Three Desert Rivers: Jarbidge/Bruneau, Delores, and Escalante

As the skiing has started to wane, the rivers have started to run, as folks in Boise and Ketchum, ID are acutely aware.   As such, my annual loss of fitness from lots of charging around the mountains to sitting on my ass in boats has begun, but it's a small price to pay for being able to float some of the best rivers in the country.

A few weeks ago I got an email out of the blue from Mike Curiak, who was famous back in the day for setting a long-standing course record on the Great Divide and winning the Iditabike, and more recently has become well known in the vast world of pack rafting for doing a lot of great adventures.  Mike had tried to join us on a Selway trip a few years ago (via Jim Harris) but couldn't make it, but kept my email address around and was willing to take a chance on inviting someone he didn't know to go paddle the Jarbidge/Bruneau river in southern Idaho.  Never wanting to turn down an opportunity to run this gem, I jumped.

Mike's other pards for this trip were Brad Meiklejohn and Roman Dial.  Brad is the president of the
American Packrafting Association and Roman wrote the book Packrafting!, and that - along with the fact that Mike has a boat named after him -was a clear indication to me that despite the fact that you can drive easily to the put in and takeout of the Jarbidge/Bruneau and no "packing" is necessary, I felt some peer pressure to paddle my packraft in lieu of my hardshell boat.  And it's great to have some good packraft solidarity!

I have had the good fortune to do that Jarbidge/Bruneau a few times before, including last spring with brother Paul and Kiwi Andy with an associated blawg post, so I'll skip some of the details here and just throw up some pics.

All trips on the Bruneau system start with connecting with the ever-affable Shuttlemaster Ed Geiger:

Who - as we were turning onto the road to the put in said:  "this thing is four wheel drive, right?"  Uh, no.....why?  "Well due to the rain the road might have a little mud!"  Um, how much?  "Oh, only about 14 miles!"  Ok, is there another way to the put in?

Sure enough there is, and it involved going back to the town of Twin Falls, where we were able to ogle at the booming Niagra-esque Shoshone falls on the Snake

It wasn't raining.  These folks were getting misted from hundreds of feet above the bottom of the falls!

soon enough we were bobbing merrily down the Jarbidge through its spectacular gorge:

Given that the season was a bit early, it was a little chilly in camp:

Roman - lef - and Brad - right.  Brad's flip flops made my toes icy just lookin' at them! 

As a result, we were glad to have Mike's lightweight, collapsible fire pan:

a far cry from the huge, heavy fire pans of most river trips

Mike finding that it's hard to smile when looking up from "Cadillac Desert"

The weather cleared and warmed up for a nice morning hike up and out of the gorge

to the top, which is a beautifully barren and amazingly flat plain

Back on the water we had some good rapids:

Mike showing how packrafting class 4 is done!

And floated on down to another camp (across from the mouth of Sheep Creek) with a friendly overhand:

the river popped up a bit with the rain we had on the first day, and blasting through the Five Mile rapid section of long, continuous 3+ rapids was pretty exciting - some of the hardest that Brad and Roman had done - but we had no problems as everyone aced them.

Upon reaching the takeout with enough time to do "something else" but not enough to go more than a day, we decided to take Ed up on his suggestion to go try for upper Sheep Creek that - to his knowledge, had never been paddled before (likely because it involves a 4 mile hike to the put in, and most kayakers don't hike, and pack rafting is still new enough that Ed had never seen a pack raft before).  Lower Sheep Creek (above the confluence with the Bruneau) is a fun section in an even-more-dramatic gorge, but the price of admission is high with several miles of bashing through riverbed-growing willows.  I was a little concerned that the section above might be the same.  But with our boats it was easy enough to hike out at any time, so we decided to give it a go.

So in the middle of the desert, we were able to the "pack" into packrafting:

anyone seen a river around here?  

