There were many who said it couldn’t be done. And we may still prove those faithless creatures right.

But not today.

Today our boats rest in the current at Grasshopper Camp, nine miles below the Flaming Gorge dam. Roselle did manage to shatter a thick Smoker oar like a tooth pick in the first Class III rapid of the trip. Roselle feels pretty bad and has begun whittling a new oar out of driftwood.

We shuttle portaged the monster concrete dam yesterday morning after rowing the entirety of the reservoir in six windy days.

We camped one evening in the company of Flaming Gorge Lodge. It was a needed rest after days at sea. To quench our sailor-sized thirst we bought Utah beer.

The Daggett County sheriff’s deputy at the Spillway put-in the next day said there is nothing special about Utah beer. The beers that sell in Utah are 3.2 percent across the board nationwide. It’s only that Utah enforces the point.

Flaming Gorge was a spectacular row against all we had been told by scores of hippie river runners. The northern section is classic Wyoming desert; empty but for the howl of the coyote, a distant mesa top, or sagebrush-speckled hill.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a tragedy to watch a young, innocent free-flowing river like the upper Green get sucked into a backwater algae-bloom cesspool. The tall grasses and reeds that housed red-tailed hawks, deer, and pronghorn just downstream of Green River, Wyoming yield abruptly to mudflats, bath-tub rings above the water line, and a drastic drop in bird numbers and varieties. The high-water line is marked by a thick layer of jet boat trash, left behind by the scores of non-native, lake-trout slayers and thrill seeking water skiers. The brilliant red rock that once towered above the intrepid boater is now buried in an abyss of green water.

But there is still a strange, surreal and captivating beauty that surrounds the landscape in spite of all the environmental degradation. All of the destruction this canyon system has endured cannot veil the magnetism of these rocks and washes

We keep on rowing. Each stroke is a stroke in protest of the river’s stilled currents, and the living systems that are also stilled when an impenetrable wall is constructed across a river.

When one of the power boaters out here on Flaming Gorge asks us why in the sam hell we would opt to row our gear rafts across an artificial lake we tell them it’s because free-flowing rivers aren’t free.

It takes treehugging writers to bring you the algae-bloom horror stories and bemoan of the loss of one of America’s greatest treasures: the ability to put your boat on a river and float through the unsurpassed beauty of the West, a place many creatures call home, from the mountains to the lowlands.

You can still attempt a journey like this with a horse, or a pair of hiking boots. But if you want to float you better be ready to row some rez.

As many of you may have noticed, we had some transmission issues early during this trip. It’s our first river trip with solar panels, lap-tops, and satellites. You’ll be glad to know that all of the kinks have been worked out. From here on out you will feel the strain of the oars in your back straps, the beat of the sun on your brow, and the gritty taste of canyon country in between your teeth.

Bob has been busy working with our portable technology, a full time job, and taking spectacular photos of our reservoir crossing. There is hardly a critical moment and isn’t recognized and documented. The daily grind of crossing that body of water proved to leave little time for anything but rowing.

Jen has been a critical component of the gear logistics game and our fluid camp structure is due mostly to her tireless preparation. You should see her row a loaded boat across a windy bay in the face of a lightning storm. No slouch.

And a new and improved non-smoker Mike Roselle hustles around camp carrying heavy boxes, even as the golden morning light shines low in the sky and he works on his first cup of coffee.

And we were joined last night by the interesting and thoughtful professor Rod Nash and Aspen journalist Tim Mutrie. They’ve already proved to be invaluable by bringing in some essential computer equipment that has led to you reading this very post.

Enough with the introductions, here’s some daily journals, and soon to follow are some hot photos from Bob, tall tales from Mike, and stories of a life aquatic by Jen.

August 27, 2007

We launched from Expedition Island in Green River, Wyoming today. The boats finally pulled out of the south tip of the island around 3 p.m. After two rigorous days and nights of assembling, packaging, and loading our boats we were water-born and ready to roll downhill to Lake Mead.

Our rigging fiasco began with a band playing in a nearby park for the town’s annual River Fest and microbrew extravaganza. The tunes blasting through the willows were enough for Roselle to exclaim, “This is the best put-in I’ve ever been to.”

