Cataract Canyon


Where the River Gods Claimed me...





The Dawning of the Call

The tale begins in 1976. My Dad and I are watching TV in the den of our house in NJ. The show is about a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. I am 7 years old and we swear a solemn pact that we will raft the Colorado river.


1994 - December - Belgium.

After much deliberation and debate in the past months we have decided. We are going this summer. To Cataract Canyon. The Colorado River at its best. The promised assignation with that Lady is finally actually going to happen.

1995 Summer - Manchester

I spend most of the summer working on a "medicinal" tan and reading the brochures again and again. Making flight arrangements, insurance, all that stuff. Pack, re-pack for minimum weight. Years of mountaineering have taught me that much…Dreaming mostly…until the day dawns when I get on the flight.


The Break-Out

22 hours later arriving in Salt Lake City after 8 years away from the States. The heat hits me like the cliché oven, but it’s true, it did. Then it poured it down with rain so hard it soaked me in seconds. Dad and I meet up in Salt Lake and take the drive down to Moab. Desert closes in with true dry ferocity. Big-wall jug made of gatorade bottle and duct-tape never leaves my side.

We check out Arches national park. Already superlative expressions begin to fail. There are only so many ways to say "Wow"…in the end we just try to absorb, quietly sharing a love of the outdoors. We started this a long time ago, and many hours have been shared walking, mountaineering, rock-climbing, (even rollercoasters). The Dad and I are buddies. I was always a tom-boy, exploring and hiking, fishing, riding my trusty chopper into the clutches of terrific adventures, planning out with my "Fisher Price Adventure People" those feats I could not attempt myself. My favourites were Chet the White Water Kayaker and Amy the Mountaineer. Even Barbie got trussed up in a climbing harness and sent winging down ropes between the trees in our back yard. When I would draw the endless mountain climbing scenes I could hear the wind whistling in my ears and the creak of crampons on neve, before I even knew what crampons were (or neve for that matter…)

But here we were far from the crisp coldness that we had shared on our latest mountaineering trip together. (*link to that trip report*) It was pure desert. The sun was slanting low over Arches and we made for Moab to check in with Sheri for the morning. We found the shack and were welcomed and to advised to report back the next morning.

Entry

Dawn broke with us sweating in our motel rooms, so ready to go, so so ready, 15 years worth of ready. We turned up at the shop and got ourselves introduced. We’d be taking down 2 oar boats and a paddle boat and the water was exceptionally high for the time of year. We got cups and dry boxes and did a last gear check. Then we hit the busses.

Our guides were Dave, the trip leader, Eric, an experienced boatsman but new to the company and Brian, a surfer turned oarsman. All three were climbers at some point too so we had lots to discuss from the outset. Dave took his banjo on the river and damn if he didn’t just sound like Kermit the Frog.

We drove along the dusty roads with Dave telling us about water. "If you’ve got a headache, drink. If you’ve got a stomache ache, drink. If you’re feeling weak, drink. If you’re crabby drink. If you’re thirsty, drink. If you’re not thirsty…" and the bus erupted….DRINK!!!…seems silly, but even after this it took us a full day on the river not to have to be reminded. All along the roadway the Datura plants grew like bushes in the verge. Dave espied our french threesome casting an eye over them and rolled off the obligatory spiel about Datura poisoning. Not that we stopped on the road, but 3 days into a 5 day trip, 400 feet down in a canyon 50 miles from the nearest roads was not a time and place he really wanted to be dealing with a townie freaking on Datura- right?We did our introductions and just sat there taking it all in.

We arrived at the put-in and divided into the boats. The Beer-Boat, oarsman plus 2 people and most of the beer/food/etc. People-Boat, oarsman with gear plus 4 people. The Paddle Boat, Dave plus 7 team and some gear. Dave stayed with the paddle boat all the time and Eric and Brian alternated in the other two boats.

Meeting the River

The river was big and brown and warm. We were afraid to touch it. It seemed to demand an intimacy, the brown, opaque mass, this warm thing, so full of resting violence. So we swam in our PFD’s and made fun of peeing in the river, while we learned our paddle drills and slid into river time. So easy to let the river take you.


(out of sequence but so what)
Eric and the brown shorts

As we were setting up for lunch before the first rapids this story from Dave:

Coupla weeks ago they're scouting Big Drop 2 and the water's real high and it looks a little gnarly, Dave's hitting it first. They get back to the rafts and Dave says to Eric..."Hey Eric, pass me those red gloves over there..." and Eric flips them to him looking quizically...Dave says..."Well you know with Big Drop 2 there this really hard pull to get across and avoid that big hole and sometimes my hands bleed a little and I don't want to worry the folks.." Eric shrugs a little worried shrug "'...'kay..." and they run the drop. The next week they're scouting Big Drop 2 once more. This time Eric's going first...and he looks at it and looks at it and looks at it and finally they go back to the rafts and Eric says..."Hey Dave, pass me those brown shorts..."


Golden

We got out to scout Big Drop III (I think it was BDIII)... In any case...One of the oarboats went first and the idea was to pull very hard for river right and run the shoot between the BIG pillow rock and Froggies...which is a VW bus size hole just left of the shoot...the rest was unrunnable hydraulics...at that level... So Eric pulls off right and pulls hard...then harder...then harder as we watch from the eddy....then he makes the cut in the pillow off the rock and swoops through the fall sweetly... Dave murmurs "golden" and we make the cut out of the eddy...harder in a paddle boat and we're pulling and pulling and it really isn't looking very good and Dave is roaring "forward HARD" and at the last moment as we're about to sweep into Froggie's sideways he says to me "pry"...and I dig in the blade and lean back and we pivot around the blade, zisch onto the pillow wave and smooth as churned butter down the fall with me eyeballing Froggie's 20ft below and to my left...everyone whooping and hollering as we take the hit at the bottom...and run out into the wave train...still huge...(then we very nearly got beaned by the funny water below...one tube totally down...) It wasn't the biggest wave but it was the sweetest moment in the whole trip...that instant when the whole boat pivoted on my blade like a yak...easing off the pillow and perfect into the chute..."Golden!!!"...

A short quote from Williams Nealy about "Funny Water"...
William Nealy says about funny water: "Mostly found on floodstage or "big water" rivers, funny water is usually anything but! Found where pools or eddies normally would be, funny water manifests itself as whirlpools, mobile eddy walls, percolating eddies and exploding waves. Funny water is generally experiences in this way...you're running a river a high water. You clean the hardest rapid on the river, hit the pool at the bottom and relax. Suddenly something grabs your boats, flips you, and tears you out of your boat. You go for a nasty swim in the 'pool'."

More to come…

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