Finally it started to look promising:

And sure enough, we found some floatable water

getting a crack O' 1pm start for a first descent

there were some willows, but always a nice path through them, for a while. 

The canyon was nice, though we were spoiled by the outrageous scenery of the Bruneau and once the willows closed in, we were pretty quick to bail out, so we rolled up and hiked a few hundred feet back up to the plains, content with a minor mission.

The next mission was to the Delores River that goes for a couple of hundred miles along the Utah/Colorado border between Moab and points East.  Jon Jamieson had made his annual spring family journey to Utah to float the Green River, and left enough time to gallivant about with me afterwards.  Along with new Delta pilot Steve Mackay we charged down for a 4 day, 100 mi journey through another of the Southwest's great river canyons.

The Delores starts out in a bit of a pine forest;

note that the packraft is getting some additional use on a fully-driveable river, but JJ loved it!

and then transitions to redrock.

I knew that there was a Salt Lake crew somewhere on the 175 miles of the Delores at the same time that we were there, and of course we bumped into them:

retired Utah National Weather Service chief Larry Dunn and his longtime pard Gary Banik, whom I worked with a lot at Merrell; the world is small.  

beautiful canyon camps

nice desert bloomage

And a couple of the coolest guys in the desert!

After paddling and camping with our new crew, we bid them adieu at the Slickrock access point:

inspired by baseball team pics of yore....

And carried on into the heart of the canyon:

marred only slightly by someone's modest monument to themselves

there was someone in the hot tub on the roof. 

The canyon was inspiring:

And the flows were pumped up enough that some impressive debris was coming down:

There is some amazing camping along the mighty D

and the gratuituous native graffiti:

The Big Guy!

McPhee dam  -above our put in - was one of the last of The Big Dams (mid 80's) built by the Corps of Engineers/Bureau of Reclamation, and the Delores river itself has been abused by the dam keepers and their minions, with some years having literally zero water going down the river.  However, great perseverance by the Delores River Boating advocates and American Whitewater has assured that this gem will have at least some boatable water every year:  much thanks to them for their efforts.

And last but certainly not least, the Escalante River is a bit of prize for Southwest runners; despite having a big drainage that drainage doesn't get much snow, and for some reason there have been a few years  -like this one - where that area is a bit of a donut hole where less winter snow falls than on the rest of the region.  So boatable flows are somewhat rare and ephemeral, so when there's water, you gotta go.  So as the temps have heated up and the water trickled in, brother Paul, burgeoning packraft machine Matt Clevenger, and Park City-ites Bryan and Alison Godlewski and I headed down to float the Big E.

In the past we've put in at the Calf Creek bridge where the Escalante goes under highway 12, but this time we decided to bypass the upper half and put in below the several tributaries that come in to pump up the amount of water.  So we started at the Egypt trailhead off the Hole in the Rock road (after running a long shuttle down to 40 mile)

marching off the rim

Our first glimpse of the river; lotta green, but is there enough water?

and marched a couple of hours down to the river.  Where the first order of bidness was to canyoneer the classic Neon Canyon

on the hike in.  I told Alison to "look cute" and she obliged!

Canyon looks promising

and got wet quickly

a cool keyhole

rapping into the Golden Cathedral

we then hit up the tight Ringtail Canyon

and then went on downriver to a nice camp

and did some early morning stretching

before tackling the wild rapids

actually, we just needed to expand our minds for the mind-blowing scenery

One of our crew couldn't hack the pressure, and napped leopard style

We did a coupla beautiful hikes:

this has been dubbed the Alien Landing Spot

We got up there via the help of some ancient Moki steps

that weren't quite built to account for puffy Hoka shoes!

And we saw shadows of the Ancient Ones

And even caught glimpses of the real deal up high

Anastazi war dance?

We found a cool ruin

coupla white dorks trying to look all Anastazi n shit...

they had a nice view though....

We found the first arrowheads any of us had ever found

and the views were sublime

Take the first right!