The scene was vibrant with locals straggling past. Two young, drunk locals straggled by bleary eyed, wanting to know what the big deal was with all the gear. We told them we’re retracing the oar strokes and footsteps of John Wesley Powell.

“Why haven’t we ever thought of that?” one asks the other.

“Yeah, we were bored and looking for something to do,” I told them.

They helped us unload our trailer, we talked about Missoula beer, and I gave one of them a Moose Drool from Big Sky, and the other a Cold Smoke from Kettlehouse.

Later an older couple came by. They were wearing medals from the kayak race earlier in the day, but lamented the state of kayaking in Green River.

In 2002 the town opted to spend $600,000 to put build a kayak park on Expedition Island. While the rapids and play holes were initially a success, it only took a few years of high water to send the town’s investment downstream.

Today signs on the town’s main drag will point you to the white-water park, but you’ll only find remnants of this community’s attempt to revitalize around the river. Downtown at the Book and Bean the store’s proprietor will ask any out-of-towner what the little forgotten railroad town needs to transition into the modern west.

“Should we focus on history, or the river, or art?” she asks, though she’s dismayed that the city has hired an expensive focus group to tell the town which direction to head.

Back at Expedition Island we met a local professor named Larry who told us that nobody had launched from the place we were putting in for 12 years. Why? The reservoir.

The focus group didn’t ask me, but if they did I’d tell them that Flaming Gorge’s backwater killed the town. If the Green was a free-flowing river, the settlement of Green River would be Raft-town U.S.A. and art and history would flow seamlessly with boat loads of tourist dollars around the town’s avenues.

“Some cows got stuck out there and nobody could get to them in time. They died,” one local woman said.

August 28, 2007

The tranquility of morning was shattered by a guide on vacation digging the coffee pot out of an old dry box we had borrowed from an outfitter in Missoula. The problem was that we had trusted the old box filling it with goods we expected to stay dry, and it had failed miserably.

A foot of standing water graced the goods that filled the bottom of the box.

But, no retracing of the Powell expedition is complete without compromising food supplies, and facing disrepair. So we happily accepted what the trip gods delivered upon our platter, did our best to make repairs, and kept pushing down river.

We pushed around north Chimney Rock and south Chimney Rock for what seemed like an eternity. A severe lightning storm and winds push us into a secluded cove.

Bob is on the oars in his boat and shores the craft before the cove. Mike hops on and pulls and boat the rest of the way in as Bob opts to walk in.

Glass returns to the water with evening and we push well into darkness to reach the confluence of the Black’s Fork and camp on a point just downstream.

August 29, 2007

August 30, 2007

We crossed under the pipeline today and continue to inch our way across this lake. Winds picked up again this afternoon forcing us to take shelter in a cove with a bunch of power boaters. We were able to tepidly communicate with them. It is good training because tomorrow we enter their lair: Lucerne Marina. I work on my nightcrawler lingo and read an Engines to English dictionary should I be forced into a conversation involving torque or overall power delivery due to combustion.

The book confuses me and I decide all I need to do is point to my arms and call them guns.

We camp on Stateline Bay in yet another nestled cove. Our cruise has felt like a Mediterranean escape.

August 31, 2007

September 1, 2007

The push through the narrow Kingfisher Canyon is marked by Labor Day crowds of boat motorists roaring through the chasm and spinning up on rolling set of waves after the next. In the confines of the tight canyon white-caps soon rocked the boat, throwing up the biggest water we had seen yet. We finally hit the boat ramp and load our shuttle rig to capacity on a busy motor ramp. The only ramp. As we pull out a motor boater yells out to us.

“Don’t you know this is a boat ramp?”

“This is a boat,” I say.

“That’s a raft.”

The exchange continued devolving into straight ramp rage as we both drove off. Motorheads.

The vibe would be different the next day on the other side of the concrete where the current flowed. Fishermen in float tubes, paddle rafters, and guides all gave us the thumbs up and support that this journey needs. We’ve got many days ahead of us, and if Roselle keeps breaking oars, who knows what could happen.

Part II
When this expedition left you last we sat poised at the top of the Green River’s upper canyons. Mike had shattered his first oar. But the Hyside, piloted by Mike and Bob, had yet to wrap violently around a rock named Lucifer in Hell’s Half Mile, nor had the oarlock been sheared from the frame in a deadly overhang in Lower Disaster Falls.

