Into the Desert

A trip down the Green River through Canyonlands National Park

When we originally talked about going on a National Park tour to Utah this fall, we’d planned to fly into Salt Lake City and do a weeklong, looping road trip down to Moab, Arches, Canyonlands, Deadhorse State Park, Bryce Canyon, and Zion. After doing some math, we realized there was way too much to see in too little time, and that it’d be hard to escape the crowds. So instead, we chose to scope our trip to the Moab area and spend 5 days floating and camping our way down the Green River from Mineral Bottom to Spanish Bottom (just past the Confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers). This trip covered approximately 57 miles of river and was a unique way to see Canyonlands National Park.

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I was nervous about going on this trip, if I’m honest. More than nervous. Full-on anxious. The week or two beforehand, I spent most of my quiet moments illustrating worst-case scenarios for myself in full, detailed, color. As I stuffed my dry bags into my touring kayak, I replayed many of these in my head.  I worried we (read I) hadn’t done enough to prepare. That we’d get lost (on a river?), lose a boat (there are no rapids), get bit by a snake (we never saw a single one), etc. Some number of these worries were undoubtedly reasonable, but most weren’t: a case of perceived risk trumping actual risk. But as I pushed my boat away from the bank on that sunny (windy) September day, it was hard for me to distinguish between those two types of risk, all of them felt real to me.

In the end, I’m so very glad that I went: that I listened to reason (and Scott) and pushed myself outside of my comfort zone. I’ve always said I wanted to adventure and explore, and on this trip, we did. In an age where it seems like everyone is outside, looking for that great Insta picture, and making nature feel more like the mall than true wilderness, we ventured into places that very few humans see each year, and learned a newfound respect for the beauty, solitude, and life of the desert.

Day 1 ›››

On Day 1 of our trip, we learned about the wind. Before putting on (and throughout the trip, if I’m honest), one of my endless worries was about all types of bad weather – nights where the temperatures could plunge to near freezing and I wouldn’t have enough warm gear to keep my lizard-like body warm, or monsoons that would flood out the sunbaked washes and sweep our loosely tied kayaks away downstream, or lightning storms that would catch us out in the open, either on the river or on a particularly bald side of canyon wall where there was no shelter from the streaking bolts. None of that actually happened, of course, and instead there was wind (note: I did not worry about the wind). Wind that whipped the still, olive green waters of the river into raucous whitecaps and blew giant whirlwinds of dust and debris into our eyes, our tent, our coffee cups, our ears, our belly buttons (even through multiple layers of clothing).

The wind started when we were packing our gear at our offitter’s (Tex’s Riverways) shop and continued to buffet the van and boat trailer as it snaked down the narrow, winding one-lane road that drops over 2,000 feet from the canyon wall to the put-in at Mineral Bottom. It blew grit in our eyes and our gear, and hinted at what the next five days, four nights were likely to bring. At the river’s edge, we shoved gear into our boats quickly quickly, thinking, for some reason, that being on the river in the wind would be better than being blasted by dust – powdered-donut style – on the bank. This was incorrect.

There aren’t rapids on the Green River through lower Labyrinth and Stillwater canyon, but the wind created its own currents and challenges on the river. (Note: there is one “riffle,” the Millard Canyon Riffle, at mile 33.8, but it was so minor at low flow you almost wouldn’t know it was there if it wasn’t labeled in the guidebook). The wind blew in great gusts that vibrated the water, giving just enough warning to brace (blade in the water) and duck our heads in preparation. Any unsecured gear was at risk – my hat was ripped from my head in the first mile of being on the river, but luckily (?), it was so windy (and the current so slow) that I just stopped paddling for a moment and was blown backwards to where it had landed in the water. After that, I tucked it securely in the mesh on the front of my boat for the remainder of that stretch of canyon. 