We had to be wary of the man eating Kayenta Finger Locks

Channeling my Inner Colter for some artsy rock scenic shots

a lot of round river-type rocks up high on slick rock benches?

Back to the wild whitewater!

and nice views

this Oreo is stale!

a poison ivy mud cake prevention test

the water actually was deep enough to dive (shallow) in one spot

there was some impressive desert varnish.  still not sure how that occurs....

the paddling was sublime at times

But a bit of a "drag" in a few spots

Hiking up Stevens Canyon (near the bottom of the popular Coyote Gulch) is worthy:

even frogs can't climb everything....

With the gratuitous shot of the amazing Stevens Arch at the bottom

supposedly planes have flown through this....

A coupla artsy reflective pool shots:

And a brilliant overhang camp near the mouth of Coyote

The hike out starts nicely

 and then you hit soft sand

 But it's not too long

heading for the horizon

our last glimpse of the river

 Before the march across the slickrock to the trailhead

with some beautiful spring desert bloomage lighting the way

Thanks again to the great Escalante crew:

To Jon and Steve, and to Brad, Roman, and Mike for being such great pards on three amazing rivers.  

Skiing the Uinta Highline Trail

I have tried a good number of times to embrace the Uinta Mountains.  In theory it's a great zone:  the only east-west oriented major range in the US with tons of great peaks, high elevation, and despite a bit of road access, most of it is quite remote.  But I've been a little frustrated at times:  attempts to kayak the rivers have been met with long marches and lots of wood, backpacking trips have been a bit long, tedious, and wet, and the trails are technical/rocky enough that it's hard to "really" run them well.  But I have continued to try the Uintas periodically and am usually game for a good adventure, so when Chad Brackelsberg invited me to join he and Eric Bunce on a "fast" ski traverse I was intrigued.

The Uintas stretch from near Park City almost all the way to Colorado, with the main ridgeline rolling between 11,000 and 13,500 feet, with a relatively inconspicuous bump on the ridgeline being Kings Peak, the highest point in Utah (the 28 mile round trip to the top is a bit of a rite of passage for most Utah outdoor types).  The Highline "trail" proper goes from a trailhead a little below Leidy Peak at the eastern edge (Leidy is 11,800 feet) to Hayden Pass on the Mirror Lake Highway, and is about 78 miles and has about 15-16 thousand feet of ascent/descent between, rolling over rocky terrain interspersed with lakes, creeks, and marshes.  Chad had done it as a summertime through-run twice:  the first time during a summer thunderstorm (my theory is that the Uintas get hit harder than other ranges in these parts by the typical monsoonal flow because the flow comes up from the south and slams into the long east-west "wall") and he memorably shot a wild-eyed video selfie basically identifying himself and and providing his own last rites because he was convinced that he was going to be struck by lightning. He learned his lesson and waited for mellower weather and he and his wife Emily ran it self-supported under better conditions in about 28 hours.  We knew that the SLC Samurai had given the 2nd "half" a good go in a very long "day" a few years ago late season, and Noah Howell and Andrew McLean made a later attempt that was thwarted before it started, and no doubt there have been other folks who have skied it expedition style, but no one else -to our knowledge - had tried to ski the whole thing sorta fast.

By "sorta fast" I mean that we were on skimo race gear:  yes, the geeky lycra suits, the skinny 160 cm skis, lightweight bindings, and light boots with big gaps in them.  And while our packs felt heavy at 27 lbs (7.5 lbs of food, sleeping bag/pad, bivy sack, repair/first aid, and warm clothes) and made our shoulders sore, it was interesting to note that the total weight  -when combined with my 8.5 lb skis/boots/bindings/skins and 1 lb skin suit - totaled about 36 lbs, and my typical Wasatch day ski get up weighs almost 20 lbs with a 15 lb pack, so it's actually about the same weight that most folks tote around on day tours.