When we last left you we were still delighted to have found current. Still feeling tough for having rowed a boat across still water.

Still waters run deep. And it’s the rocks that can sink any expedition. Especially when those rocks lay directly in the midst of a big drop.

We managed the rest of Red Canyon just fine, below Grasshopper Camp. We pushed a long day through Brown’s Park, past the historic Jarvie residence and into the beating heart of moose country. Rod Nash, our trip leader and river-runner extraordinaire, told us that the lush willow flats hugging the river were luxury suites for our friend the moose.

The sun shone high and hot as we pushed through the flat water on the east side of the rugged Uintah mountain range. A thick and classic alpine crown, its base studded with deer, pronghorn, and fistfuls of birds. It’s hot, I thought, too hot for moose to do much but shade up. I was rowing alone, but paddling near Tim Mutrie in his kayak when we rounded the bend and saw what appeared to be a massive log half in the water, and half out.

“Is that a moose?” I ask.

“I think so,” Tim responds, paddling up to Rod’s boat where Jen is riding shotgun.

As we make our way closer Rod and Jen’s boat veers river left – moose side.

The gargantuan creature takes in the two-headed, 13-foot long floating beast and retreats to the willows as the boat nears.

The next morning 50 elk are spotted crossing the river and roaring up a hillside. The herd’s bull is the last to ascend, standing defiantly in the morning light.

The Gate’s of Lodore beckon and stand like mirrored towers with a ribbon of water weaving its way through the entrance.

We had fought the rapids of Red Canyon, one of our boats losing an oar in a riffle and becoming beached in Red Creek Rapid. We braved lightning, mega fauna, and sand bars in Brown’s Park. But nothing had prepared us for Gates of Lodore. Its whitewater was rugged. The river deceptively orange. The moves tight. The walls of the canyon, dotted with juniper, thrust straight to the sky thousands of feet, revealing only a slice of the heavens. Once you enter there is a feeling that there is only one way out – through the legions of rocks on the river’s back.

The oarlock was sheared from the frame in Lower Disaster Falls, dubbed such by the Powell party after a shipwreck. In our case the Hyside was sucked down a rogue current into a deadly overhang. Contact with the cliff’s side was made with Roselle on the bow. From my boat’s vantage at the rear, the collision was severe. But the men bounced out somehow wholly intact. The equipment woes were just beginning.

We soon realized that the oar tower had been snapped and that the boat would have to be towed to a ways to camp, then lined through a half-mile of mid-grade rapids.

A trusty spare oar tower was pulled from the group’s repair arsenal, and with Idaho attitude the crew went at attaching a round clamp to a square frame. After threats of duct tape and bailing wire, one of the snapped oars was cam strapped to the frame and the tower was fastened to the handle. It held solid.

Solid enough to get the Hyside through Triplet the next day. But Lucifer lay hungrily below. The river ranger, Chris, said it was the 13^th boat he had pulled off that rock this year. After the river ran through the raft for awhile, sucking off some odds and ends and boat came down right side up with no major damage. An ammo can of computer technology was chased down. I think the river was trying to tell us something. Some food stores took on water, but the boat would row on.

And that it did. Down past the confluence of the Yampa. Home to natives and immigrant mountain men alike. You can still feel the magic in that joining of two powerful rivers. Some claim it’s the center of the universe. But as all river runners know, there are several centers to the universe. Your spine will tingle, though, as you wander that magnificent beach of smooth, shiny rocks, all the colors of the rainbow. Stare up at the top of Steamboat Rock, then make a hoot and hear the seven-syllable echo. Echo Park is what it’s called today. It’s also known as Pat’s Hole for a hermit who lived off the desert land.

Just downstream Rod Nash showed us French explorer Dennis Julien’s 1830 inscription at the proposed dam site of Whirpool Canyon. That dam never came to be. I can’t imagine a world with the Whirlpool Dam in it. Echo Park and the upstream canyons sunk forever. The twisted red faults of Mitten Park, named for Pat’s mule, but a geologist’s memory. The current still flows.