The fact that wind whips through Stillwater and Labyrinth canyons shouldn’t have been a surprise to us – the highlands of Canyonlands are open, flat, and arid, with no trees or hills to block the wind, and the gash of canyons formed by the Green and Colorado rivers are great funnels for the air. Happily, the river winds in great looping bends (it once took us 5+ miles to travel about ½ a mile southwest) so the wind wasn’t constant and there were even a few (very few) stretches where we ended up with a tail-wind. When that happened we moved much faster through the miles, but had to hold our paddles tightly to keep the wind from grabbing the blades and ripping them from our unsuspecting fingers with a sneaky gust (with the wind at your back, there were no helpful ‘puff’ ripples on the water in front of you to tell you when a gust was coming). Scott took advantage of this “paddle sail” and practiced angling the blade to catch the wind so he could ‘sail’ his kayak down the river.

When we’d reached the Confluence on our final day on the river, the wind whipped up a particularly nasty (and spectacular) funnel of dirt and water that stretched 30 to 40 feet into the air. It caught an experienced canoer in it’s center and held him there for a few seconds before unceremoniously dumping him and the contents of his canoe into the water in front of us. Luckily, the river there was relatively shallow and slow-moving and he was only about 10 feet from shore, so recovery was easy, but all of us said afterwards that we’d never seen anything like that on a river before.

Day 2 ›››

On Day 2, the wind abated enough that we were able to start appreciating the rocks and the light of the canyon. The entire greater Moab area (inclusive of Canyonlands, Arches, Dead Horse State park, and a bunch of open BLM lands) is all about rocks – the color of them, the ever-changing layers of them, and the way the light hits them and morphs them into castles, cathedrals, sculptures, and, yes, giant penises. 

There are 8 different layers of rocks that are visible between Mineral Bottom and on the first four miles of the Colorado after the Confluence up to Spanish Bottom. These layers (minus 1 or 2) are almost exclusively described by the words “red with white” in the guidebook we had, despite them being completely different from one another. This became a running joke between Scott and I – hey look! More red rock with white in it! While we quickly forgot the official names of the rock layers, I had a blast coming up with new names for each layer based on what they actually looked like. There was the penis layer (actual name: Wingate Sandstone) notable for its tendency to form giant, erect, phallic shaped protrusions; the sourdough bread layer (actual name: White Rim Sandstone) that looked like mounds of rising homemade sourdough bread dough. Floating down the river, my eyes were always up and out, traversing the cliff layers and scaling the multi-layered canyon walls. 

Coming from the northwest where green is the dominant shade, the almost complete omission of that color in Canyonlands (with the notable exception of a small band of greenery lining the waterway and the dusty olive hues of the river itself) was striking. In lieu of green, everything here is shades of red (or pink, beige, mauve, rose, burnt orange, mahogany, etc.). The light, even, takes on a rosy glow at sunset and sunrise. 

One of our campsites (appropriately named Jasper Canyon) had a magnificent wash that cut backwards through the burnt umber walls of the canyon until it petered out about a quarter of a mile from the river. Its bottom was covered in a fine, pale opalescent sand littered with pastel-hued rocks and chunks of brilliant red jasper (thus its name). The red sandstone cliff layers leaned inwards over it, making it feel enclosed, almost, and protecting it from the wind. We tiptoed through, careful to try and stay on bare rock wherever possible, following the  few softened footprints of previous explorers and intermittent cairns marking the trail. It was a magical and spooky place – we found it while looking for an APS (Ancestral Puebloan Structure) that was reportedly in the area – and I could imagine the desert’s earlier inhabitants feeling the same majesty I felt in that space; marveling at the quiet vibration in the air; the way the light made all the rocks glow like precious stones and the scrub branches turn a dusty rose. A feeling like something bigger and stranger than me (or humanity) was responsible for carving out and landscaping that special place and might still live there, ducking into a crevasse when human trespassers came to call, and then carefully raking the sand and rearranging the rocks, after we’d gone.