Chad was convinced that despite having a 10+ mile approach to the "trailhead" (it's far too high, remote, and unused to plow to in the winter) it was doable in 3 days with the right conditions, but "right" is sort of a relative term.  If - as Derek Weiss put it - the recently-visited Aleutians are the "Birthplace of Winds" then the Uintas are the bastard child:  the Uintas are famously windy, and when combined with sun, that can make for fast snow surfaces.  But also because they are windy, much of the west-facing terrain gets the snow blown off, and if you wait too long in the spring much of the skiable terrain that never had enough snow in the first place gets melted down to rock.  We had a window of a few days of warm, nice weather after a storm before the next major storm was progged to roll in, so we thought the window might open.

And thus we found ourselves at a random, gated/locked side road off highway 44 at a bit over 7000 feet - almost within sight of Flaming Gorge reservoir - getting dropped off by the ever-generous Jackie who was willing to abet us on our fool's errand:

Fortunately we were able to start on at least a bit of snow right away:

But considering that the treeline in the Uintas is typically near 11,000 feet we had a lot of trees to navigate:

We were looking for a trail that we thought may not even exist, but after some gps-led bumbling through woods:

we suddenly stumbled onto the trail:

We knew it was the trail because the sign said so

now we were able to move uphill more efficiently, which was good, but the heated snow down low had soaked our skins and despite all of us having hot waxed our skins we started "glopping" (a very technical term for snow sticking to the bottom of our skins) as we ascended into colder snow:

skinny skis with even skinnier skins.....still create a fair bit of glop.

the snow wasn't deep to trail break, but the heaviness slowed us down

Ultimately we got to the main road up that leads to Leidy Peak, which had some snowmobile tracks on it:

That made for somewhat easier travel, since the hardened sled snow didn't glop as much and enabled less trail breaking.  After taking 7 hours to go only 14 miles (a bit farther than Chad anticipated) we finally reached the real trailhead:

After 7 hours, let's get going!

And proceeded past Leidy Peak into the rolling hills beyond,

though the snow did indeed get colder, it turned to breakable powder crust, so even though we weren't climbing much more our speed was still slowed by the need to break trail:

Antarctica?  no, eastern Utah...

And this point Chad and I could see that Eric's feet were hurting; every time we stopped he would gingerly pick his feet up one by one to try to take the pressure off of them, and it turned out that marching and breaking trail in the heat of the day had created some quick-onset trenchfoot that was quite painful.  He was stoic about it,

Stoic?!  Eric just laughs at excruciating foot pain!

but it was clear that between his foot pain, the woods navigation, and slower-than anticipated pace we were going to end up a bit short of our goal for the day.   But we found a nice campsite and had enough wood for a fire next to a nicely-reflecting rock:

which was nice because the earlier storm's aftermath had the temps up high get fairly cold; down into the teens.

This was where the "light and fast" thing became a bit more challenging.  We had forgone any kind of shelter, which to traditional mountain folks probably sounds stupid:  doing a late winter/early spring traversed of a remote mountain range between storms with only lightweight sleeping bags and no tents is definitely not recommended in Freedom Of The Hills!  But those guys aren't on skimo race gear nor wearing spandex suits either.   But with puffy jackets and (for me) puffy slippers and mylar bivy sacks we were able to sleep ok.

Another day of trudging over high, windswept ridges followed:

Every once in a while we'd see these forlorn cairns that mark the Highline trail; somebody long ago made sure that these things were big enough to stand up out of the snow!

But we were also able to find a bit of open water to stock up:

best not to fall in whilst quenching one's thirst.

the skiing was sub-optimal:

note the steep pitch that took Eric down!

but we did get a couple of turns:

On ridiculously low angle terrain.  

