KB and I roll up and everyone is asleep. The light at Hite is on. There are a few coyotes yipping over the hill, but otherwise the night is dark, still and quiet.
We disturb the silence driving up and then popping a beer as our reward for doing a 5+ hour drive after working 8 hours. As I set up the tent, we both question the sanity of being where we are and whether that drive was worth it. I’m concerned I won’t be able to sleep as I’ve been sipping on caffeine for the past 3.5 hours, but as soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m out.
The Lickers, the Knockers and us, the Knucklers had all made the drive to the middle of nowhere Utah where the mighty river, the icon of the west, is pacified and emasculated and transformed into a placid, flat reservoir. We made the drive to see a forgotten place and float an ephemeral desert river that at best is just deep enough to pass through with our packrafts and at its worst, not floatable.
The Planner, Tenderfoot, Mama Bear and I had floated and/or dragged our boats down this stretch of river last summer. We hit a point and the dragging turned into floating, the canyon got narrow and we vowed to come back. Less than a year later and here we were. We had cut out the top section and planned to use bikes to get to the put-in about 12 miles upstream.
The dawn broke.
I was up and at it pretty quick. Not only was I dying to see my surroundings, but we had boats that needed to be attached to bikes and the Planner wanted to be moving by 9. I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to pack everything up, but I hadn’t actually done it yet.
It certainly wasn’t the way I would have liked or would recommend to someone to go about trying bikerafting, but it was my reality. I pulled tags off of my harnesses and a couple new straps as I was rigging. Luckily, the plan I had in my head worked out perfectly. Everything attached nicely and fit on the bike without even getting too creative.
We had everything packed up and rolled out a few minutes before 9.
The float we had done, the bike ride not so much.
We knew there was a dirt road, an old mining road that would get us to where we wanted to be. We had no idea what that road was going to look like. I expected lots of sand and lots of rutted out rocky nastiness. And for some reason, I was envisioning some steep pedaling.
While we did hit some sand, the road was actually quite nice. It stayed on the bench just above the “river” and had views that went on for days. Nothing steep. Nothing really rocky. Just an easy 8 mile pedal through some amazeballs country.
The hardest part was how often we were stopping for photos.
Once at the put-in, we had to transition to float mode.
Step 1 – remove boats from bikes and inflate in preparation of float.
Step 2 – remove wheels from bikes and figure out how the hell you can strap both wheels and the bike to the boat along with whatever other gear you brought along. Think of this is an adventure-themed Tetris game where the pieces are specifically a packraft and a plus-sized mountain bike.
This took some time. Mama Bear is super capable of getting her boat ready, but seeing that this was her first time strapping a bike to it, wanted my help. Now that we have done it and have an idea of how it all goes together, we could probably knock this out much quicker.
The put-in is just above the one, count ’em, one rapid. It has the capability of being hairy. There is a small drop and the river takes an immediate turn to the left. The flow goes directly into a sandstone wall. With higher water, getting pinned against that wall would not be ideal. Luckily, at the crazy high level of ~150 CFS, even those of us who didn’t avoid the wall were able to navigate the rapid without incident.
I remembered the rapid well from the year before and wasn’t too concerned about it other than I now had a bike on top of my boat that made it a bit top-heavy. Seeing that I fell out of my boat in a couple inches of water farther downriver, it kind of surprises me that none of us had issues in the rapid.
Once past the one rapid, all we really had to do was float.
We put our feet up. Took pictures. Tried to absorb this place. Its emptiness, its everything. If you didn’t take the time to read the last time we were here, go back and read it.
I go to empty places to feel empty. When the demons in my head are screaming, the one thing I want to feel is empty. I can numb them. I can quiet them. But the wide-open spaces of the desert make them disappear. I don’t know why or where they go or what is exactly happening at any given point with my cerebral chemistry, but these places save me. I come to revel in their mysteries and to be healed by their space.
While this trip was short, it gave us the familiar taste of what floating means. These small rivers aren’t to be rushed. Sure you can paddle, but the effort is almost pointless. Once you put in, you are at the mercy of the flow. You have to sit back, relax and take in the place at the pace of Mother Nature. She isn’t always slow, but this day things were laid back and lazy.
Just as we were lulled almost into a complete meditative state, the end of our float neared.
When rivers flow into lakes, or as in this case, reservoirs, there can be a pretty wicked transition zone depending on how that river flows into and drops its sediment. Last year when we were here, we had been concerned, we risked it and were paid off by a nice flatwater paddle all the way back to the car.
This year, well, this year was a bit different. Mostly due to group dynamics, it had been determined before we started that we would be hiking out of the river to avoid any mucky, sticky, nastiness that could be a takeout if the transition was nasty.
Instead of the possibility on the river, we opted for the certainty of pushing, pulling and dragging our bikes and gear through the bushes and up the side of a cliff as our exit. Don’t take this as a complaint, I thoroughly enjoyed the little ending adventure, but it was the hardest part of the day.
Once back to the rim, we had an easy pedal back to the cars.
And then a whole lot of this.
P. L. and R.
