Green River Part 6: Damn Dams and Other Consternations

Our last day on the whitewater section gave us a few more rapids above the town of Green River. Our plan was to resupply the ice and a few food items in town, as well as eat lunch somewhere. Ranger Dennis had mentioned the burgers at Ray’s Tavern as being worth the experience, so that was the game plan. To get there, we had Swaysey’s Rapid, a four mile stretch of flatwater, a low head dam and eight more miles of flatwater ahead of us. The low head dam was the trickiest part of the day. I had made Lucas drive up there on our way out of town Tuesday morning and we didn’t see a clear path from river right. Both of us thought we might have seen a line on river left, but the river was too wide to tell for sure.

We took a civilization break at Swaysey’s Rapid and then Lucas applied the second Playtex raft patch. Never trust a boy to understand how temporary raft patches work.

Gray Canyon ended ended below Swayseys, with one last butte guarding the wilderness we were departing. As we approached the dam, we saw increasing signs of civilization. Cows, horses, fences, houses. Some of the cows were quite social, answering our conversational moos. After about an hour of us lounging and occasional paddling, the water started to slow down and we heard the telltale roar. Scouting time.

We found a mud bar on river left, below some cows but a couple hundred yards. We wandered into the woods and found some animal trails through the trees. We made our way downriver carefully, occasionally bending down to cow height to get through some of the passes. At the wire fence, Kerry and I turned left while Mark and Lucas found a way to climb over. Kerry and I found ourselves in a field with some cows in the distance. The house nearby looked like it might have been occupied at some point, but thankfully, the occupants were elsewhere. We climbed the wood fence at the pasture gate and followed the dirt road to the waterwheel below the dam. We beat the boys there by a minute or two.

The waterwheel is impressive in two ways. This marvel of engineering took obvious craftsmanship to build and obvious lack of forethought to build in an eddy. It never worked.

We were able to see an obvious line around the dam. The dam itself is horseshoe-shaped, curving upriver. Between the river left edge of the dam and the low concrete wall extending from the river left bank was an unobstructed channel about fifteen or twenty feet wide, plenty big for our rafts. We would have to make an epic raft ferry below it to get to the main channel. If not, the smaller river left channel looked open as far as we could see. We studied it for a minute more and then hiked back through the woods to our boats.

The line was easy to hit. The epic ferry was easy to miss. The river left channel was unobstructed. Soon we were back on the flats. Kerry tied her boat in so she wouldn’t have to work nearly so hard. Eight miles to Green River. We lounged some and then Lucas decided against the patient approach. He rowed pretty steadily for about an hour to get us to Green River State Park sooner.

The ranger at the park office was a bit of an ass when we met him. We needed a permit for Labyrinth Canyon, which was free, and we needed to have our gear inspected. He gave us the permit and blustered on about this regulation and that rule. “I own this river,” was probably my favorite moment of bluster. His assistant hid behind the counter. I kept looking at her for an eyeroll, but it looked like he didn’t even merit that. We endured a good five or ten minutes with him and then he decided that the discussion of our gear was sufficient for his inspection. He’s an ass who’s too lazy to do his job. Awesome.

We wandered into town to Ray’s Tavern for burgers. At the bar, Fox News was on the TV with special coverage of the Michael Jackson verdict. The burgers were delicious. The crowds surrounding the TV in the bar and surrounding the courthouse on the TV were frightening. At each acquittal, gasps, sighs and mutters surrounded us, crazy people cried on TV and a feral blonde woman released a dove from a cage. I had to wonder if a guilty verdict would have caused her to remove a dove from the cage and bash its skull with a rock. We looked at each other and agreed that it was time to get away from these people and get back on the river. Check please.

The resupply at the grocery store was quick. I considered resupplying the emergency raft patch kit, but decided they were too expensive for the expanse of flatwater that we would be facing. The ice for the coolers was quickly melting as we walked back to the rafts. Our ranger friend was nowhere to be found.

The first few miles below Green River State Park were pretty uninteresting. The only rapid on the lower section was less than two miles from the park. We talked it up a lot, calling it a class 5, and I guess Mark and Kerry missed the sarcasm. Mark evicted Kerry to her canoe for what turned out to be a class 1 riffle.

We stopped at the Crystal Geyser at mile 7. While not a true geyser because the water is cold, it was still pretty cool to watch. The path from the geyser to the river was pumpkin orange with mineral deposits. Every so often water would spurt through the pipe fifteen or twenty feet high. Somebody had sunk a well there and abandoned it after sampling the water quality. The shell of the well remains at the main geyser. Two baby geysers bubbled nearby.

Between Crystal Geyser and Ruby Ranch, we had a severe lack of available campsites. Those that existed were occupied. We also had ownership issues. Not all of the land was public domain, and with the high water level, sandbars were still several feet under water. The light grew dim as we rowed toward Ruby Ranch, our last-ditch camping area if we couldn’t find anything sooner. We hoped for sooner because dark was approaching. Finally, we found a break in the tamarisk and a steep, muddy path up to a flat area. We set up our tents in the corner of a barren field surrounded by petrified cowpies and went to bed without any dinner. In total, we covered over 30 miles before we slept.