie lived on the Green for 29 years before he was shot and killed in a robbery.
Day 18: Where Dinosaurs Roamed—21 Miles
Skipping the Class IV whitewater through the storied Gates of Lodore Canyon saw me launch just downriver at Split Mountain in Dinosaur National Monument. Here, geologic action has uplifted hundreds of millions of years of sedimentary rocks into the mélange of colorful mountains seen in Dinosaur, though the Green River only took a few thousand years to erode its current course through the mountains. Though I couldn’t take the river tour of Dinosaur’s 23 layers of sediment, I could still marvel at the mountains as I launched and paddled directly away from them. But no visit to Dinosaur National Monument would be complete without visiting the quarry that started it all, where a jumble of 149-million year-old dinosaur bones are ensconced in relief against the sandstone they were buried in. Dinosaur National Monument has more to offer than just canyons and dinosaurs, and I spent the morning exploring the pictographs of the ancient Fremont People, and the cabins of a few homesteaders in the park. Exploring the Monument was great, but was partly a delay tactic to avoid the inevitable—launching my canoe in the cold, wind, and rain. As far as paddling weather goes, today was not ideal. Personally, given the situation, I found it hard to believe the ranger when she said this area was a desert that receives less than ten inches of rain per year. All ten inches, it seemed, happened to be falling today. Despite my hopes, the rain never let up. As I passed out of the mountains of Dinosaur, and into the agricultural fields of Jensen, Utah, the constant drizzle kept everything saturated. I eventually pitched a wet camp on a wet sandbar and called it a day.
Day 19: Endurance—26 Miles
A cold rainy day prior led into a cold rainy morning. I delayed getting up as long as I could justify it. Not much fun taking down a wet camp and starting to paddle in the rain again. Looking up at the mountains of Dinosaur, I could see snow in the high peaks. The rain eventually stopped in the morning, and I spent all day trying to chase down the hint of blue skies I could see where the river was flowing—to the south and the west. Unfortunately for me, I would never reach those blue skies. The Green in this section of its flowage—though it has much more volume than upriver—meanders lacksidasically through the flat Uintah Basin. Today the river flowed through such large equestrian features like The Horseshoe and The Stirrup. After paddling many river miles through these features, I was only a few miles as the crow flies from where I started. The river also has innumerable sandbars that come up out of nowhere to strand my canoe. Much like my first few days of paddling, the Green is only inches deep in parts. It is a cold day of paddling that barely makes it to 50 degrees. I pitched camp early and had a warm cup of tea as my tent slowly dried out in the cold breeze. Some days of a journey are more about getting through than prospering.
Day 20: An Autumnal Paddle—25 Miles
If two days of cold and rain were the punishment, then today was the much needed reward. Partly cloudy skies greeted me, and would soon be a bright blue dappled by small cumulus. It is cold, but refreshingly so. The breeze is slight and enlivening. The air smells crisp. Overall, a very pleasant day to paddle. Unlike previous days of travel through the steep-walled canyons, today’s landscape had relatively little topographical relief. And, unlike days of paddling through the arid sagebrush steppe, today’s vegetation featured a nearly continuous wall of mature green and yellow cottonwoods lining the riverbanks. Given the broad, shallow nature of the river, and the wooded setting, today felt almost as if I were paddling a river in northern Wisconsin rather than western Utah. I paddled past hundreds of herons, all which soar off into flight where they see me. They honk loudly and circle the skies above. On the riverbanks, dozens of horses roam free as they wander and graze. The air is crisp. It is a lovely autumn day paddle.
In All Directions 