The mysterious river journey
of a water cooler
Labyrinth Canyon, Sept. 25, Day #29

Today we came across Bob’s water jug that he lost when he wrapped his boat on a rock in rapid way back in Dinosaur National Monument. That was 17 days ago and 260 miles upstream.

Since then, that 2-gallon water cooler has floated – on its own – through the canyons of Lodore, Whirlpool and Split Mountain, down 106 miles of the Uinta Basin, through Desolation and Gray canyons, past the town of Green River, Utah, and into Labyrinth Canyon.

Roselle spotted it this morning, not long after we launched for the day. Josh pushed our boat to the left bank, where the cooler lay beached in the mud, left behind when the river rose, then fell after heavy rain fell a few days before.
We approached in awe; surely this could not be the same water jug that went bobbing down the river with the slew of other gear that fateful day. We’d made an effort to chase down every item, but when the two red water jugs floated into a crevice across the river, we decided to let Bob swim for them. He opted not to retrieve them, and they continued their journey downstream. One was later rescued by a river ranger and left for Bob on the shore at Echo Park. The other disappeared, never to be seen again. Until today.

Now, almost 300 miles later, the water jug was back. And it was ahead of us. We’d been through dozens of rapids, past hundreds of sandbars, rowed countless strokes through the flat water for eight, 10, 12 hours a day.

I disliked Bob’s cooler before it was lost because its handle fell off every time I looked it. If this was the same cooler, it seems unlikely that it would still have a handle. We hit shore and I jumped from the boat into the mud. The handle was still attached. I reached down, grabbed on to it and yanked the jug from the sticky mud – and the handle snapped off.

Seventeen days, untold hours spent rowing, thousands of calories expended. And the cooler had beaten us.
“Bob’s cooler lasted longer than Bob did,” Josh said.
The top of jug had been smashed by the weight of the water and it was heavy with sand. We retrieved it and strapped it to the boat for proper disposal at the next takeout.

For the rest of the day we speculated on how the jug could make it that far, at virtually the same speed we were traveling, without being beached or sunk or at least seen.
We can only agree on one thing: The river giveth and the river taketh away.