The Highline trail in this section also drops into some big basins, so we had to do a bit more forest navigating, and despite the warm temps of the day before and the cold temps at night, we still did not have a supportable crust to zip along on, and our progress was still only about 2mph; it was simply not fast enough.

trudging, even downhill

We talked a lot about our options and what it would take to successfully finish, but what loomed large was the storm that we knew was schedule to stomp in hard Friday night/Saturday morning. The timing and ferocity were important, because if it came in early (as the previous storm had) it would really bog us down (or if later, possibly enable us to have more time to finish), and if it came in harder than anticipated we could get into avalanchy situations, or make for even slower, miserable, and possibly dangerous camping/traveling, since we were going pretty light.  

why are those beautiful lenticular clouds forming?

Using the satellite-connected gizmo that was uploading our track to The Interwebs we were also able to get and receive texts from Chad's wife Emily who was updating us with the forecasts, and it became clear that we needed to have a really long day and get a bit lucky to enable us to finish without getting hammered by the storm.  I was pretty dubious, but Chad is smart and safe (albeit a bit obsessive!) guy with not only a lot of silly endurance efforts but plenty of Uinta experience, and he made a good case for our odds of success by charging hard the next day.  But as darkness rolled in and we were still a few miles from our trip high point of Anderson Pass near Kings Peak we pondered trying to get over the pass and ski down the backside in the dark (albeit with great headlamps and a near-full moon) to hopefully find some trees for shelter (the wind was starting to pick up) we decided to camp.

I think our tentless camp at 11,000 feet was featured in this:

As it turned out, the wind did indeed pick up, and it went pretty big.  We didn't get much sleep as the jet force winds started to crank, and by morning it was clear that our thin margin of error had been erased, and it was time to make an early exit.   We had a beautiful sunrise:

Marching into the wind

There's an old saying:  "Red sky in the morning...the GFS and the EU models are in agreement that a major low pressure system swinging down out of Alaska will make for big winds and epic trail breaking!

Chad grumpy we aren't going to do the deal, Eric happy that his trenchfoot may actually heal

Ironically, after we descended from Gunsight Pass and went into the long, flat Henry's Fork Valley
the wind we'd marched into earlier the morning went to our back and the long-sought-after supportable crust finally appeared, and the wind blew us along the flats at 15-20 mph!

And as we got into the long, flat valley that's well known to Kings Peakers we not only finally had the supportable fast crust that we'd been hoping for, but we also had a tail wind that blasted us along at close to 20 mph! But soon enough we dropped out of the wind and into the heated snow, and our trudging through slop recommenced back and forth across the creek:

And it wasn't all that easy:

people think that flat skiing is easy.....it is, until the snowbank collapses!

until we hit the road and then the three more flat road miles to skin out to the typical wintertime trailhead

At least it was warm enough to make our feet really hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable!

 where our angels Jackie and Brother Paul came for our salvation at our terminus.

  

Jared Hargrave has a good article in the latest Ascent Backcountry ski magazine about "Bootgasms".  I had one....

My prophylactics

Eric had his own Bootgasm as well

And Chad joined the Bootgasm fest

We could look up and see the spindrift coming off the high peaks, and post-trip checking of weather stations indicated consistent westerly wind speeds in the mid-40's with gusts into the mid-70's, which would have been grueling to march into at best and terrifying at worst with bigger peaks and more exposure looming ahead.  Despite a fair bit of disappointment, it was clear that we made the right decision.

On one hand it was yet another "failure" of an expedition, but despite agreeing to go on these trips I'm more interested in the experience than the actual deed, and this was a great learning experience for me and a good adventure with a couple of great guys that ended well, and that's my real goal.  It's likely that I won't sign on to do the whole trip again, but I am intrigued by "finishing it off" if for no other reason than we were just getting to the meat of the High Uintas.

thanks again to Chad and Eric for letting me tag along and be great pards for such a trip; in skimo races the three of us are pretty evenly matched, and as I anticipated we made for a good team for an outing such as this.

And for Chad's take on this, here's his blog post as well, with some familiar pics and tales