Cataract Canyon

Big Drop #2

A Tour Group Riding the wave

The NPS Jet Boat on Standby

My view from the spotter tent

Sunrise at My Tent

The Hite Bridge

Well, I’ve made it back safe and sound from Cataract Canyon.  Eight days on the Colorado River was awesome.  I was able to see a lot of new areas that are in Glen Canyon and I got to travel through Canyonlands National Park as well. 

As I had stated in my previous post, we were sent to Cataract to do preventative search and rescue.  With the extremely high water flows, many boat were having difficulty navigating the Class V rapids. In addition to rescue, we still checked permits and other rangering duties.

We set a base camp down below the “Big Drop Rapids” at Ten Cent Camp.  This was a nice sandy beach that is right along the river.  From here we would respond to all the boats and rafts that ran the rapids above us.  As part of the operation we set up an observation post above the rapids and we took turns spotting for inbound boats.  Having this eye in the sky helped the rest of the team on the rescue boat to know what is headed down river.

Speaking of the rescue boat, it was very impressive.  A 400+ horse power jet driven boat. This boat was able to drive up the rapids to get where ever needed.  It was always fun and a bit frightening to cruise up such a powerful river.  You can imagine that there was a lot of bouncing around and walls of water crashing over the boat, aka fun. On a few occasions I was allowed to drive it, and I was glad that I had an experienced river ranger guiding me through navigating the white water,

We ended up doing a few rescues of people in the water.  Everyone was okay after getting on land and catching their breath.  I can speak from experience that floating down the rapids in just a life jacket is not fun, I was very glad to see our boat come to pick me up and pull me back in.

At the end of the week long shift, I was asked to drive one of the boats out of the canyon to Hite.  This was a very special boat.  It was a “J-Rig” that had served as the fuel dock for our jet boat.  This was just a floating gas can, and of course the engine had died, leaving me with a 15 horse power back up engine… It was a long slow trip to Hite, UT. I was very glad to be back in Bullfrog (jokingly called civilization). After eight days on the river I needed a shower real bad. I was also very glad to see some of my favorite Bullfrogers again.

So its 4^th of July weekend now back at Lake Powell, and I’ve been busy already.  Time to get ready for another shift.