June '98 Newsletter

El Niño? If you live in Phoenix, the problems associated with this weather phenomena have been slight! Our spring has been delightfully cool and anytime Phoenix has rain and seventy degree temperatures in mid-May, it's time to celebrate! As we write this, it is early June and we've only had a couple of days when the temperature was over 100º. The evening temperatures have been glorious, often below 70º and there has been absolutely no humidity problem. We've been celebrating by completing our neglected yard work, doing some long-overdue outdoor apartment maintenance, and preparing our rafting gear for upcoming trips.

In addition to a one week Salt River trip in April, we squeezed in some two-a-day runs from the Salt River Canyon bridge to Cibique over Mother's Day weekend. Bob's son, Scott, and his girlfriend, Tennille, met and camped with us one evening. The following day, Bob Cree and John Clark drove up and joined us for two exciting runs down the river. After a decade of inactivity outdoors, Cree has turned up for a rafting trip each of the past two years, including last year's 80,000 cfs Main Salmon trip. For those who don't recognize the name, he was Bob's companion on the infamous 56 day through Grand Canyon trek in 1980 and a boatman with Bob on most of his early 1980's raft trips. Tennille paddled with us on the paddle raft while Scott manned an inflatable kayak. The next morning our musician tenants, Zen Crook and Julie Rubio, and our new friend, Kate Lutkemeier drove up for another exciting two runs down the Upper Salt. With a huge snow pack in the White Mountains, the Salt had a long season this year. Boating was going on at respectable flow levels through the end of May.

We have another action-packed summer planned. After being home from the Yampa trip for just a few days, Susan flew up to Minnesota to visit her family for a week. We were invited to join some friends from Salt Lake on a Middle Fork raft trip in late June and were planning to continue on down the Main Salmon by ourselves after the rest of the group took out at Cache Bar. Unfortunately, a lack of equipment and experience, an unavailable permit holder, and complications with trip organization made the trip go bust for us. It broke our hearts to miss a Middle Fork opportunity like this but it did remind us of something we've always known about private trips. 30-40% of them don't get on the water because the permit holder doesn't have the skills, experienced friends, or equipment to get it done. After assessing the situation, we decided that five weeks of rafting the Salt, Yampa, Green, and Colorado through Grand Canyon by the end of September would be enough rafting for us. There is always too much to do, who knows what great opportunities may yet present themselves?

About the time we mail this, we are heading for the Cedar Mesa area of Utah to spend a week scouting out the best campsites for our August Grand Gulch and vicinity trip. If we have time, we also plan to explore the canyon rim roads along the San Juan from the Goosenecks to Slickhorn.

'98 Trip Reports:

Salt River (4/19-4/25):

A couple of old friends, Linda Andermann and Michelle Bussiere, were in town from their home in Massachusetts for a week, which timed out perfectly for a day of joint play on the Upper Salt day run. After a wonderful Sunday afternoon party hosted by Michelle's friends, Andy and Leah, the two of us drove to the put-in and crashed above the river. Imagine our surprise the next morning when Michelle, Linda, Leah, and Randy from Colorado were all standing there waiting when we got up. Since the party was still rocking when we left, we hadn't expected them until noon. We heated up some sausage and smeared some bagels while waiting for the air to warm a little. The put-in was extremely quiet on Monday morning. One large private group was putting in for a through trip and one boat load of paddle rafters was running the day run, but that was it. We helped shuttle the car of a couple of young kayakers from Colorado while moving one of our vehicles down to Cibeque Creek and were still on the river by 10:30 AM.

When we checked the Internet flow chart on Sunday, it was running about 1680 cfs and had risen a 100 cfs from the previous day. Wanting to neither park on exposed rocks nor be flushed downstream in a torrential spring deluge, we were hoping this slow rise would continue. Leah had boated the Salt River day run previously but this was Randy's first whitewater experience. Both were thrilled to be there and Linda and Michelle were thrilled to be in Arizona for the first time in several years. We were cautious and scouted a few of the rapids while making our first descent of the year. We scraped a few rocks in Bump 'n' Grind Rapid, but never parked anywhere. The 16' boat was difficult to control at first but we soon got the hang of it. We reached our vehicle at Cibeque Creek in about 2 hours and threw the boat into the back of the truck for the ride back to the put-in where we planned to eat lunch.

Suffering from jet-lag and possibly party-lag, both Michelle and Linda felt somewhat lazy so we skipped a second run that day and shot the breeze while lolling in the shade of a ramada for most of the afternoon. Once the intense sun left, Michelle and Randy collected downed mesquite for a fire needed to roast our fish dinner. Since we supplied the raft and gear, the other four supplied the food. It was sinfully delicious. They steamed packets of Cod on the mesquite coals and accompanied this with skillfully timed rice pilaf and asparagus Alfredo made on the Coleman stove. Fresh air and tired muscles led to early escapes to bed without any decisions about the next morning's plans.

