In the mid 90’s I was phasing out of a five-year period of intense training in the art of aikido. I had been training at a dojo in Ventura, California, where there were lots of students and a full schedule of classes. But between the crowds and the expense of living in Southern California, it seemed I should find another place to live, and maybe open my own dojo. I got on the road in October.
I was a lifelong coastal resident, but I thought I should consider living inland, so I took a tour, just to see how it felt in places like Moab, Utah, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Flagstaff, Arizona.
At the time my vehicle was a priceless 1982 Toyota four-wheel-drive pickup. It was an amazing truck that could go anywhere. While in the Moab area, I drove the rocky cattle roads and jeep trails of Canyonlands N.P. (including the 100 mile “White Rim” loop and the Shafer trail down the most amazing set of switchbacks I’ve ever seen), and was captivated by the Green river, which carves through the park. Indeed, it made the park. The green water was flanked by golden cottonwoods as it passed below canyon walls of rusty red-brown Navajo sandstone.
The Green originates in the Wind River Range of Western Wyoming and flows south until it meets the Colorado River in Southeast Utah. For the last 100 miles before that confluence, the Green meanders through spectacular Canyonlands. I needed to float that stretch of river.
By the following spring I had organized a trip. Three couples would paddle the through the canyons for a week. Two couples were in canoes. I had my folding kayak. My girlfriend had no boating or river experience, and no outdoor skills. Once I had my kayak assembled and packed I told her we were ready to go. We stood in knee deep water in the desert brush at Ruby Ranch, which had road access to the river above the canyons. The river was moving quickly with the spring runoff from the mountains upstream. “Which way are we going?” She asked. “Whichever way you want.” I replied. She surveyed the river. “Lets go that way.” she said, pointing downstream. “Good idea.” I said.
After a couple miles of paddling by flat desert scrub, we saw the banks rise as we entered the canyons. This 100 mile stretch flows through two canyon systems: Labyrinth and Stillwater canyons. I had a little plastic camera with a roll of 36 exposures to record the trip.
One of our crew had written the first and most popular of guidebooks to mountain biking the area. He lived in Moab and was well educated about the trails that led from the river into various side canyons or up to the rim, so on most of our seven days of the trip we had a good hike.
The river is so snaky in Stillwater canyon that at times you round a bend of 180 degrees to paddle the next section of river in the opposite direction you were traveling in the last stretch. This meant that on a windy day you could paddle a few miles into a headwind, only to round a bend an have a tailwind for a few miles. We took advantage of one of the tailwind sections to rest. I lashed the three boats together and rigged a tarp as a sail between our vertical kayak paddles.
It’s an easy trip. One of the most difficult aspects is spotting good places to camp. Established camps are often hard to see because they are behind a wall of tamarisk brush. To find them you have to look for a tunnel through the brush, and they are easy to miss. indeed I missed one, which cause us to miss a great hiking trail from that camp.
Evenings were festive, and in the tradition of river trips, we even had a costume night, but we didn’t bring costumes! So it got creative.
There’s nothing like floating along a river through majestic canyons, and this trip is unique in that there are no rapids until the confluence with the Colorado. Once on the Colorado River there is one long riffle to run before the beach where a jetboat will come to pick you up and shuttle you 40 miles or so up the Colorado to Moab.
About 15 years later I was craving some adventure during a winter surfing on the Mendocino Coast of California. I decided I would spend the spring running rivers in the West. With no small stroke of luck, I was invited on an early season kayak float of the Owyhee in SE Oregon, and also won the lottery to get a permit to float the San Juan in SE Utah. I also got a tip from an old friend from whitewater guiding days that he knew of a crew that needed a boatman for a Grand Canyon trip. And the put-in dates for all these trips worked well, except for a big 10 day gap between the San Juan take-out and the Grand Canyon put-in. I decided to run the Green again, alone. River trips are almost always done in groups. I had done countless solo backpacking trips, and rowed my dory on solo trips around Katchemak Bay in Alaska, but although I’ve probably done over a hundred river trips, I never ran a river by myself, so I threw the folding kayak in the back of my pickup when I left the coast in April. I’d have two months of back-to back river trips, culminating with the mother of them all, the Colorado through the Grand Canyon (for my 3rd time).
Once again the Green was a magical float, maybe more so, with fewer distractions from the majesty of the landscape. Admittedly, nights were not even nearly as much fun. This time I had a real camera with me and got a few photographs:
Prints of these photos are available. Just contact me through www.tomreed.com
Tom Reed Photography 
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