Not all who wander are lost
– Sept. 15, on the Green River

When the orders came to row upstream, Mike and I were too exhausted to even respond. I imagine we exchanged looks of utter defeat, but because it was completely dark, I couldn’t actually see his face as he sat two feet from me on the Hyside raft. I’d been on the oars almost six hours, offering some relief to Mike after he put in a solid eight hours on the sticks earlier in the day.

There was no time to argue anyway, as Josh immediately rowed up the Green River with the efficiency of a veteran guide and I floundered at the oars in my very first attempt to defy the current and gravity and return to the place we had just moments before floated past. I watched in dismay as the beam of Josh’s headlamp faded into the night and then completely disappeared.

Luckily, the lightning storm that had been lingering along the top of the sandstone plateaus above us moved in just then and brought with it strikes that illuminated the entire river valley of upper Desolation Canyon. If I focused through the blackness at the river’s upstream course and waited for lightning to strike, I could see where Josh’s raft was headed. It was as if someone was turning the light switch of a room on and off, on and off.

Eventually I could see that he had landed on sandbar at river left. As I could barely hold the raft steady against the downstream current, I relinquished the oars to Mike who finally landed us on the lower end of the sandbar and Josh was able to pull us to shore and alongside the other raft. The three of us trudged back and forth through the shoe-sucking mud to unload the bare necessities from the boats and went to bed without a word spoken or a bite eaten.

It all started 14 hours previous to the “row upstream” orders, when we’d launched from our camp near the border of the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge in the northeastern part of Utah. We were hell bound for Sand Wash, the launch site for river trips down the permitted section of Desolation Canyon. There our party of three would grow to six as we rendezvoused with fellow floaters from Missoula who came bearing gifts of fine food, strong beer, stronger whiskey and true friendship.

But first we had to cross the Uinta Basin, a wide stretch of flat water on the Green River that leads from Split Mountain Canyon to Desolation Canyon far downstream. Just how far we didn’t know. We didn’t have any maps to tell us the exact distance but we suspected it was somewhere around 85 miles. After our arrival at Sand Wash, we discovered we had traveled 106 miles of desperately flat water in four days. Had we known that mileage when we started, it might have been a bit daunting. But all we knew was that Jimmy, Morgan and Allison were waiting a Sand Wash. And there was no way we were going to miss them.

That part the really screwed us was Split Mountain to Jensen, a span of 17 miles that we thought was already included in the 85-mile estimate. It wasn’t. And this wasn’t your typical 106-mile stretch of river. This water was still. As in unmoving. There was no downstream flow. And it was full of sandbars hidden just below the surface. Later, we mapped our route and determined that we logged 17 miles the first day, then 24 miles, 27 and 28 in the following days. These amounted to 10 or 12 or 14-hour days on the water, sticks always in the water, pulling and pushing across the river, chasing the elusive channel, fleeing the evil sandbars that trapped our rafts high and dry and stilled our progress. We figure our mileage was much higher than 106 miles due to our constant crisscrossing of the river in an attempt to remain in the main channel. And by no means was this river straight to begin with. At one point we traveled 10 miles around Horseshoe Bend to come within a quarter mile of where we had started. Several smaller horseshoes came before and after, slowing our pace to a what felt like a crawl.

On our fourth day, we entered territory for which we actually had a map but it did us little good as late in the afternoon we overestimated our progress and came to believe that we were within striking distance of our destination. This section of canyon country all starts to look the same after days on end, and misplacing yourself on one bend of the river can lead to absolute disorientation. Empowered and energized by our flawed knowledge, we pushed on well past sunset and into the night, always optimistic that Sand Wash was the next big drainage in the distance.

As we approached and then floated past one such drainage, we started to question our location. The photo of the ramp in our book showed nothing more that a wide dirt road leading straight into the river. The parking and camping areas are located above the ramp, out of sight from the river. The last drainage had what appeared to be a wide ramp-like area, but we’d disregarded it and continued on. Now it seemed we might have gone too far, overshooting our destination and missing our party despite all our best efforts. Thus the rowing upstream and silent retreat to bed.

In the morning, we assessed our situation anew and decided we were still just around the bend and upstream from Sand Wash, much to everyone’s relief. Flush with this new information, we treated ourselves to a leisurely breakfast of eggs to order, bacon and melon. It was only after we launched at around 11 a.m. and assessed our location from the river that we realized we were actually seven miles from the ramp.

Well practiced at mindless rowing by this time, Josh and Mike put their backs into it and pushed us downstream until we finally arrived that the bend in the river we’d been waiting for. We could see the Missoula crew rigging Morgan’s cat boat long before we reached them.

We arrived at the ramp amid cat calls and hollers at 1:22 p.m., just one minute before Morgan’s prediction. They had their own tales of adventure down the windy, rocky road that leads to the put-in, and hadn’t rolled in until after 4 a.m. that morning. Even if we had reached Sand Wash the night before, they wouldn’t have been there.

After conferring with river ranger Jim Wright about the stretch ahead of us, our newly augmented floatilla of four men, two ladies, three boats and two dogs pulled out of Sand Wash and into the slightly increased current for six days of whitewater and revelry.