A different hike on our second day on the river took us out across the base of a large canyon wall from our campsite at Upper Cabin Bottom to Newspaper rock about a mile and a half away. The aptly named Newspaper Rock (it’s white, black, and red all over it – heh heh) sports a collection of Ancestral Puebloan rock carvings dating from around 2,000 years ago. I was impressed with the carvings having never seen art that old in person, but the true reward of that hike (like many things in life) was the getting there rather than the destination. 

The trail wound out across the desert, over small hillocks, running parallel to a soaring canyon wall. Swallows circled in great swooping loops near the upper rim of the canyon, but they were so high above that we couldn’t hear them as they flew. The land sloped down towards the river on the left, but we were a good quarter to half a mile from its banks at times, closer to the shade of the canyon walls. This was another sunset hike so the light was spectacular. Countless floods had carved through the ground, seeking out the path of least resistance and eating away around pancake-thin shelves of rock that overhung roughly pebbled and sandy-bottomed dry washes. All the plants we saw seemed angry – little spiny cactuses that leaned out over the trail sporting spines longer than the cactus itself was wide, and stubby bushes and trees that were likely older than I am, their scratchy and twisted limbs jutting out at aggressive angles. Scott had a good point that no one can afford to be friendly in a place where there are so few resources and everything (read anything) living could easily become food for something else. 

We finished that day from our perch above the river (like we finished all our days): staring off into the distance at the multi-hued canyon walls stretching away from us.

Day 3 ›››

On Day 3, we learned about the true silence and the isolation of the place. We originally put on the river at the same time as a 2 person raft party, a 5 man canoe group, and another couple who were also in kayaks. We never saw the rafters or the kayakers again, but would spot the canoers once a day, usually because they were up earlier than us each morning and would go paddling by us as we shoved the last of our gear into our boats. We’d catch up with them shortly after, have a brief chat, share a bit about last night’s campsite and how far we hoped to get that day, and then we’d drift away, our kayaks making much better time than their tippier and broader canoes, particularly on windy days. Some days we saw only them, and once or twice we ran into other groups of two or three people. Most of the time we were blessedly, creepily alone.

The “alone” was something I’d worried about extensively before we left – being trapped in a river valley that we couldn’t hike out of, just the two of us. If anything happened to either of us, help was hours away, and accessible only via a rented Sat-phone. The sheer embarrassment of thinking of having to call a helicopter to pull us out because I didn’t want to be there anymore was paralyzing, and – again – unnecessary. Aside from some discomfort with the silence the first night, the isolation from people and human-generated noise quickly became my favorite part of the trip.

During the day, the wind often muted or obscured other sounds but in the evening, when it died to a gentle, intermittent breeze, the silence (but also the noise!) of the canyon popped. We could hear everything. The flap of a raven’s wing as he circled high above near the canyon’s rim seemed deafening. The squealing buzz of a giant gnat cloud hovering over the riverbank. The high-pitched squeaks of the bats as they dipped and darted above our heads. The slap of a beaver’s tail on the still nighttime water of the river. A portion of sand bank collapsing into the river a half-mile away. The slip of a river otter sliding into the water on the opposite shore. The gentle rustle of the branches of the cottonwood branches over our heads as we slept in our tent. All these sounds you’d normally miss were magnified by the space, the silence, the quiet, the aloneness of the canyon.

We were lucky to find large, empty, established campsites each night that offered their own varied, unique view of canyon life. We’d set out our chairs to take in the best view, cook up some gourmet backpacking food (eaten straight out of the bag, of course), cheers our river-chilled, Utah-strength beer and watch “nature tv”: the clouds, moving quickly across the red-tinged blue sky; the rocks (we picked out shapes like the magnificent Lion-Dragon and tallied “diving boards” that extended over the river); the sun setting and rising slowly, the line of its rays steadily advancing up the canyon walls away from us or down across the river towards us based on the time of day. 