While our four friends went up the hill to shoot sunrise pictures of Salt River Canyon, the two of us rigged the 16' raft for oars and a through trip. Another private group helped the six of us get this now heavy boat to the water. Michelle and Susan packed up the remaining gear and shuttled our Toyota to Cibeque while the rest of the group made the day run in an oared raft with two front paddlers. The flowers along the road were fantastic viewing but Michelle and Susan still arrived in time to watch us run Exhibition Rapid. The water had come up quite a bit overnight and the seven mile day run took very little time. Many of the rocks we had avoided the day before were under water. Everyone helped us unload our truck and carry the through trip gear to the river. By 10:30 AM, they were on their way to Globe to do our shuttle and return to Phoenix. We were soon on our way downstream in search of adventure. We lunched at Salt Banks across from the small waterfall and ended up camping just a few hundred yards downstream shortly after lunch. The temperature was pleasant and we had a driftwood fire in our firepan that evening, a luxury not allowed on many western rivers. After 11 hours of sleep, we were well rested the next day.

The mornings were still a little crisp so we made a habit of getting late starts. We floated down to Walnut Creek and spent several hours in the shade of the ledges playing cards and eating lunch. After awhile we took a short walk to the riverside waterfall but the water in the deep pool was too cold to be tempting. Walnut Falls was pretty and the yellow columbine growing in the mist had the largest blooms we've seen on an Arizona columbine. Our second camp, about a mile above Canyon Creek, was huge. We took a short hike up a cow trail to the ridge above camp in the late afternoon. The spring flowers were magnificent. While we were in camp, a group came by and told us they had sighted a small bear at river level between the Salt Banks and Walnut Creek, close to where we had camped the night before. Since we hadn't been too careful with our food and trash that night, we felt lucky the bear hadn't visited us. A kayaker also told us that according to the USGS Internet page the flow was now up to 2200 CFS.

After hearing about Scott's flip earlier this spring at the Eye of the Needle, we decided to scout it. It was an easy water level but the traditional left side low water route was indeed a flipper at this higher water level. The two pillars that form the needle's eye were both under water and a nasty reversal awaited the unwary at the bottom of the normal low-water entry point. We successfully ran right and then pulled over to scout Black Rock, just to be safe. At higher water levels, Black Rock Rapid is an easy run down the right wall and there were no surprises. We reached our third camp at Hess Canyon early in the afternoon. We played cards in the shade for much of the afternoon, letting the mid-day heat fade before going hiking. Hess was running good water and the hike was lovely, with lots of wildflowers. Once in the canyon, we were in the shade most of the way. It seemed like a great place to hang out on a hot afternoon and we were sorry we hadn't hiked up earlier. The wind came up just as we were preparing to cook dinner that night so we switched our menu to cold sandwiches and decided to forego our nightly campfire. A good choice, as the wind gusted most of the night and it was still breezy the next morning.

Fueled by Quartzite Falls nervousness, we were up and packed fairly early. Before we left camp, Bob pounded the clips with a rock to tighten them up. With our new oar bushings, the oars seemed to be popping a little more easily than we like. The Maze was fast and tight in a big raft but not extremely difficult. The pull-in for scouting Quartzite Falls from high above wasn't easy to reach but we made it and hiked up the steep hill. Through our binoculars Quartzite looked enormous but not particularly complicated. Nevertheless, we put our wet suits on for the first time and rigged a strap for Bob to hook a foot under. No out-of-boat experiences allowed. Once above the Falls, he decided to skip the final scout from the left side pull-in and immediately ran. After an excellent run, we calmed ourselves by bailing for a few minutes in the huge pond above Corkscrew Rapid. Corkscrew looked nastier than Quartzite and we wanted to be ready. After a decent run there, we headed downstream for camp.

By the time we reached Horseshoe Bend, the wind was howling upstream and downstream progress was becoming a struggle. Hoping it would die down, we pulled over for lunch. Bob planned to camp in the Goosenecks a few miles above the take-out but we ended up a little short of that in a superb granite area around mile 12. Huge granite boulders and outcroppings at river level made for a spectacular campsite. In the late afternoon, we took a steep hike up the ridge through broken down granite and fields of desert chia, lupine, larkspur, owl's clover, chicory, etc. The Hedgehog Cacti were just starting to bloom. Among this vegetation we had the good fortune to see three Gila Monsters. They are a particularly elusive creature and Arizona hikers consider themselves lucky if they see one in 20 years. We weren't quite as ecstatic about our first rattlesnake encounter on our way back to camp. The wind died down enough for us to have another cheery campfire on our last river night.

Up early, we packed and rowed downstream to Pinal Creek, which was running quite a lot of water. We anchored in the mouth and hiked upstream a ways in our Tevas. It was a pretty canyon with many crystalline pools. Since we had heard that Pinal Creek is polluted and we weren't sure with what, we weren't in a big hurry to hop into the pools. It turns out that it is heavy metals from the up-canyon copper mining operations near Miami. We hope that those wash off. At the take-out we ran into two friendly new rangers on a TNF river patrol. Apparently they'd checked our equipment out while we were hiking in Hess Canyon. We hadn't been aware that they were even on the river. Unscathed, our truck was waiting for us at the top of the ramp. We cleaned our gear up as best we could, threw it in the truck, and took off for Globe and home.

Participants: Susan Groth & Bob Marley.