The Epic Desolation Canyon

The Epic Deso trip all began when we were about a half hour out of Moab on our way to Duschene Utah near the put in about 5 hours away. Our tire blew out and Eric, our driver, fixed it Indi 500 pit style. We made it up to Duschene and when we went to pump gas, a man came outside and said "A transformer was hit by lightning and we have no power so you can't pump gas. We don't know when it will be back up." Luckily, we had enough gas in the tank to make it to the put in and back. Well, on the dirt road about a half hour away, we saw some water in the road. As we got closer, we realized that it was not just a little bit of water, but a raging flash flood that there was no way our truck and heavy trailer could make it through at least until it died down.

We ended up waiting there for 4 hours until after it got dark. in the mean time, we made the most of our journey and blew up a duckie to float the road rapids, the chocolaty white water.

Sam fell in the water...

This wave we called "the curler..."

You can see how it got bigger, not smaller as time went on...

We ate dinner while we waited and wondered if we were going to have time to rig the boats or if our trip would be delayed in anyway as the passengers were coming in the next morning very early on the plane. We actually had phone service at one point and talked to someone in Moab...they said that Moab was on fire and our trailers may need to be activated. Sammy was worried about her car.

moussy

When you have that much time...might as well take a lot of photos, eh? The crew from left to right was Ava, Jess, Sam, Kenna, and Danny. Our nicknames became Dave, Jesse, Samuel, Ken, and Danielle.

We finally made it through the road rapids and continued to the put in. Eric was definitely going to stay overnight. We rigged at midnight. We were exhausted, but it was kinda nice in the light of the yellow moon and with a lot less mosquitoes. Then the expedition began. 25 passengers 5 days on the Green.

On day 2 we saw a black bear during lunch. Luckily, it was not aggressive.

This was with a pretty good zoom, don't even worry...

On night 3 we played football on the beach, went on a great hike to a natural bridge, and made a delicious meal followed by rice krispie treats.

View of the Green in the background from on top of the bridge...





After desert, we had a nature show when 3 big horned sheep came down the rocky cliffs across from our camp to water.

The next day was our biggest rapids, and I loved rowing them. We had a beautiful rain and rainbow. I celebrated with chicken salad air!







We had a great time laughing and dancing on the boats.

Kenna has been doing this trip for 6 years now and she had heard of a side hike to some outlaw bones, but had never been there. We decided that since this was an EPIC trip that we might as well try to find the bones. The only problem was when we actually found them!!! It was crazy! As Jess would say "Bad river juju for 7 years at least..."


Well needless to say, that night when we got to camp a major gust of wind and one of the passenger's tents took flight and landed in the water and sunk. We could not retrieve the tent in time. The river juju caught up with us quickly. Another part of this story is that when Kenna went to her ammo can that evening, she opened it up and it had a bone in it. She was yelling AVA!!! AVA!!! then basically blackmailed Sammy out of her job if she did not tell her who put the bone in her ammo can and where it came from. It ended up that I (unfortunately) was not the culprit, that a passenger did it and it was a cow bone. Boy was it funny practical joke though. The last night we dressed up and had a talent show. It was great ending to an epic trip.