Friday after Bryan, Trevor, and Brandy got off of work, we got things together to head out to the San Rafael river. I had Dave's canoe on my Suzuki, and Trevor had his canoe on his car, and we blasted down to the Wedge Overlook. I dropped off Brent and Bryan along with their camping stuff right around nightfall. During this time Trevor had dropped off one of the canoes near the launch site. He then dropped off some firewood at the campsite, and met me at the take-out point where we left his car. I drove us back to our campsite near the overlook with a welcome fire. The wind was pretty high, so it was slightly cooler than comfort. We were all pretty tired anyways, so we hit the sleeping bags under the stars. The sun rose around 6:30am, I wandered around a little, emptied my bladder off the cliff, then stirred around some coals to start a fire. Soon the others got up, and we made it over to the actual Wedge Overlook to see our river route. There was considerably more water this year than last. The last recorded value online from the USGS before we left was about 55cfs. Last year it had dropped below 30cfs and we were grinding down the under part of the canoe 50% of the way. I packed the cooler with food stuffs, water, and other drinks. Put wallet, cellphone, and other electronics into plastic baggies in my backpack. Then we got to the launch point with the other canoe, made some last minute patching, coaxed Trevor & Brandy's dog into the canoe, and we were off! The first section of the river was like I remembered, curvy and slow. Rather nice to get a feel of the canoe before doing anything challenging. We met up with a young men's group, or scout troop about a quarter mile in, and they decided to launch their boats RIGHT as we passed. I suppose I'm getting old and grouchy, but I preferred to have at least our section of the river to ourselves. We increased our pace and lost a few of them, but one foreign canoe remained on our aft. Finally, we just pulled over to let them pass. They declined because "we were at a good pace" and they WANTED to stay on our ass the whole time. Seriously! What is wrong with some people?! Thankfully they did eventually pass with the others, and we stuck around to give them plenty of time to get ahead, since they possibly saw their trip as some sort of race. Unfortunately after about 20 minutes we encountered them again because they were taking a break. We simply made our way along the river, and enjoyed the scenery and sunlight. The nasty logjam we encountered last year was not there this year, and made for easy passing. Nor did we have a nasty spill like last year along a narrow stretch.
We made a stop at Salt Wash, and made our way up the canyon in search for old ruins and pictographs. After a lengthy hike, exhaustion and the heat turned us around. It was very scenic and pretty, but we didn't find any ruins. We continued down the river and spotted some deep hole in the canyon, possibly a mine or granary. We took another break at Virgin Springs Canyon, and headed on up. We found some spectacular pictographs right off the bat. The panel was however degrading, and chipping off due to natural or human influences. Its pretty sad because there obviously was more to the panel, and proved to be fascinating subject matter. In one of the pics, it appears that one figure is holding a severed head! In the canyon there was a promise of a crystal clear pool of water a ways down the canyon, so we continued. The crystal clear pool of water was in fact a murky pool of stagnant water crawling with bugs and parasites. Nobody was even tempted to jump in, not even the dog. By the time we returned to the canoes, some other party had showed up and of course had stopped where we had. We bailed out and jetted onward to avoid further human contact. As we approached the wedge overlook, there were faintly visible pictographs under an overhang. We pulled the boats to a nearby bank, and Brent, Trevor, and I scampered up the steep slope to the paintings. There they were. Reds, Yellows, and even faint blues were still visible. By far the most preserved specimens I have ever encountered. After taking more than enough pictures, I realized that my GPS had been acting like a pendulum on my chest, and had rubbed off the sun lotion. I had a ripe sunburn across my abdomen. After returning to the canoes, Bryan was found reading, and Brandy was sprawled spread eagle in the middle of the river beached on a sandbar. We continued further to our sweet swimming hole we discovered last year. There we scampered around on rocks, jumped in, and killed about an hour just cooling off in the water. Packed up, and were off again. From here, we all seemed to feel that we were getting tired, and still there was a LONG way to go. There was a canyon on the map that had the promise of two petrified logs within, but we passed them by because we all were pretty exhausted. Therefore we trudged along enjoying the scenery. Thankfully there were bits of shade from the twists of the canyon walls, and provided shade and indirect sunlight. There were reports of ruins and a cabin in one area nearing the SanRafael campsite, but after a painful and disappointing detour, neither were discovered.
Alas, we returned to the canoes, and arrived at the campsite where we pulled the canoes out and drained the water out of them. There was a plethora of people there lollygagging around with their river equipment. All five of us, including the dog somehow piled into Trevor's car with one canoe on top, and headed back to where I parked my car. Trevor dropped me off, and Brent and I jetted on out to pick up the other canoe we left at the S.R. campsite. By the time we had it loaded up, the sun had just set, and we blasted back to camp. The glow of a campfire at our overlook campsite was visible from about a mile away. There Trevor and Brandy had cooked up some spaghetti and hotdogs. Most hotdogs found themselves falling into ashes or sand. The dog made quick work of them. We scarfed down some other food stuffs, and went to bed. I had to visit the outhouse before retiring, and took a nice walk in the cool night air under the light of the milky way. No headlamp needed, and the moon still had several hours before rising. Even though exhausted, I remained awake in my sleeping bag for about an hour watching meteors and stars.
In the morning, we staggered out of our sleeping bags, and packed our things. Broke camp, and headed back to civilization. At Spanish Fork we kept the tradition of hitting up Carl Jr's with a massive hamburger. Then we had to get Brent on the road so he could make it in for work on Monday morning. All in all it was a fun successful trip! Planning on another trip next year FOR SURE!
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