On our second night, the canyon opened up in front of us from our perch above the river at Lower Cabin Bottom, and we had an expansive view of a large swatch of Canyonlands. Multiple different sections of canyon walls stretched away from us, layering upward further and further towards the sky in the distance. As the last light was fading, a bright artificial light (headlights?) lit up atop the farthest canyon wall. Canyonlands is so undeveloped that most of the roads are remote tracks (all-wheel or four-wheel drive only) that cut across the desert and are rarely traveled by the uninitiated. To see those lights up on the canyon was both a comforting sense of not being alone, but also a jarring intrusion of the outside on our small corner of isolation. It was so easy to imagine that no one else existed on those nights when it was just us, in the desert. Later, we scoured our guide book to see if we could figure out where those lights were coming from, but we couldn’t find a road or trail near where we’d seen them.

Another night while camped at Jasper Canyon, we heard the faint buzz of a motor a few minutes before two small boats emerged from behind the canyon bend and zipped down the river towards us. They were the only motorized craft we saw on the Green until reaching the Colorado. They stopped at a sandbar upstream from us and spent about 10 minutes there (while I silently wished for them to continue onward and not stay within earshot of our peaceful campsite. Quite the change from my first night!), before getting back in their boats and heading down river. As they passed, they raised a hand in silent acknowledgement of our presence and then carried on around the canyon bend, the whine of their outboard motors fading into the silence of the crickets and cicadas. 

We later found out they were likely fisheries researchers checking the populations of the local endangered pikeminnow. The Green supports 4 species of native fish that live nowhere else in the world and over forty, non-native species that were introduced to support game-fishing in the area in the 1930s-1950s. The introduced species now (unsurprisingly) compete with the native fish and are a threat to their survival. There is a mandatory non-release policy in place for the non-native fish; if you catch one, it’s illegal to put it back in the water.

Other than these few encounters, we spent most of our time on the river without other human contact. At first, this was intimidating, but it quickly became my favorite part of the river trip.

Day 4 ›››

By the 4th day on the river, we’d learned the rhythm of the desert/canyon and had built our own around it. Despite being an arid and seemingly inhospitable place, the desert and the river teemed with life if you stopped to look around. Solitary ravens perched on a sandbar or rock outcropping, watching quietly as you paddled by. Flocks of swallows dipped and dove after bugs at sunset, high up the canyon walls. Small determined armies of red and black ants marched in resolute lines across the dusty, salmon-colored dust. Dragonflies darted across the still river. Minnows nibbled on my legs and feet while I soaked them. Small rodents (chipmunks, ground squirrels, etc.) slipped nimbly in and among the rocks. River otters. Beavers. Bats. And Lizards. So many lizards. 

The lizards we saw were all small (3 – 5 inches long), harmless, and skittish, although we did see one mature, full-grown Collared Lizard that was a bit more impressive in stature. It stared at us from the rock where we were drying out our river-washed clothes and slunk away before we could get a picture of him. His smaller and more social brethren were one of our greater forms of evening entertainment. They’d scamper out from beneath a bush near your feet and then freeze; bob their heads jerkily up and down once or twice; and then scamper away again, further on, and then repeat. We made up sound effects for the way they moved (the noise that cartoon characters make when they run was our favorite). 

There are a host of creepy-crawlies that live in Canyonlands that I was anxious to avoid – rattlesnakes, a few varieties of scorpions, tarantulas, giant centipedes, tarantula hawks, biting red ants to name a few – but we saw only one, tiny orange scorpion that had taken up residence under a pair of Scott’s socks during the entire trip. The rest (confirming what we were told by our outfitter) were shy and docile and more interested in avoiding us than in interacting (another worry, debunked). I still insisted on keeping my shoes in the tent at night, shook everything out vigorously in the morning before putting it on, and flipped all rocks over towards me, so that anything living underneath them could skitter off away from me.

The longer we watched the life around us, the more we recognized its patterns and how tied to the time of day the animals are. We became much the same – waking with the sun, making camp when the wind grew too high, winding down at twilight, going to sleep with the stars even though it was only 9pm. As soon as the sky began to lighten, the buzzing insects (flies, bees, hornets) emerged and we could hear them zipping around our tent flaps. The ants started their work shortly thereafter, and as soon as the sun’s first rays hit the ground, the lizards were back out and on patrol. We’d use this time to pack up and get on the river. 