And we go with it. Down through the currents and shallow rapids of Split Mountain canyon to the boat ramp with the same name. We camp a night. Ed and Melanie of River Runner’s Transport in Vernal, Utah take excellent care of us, donating a shuttle into town to resupply our beleaguered team. Together they know just about everyone in the oil patch boomtown. The town has more people than houses, and a new pipeline to Rock Springs is being built. Two-thousand new houses are in the works to relieve the lots of fifth-wheel trailers that the workers reside in. It’s a far cry from Green River, Wyoming, and prices are high, just like any oil town. If you want to get your car fixed, forget about it for a couple weeks. What if you need to get a frame welded and back on the river? You have to know people.

Fortunately, we knew Rod Nash, who now left the trip with Tim. He knew Ed and Melanie. They knew Don at Industrial Repair Services, or IRS. Don is a river runner and even  though we came to him at closing time, he put in another three hours and got us back on the water.

“I don’t want to slow a river trip down,” he told me. He said he’d like to jump on board, but like everyone else in town, he had a two-week back log on work.

River Runner’s sold us some knew sticks to replace the oars Mike shattered. They took us to the grocery store, got our propane filled, and even gave us twelve blocks of ice, and a box of beer that had been in their garage for a year. We happily accepted. Good people in Vernal.

We say good-bye to Bob who is heading back home and will rejoin us on the Grand Canyon.

Back on the river we made a winding push through the Uintah Basin. Sandbars and sand hill cranes everywhere. Beavers slid into the water with a splash. As did the rapidly eroding banks of the river.

We pushed and we pulled.

We would awake before dark, pushing off at first light, and roll into camp after dark. Our last push of the 106 miles brought us within strike distance of Sand Wash. We had slipped on navigation and thought we were one more bend further south than we actually were. Hoping to meet our friends we pushed into darkness figuring, how could we pass the boat launch to Desolation Canyon? The dark turned oil black and the landscape foreign. Lightning crashed across the sky illuminating the night for an instant. As we floated past the location of where Sand Wash would have been if we were actually there I made the call to row back upstream to what turned out to be Ray’s Botttom. After our longest day yet, we were now rowing against the current through the darkness, marked by flashes of visibility. We hit camp on a mucky sand bar. The crew was beat. In a trip marked by adversity already, this may have been our darkest hour yet. Silently we drifted to sleep.

The next day was bright, though. We collected ourselves, ate a big breakfast, and found our location. Then pushed to meet our friends; Jimmy, Morgan, and Allison, a crack river-running crew. We hoot at each other when we make our visual, talk to Ranger Jim Wright about how nicely the BLM section of Desolation Canyon is recovering since cows have been pulled out, and proceed downhill.

Desolation Canyon is anything but desolate. The vibrant red rock terracing up to mind-crippling heights. The days slipped sweetly into river time as we ran with old friends, telling stories, laughing, and wasting the day like proper sailors. We still rowed hard against the wind and occasional swift storm. Retracing the roots of Cassidy’s wild bunch, I wondered what that band of outlaws valued most of their life on the lamb. Their existence wasn’t all that different than ours once they were out here. We just have different resource acquisition philosophies.

We ran the rapids of Deso: Steer Ridge, Chandler, Three Fords, and Stone House. Solid whitewater.

We left our friends at Swasey’s after one last night at Neferetti Rock. We had a dam to deal with. Tuscher Diversion Dam. The center run had a gnarly, low-head keeper hole at the bottom. We squeaked the rafts through a damn tight left line directly next to the water wheel. We were happy not to portage. We hit Green River State Park at dark.

The next day was a resupply in the dusty town. That night we lost our table at Ray’s to a large group of Exxon employees who were obviously much more important than our group, which included Uncle Ramon and Wally, who surprised us, and a hitch-hiking Kiwi named Lawrence. They were a sight for sore eyes.

John Weisheit and Bob Lippeman came down to chat about the adventure, options for joining us, and interviewed us for radio and newspaper in Moab. Great guys! It was nice to spend the afternoon with them.

As I write, Marilyn Olsen and Howie Wolke (a.k.a. Mom and Howie) have pulled into the state park and we are pushing off to Labrinyth. More later, dear reader. Don’t give up on us yet.

Remember, they said it couldn’t done.

Josh Mahan is still going down the river.