A small lazy breeze would start about mid-morning after we’d been paddling for an hour or two, and turn into a full gale by the afternoon. We’d try to pick up most of our miles early before lunch (we did about 13-15 miles per day) and would pull onto a relatively protected, sandy bank or small wash for lunch when the wind started to pick up more. The dragonflies and songbirds and geese and ducks ruled the day, and we’d see the occasional Great Blue Herons fishing stoically in the brush along the bank of the river. The herons would eye us suspiciously and then take off in a huff when our kayaks drifted within a few hundred yards of them. 

Being on the water in the afternoon protected us somewhat from the hottest hours of the day, but also exposed us to the worst winds. A few hours of full-wind-afternoon paddling and we’d find a camp, drag our stuff ashore and then soak in the tepid river water alongside our warm beers to cool off as we waited for the sun to set and the heat to abate. Once the breeze started to let up in the evening, we’d cook dinner and set up camp and accompanied by the early-evening crowd of buzzing, flying insects (although there were surprisingly few mosquitos). As soon as the sun went down, the rodents disappeared and the ants would go to bed, we’d see (and hear) the giant squealing gnat clouds float down the river as we cleaned up after dinner and tucked into our chairs for the nighttime show. Stars would pinprick the sky shortly thereafter (night falls quickly in September in Canyonlands) and we’d watch the bats hunt, streaking across the sky erratically above our heads. Finally, about an hour after sunset, the stars and Milky Way would emerge in full force and we’d ooh and aww at shooting stars, and satellites, and the brilliance of it all.

Day 5 ›››

When the jet boat finally came to get us on the morning of Day 5 at Spanish Bottom, we were coated in dust and ready for a shower and some real food, but delighted by the time we spent exploring the desert via the Green River.

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What to bring / how to prepare ›››

I can’t claim much in the way of helping prepare for this trip (Scott did most of the planning and research) but I found the following tidbits particularly useful:

• Water is critical in the desert and the water on the Green and Colorado Rivers can be thick with sediment which poses a problem for many traditional water filters. It’s recommended that you drink about 1 gallon (4 liters) of water a day while in the desert and this quickly adds up if you’re planning to cart all your water in with you. Scott got advice from our outfitter and devised a solution involving a collapsible bucket and a gravity filter called ___. We’d collect water from the river and let the sediment settle in the bucket before carefully scooping it into the filter. This worked great, although I’d still highly recommend a backup water plan as filters can become damaged or clogged.
• Get a good, reputable outfitter to help you plan your trip, rent gear, and help you get on and off the river. We went with Tex’s Riverways and were impressed by their timeliness, knowledge, and professionalism. The gear we rented had lived a hard life, but was solid, and I appreciated their tips and info for how to interact with the ecosystem in the area.
• Bring a good river guidebook with you. We purchased a copy of ___ on the recommendation of our canyoneering guide, Zach, from the little bookstore in Moab before we put on and it was a gem. True, it’s hard to get lost on a river (hint: just go downstream), but I appreciated the feeling of safety that came with knowing exactly where we were, mile after mile. The guide is waterproof (I had it out on the bow of my boat for the entire trip and it held up great), has detailed, mile-by-mile maps, and lots of interesting information about the local history, geology, and flora / fauna. It also helped us find great campsites and side hikes to interesting things like Newspaper Rocks and archeological sites.
• You’re going to have to poop in a bag and carry it out with you. Or you can rent a Groover and poop in that and carry that out with you. We chose Wag Bags (purchase online or get from your outfitter before you leave), a two-bag system that has some deodorizing and hardening chemicals in them. You poop in one bag, put that bag in another bag, and put the whole thing in either a giant metal tube you rent from Tex’s or a sealed PVC pipe you make on your own. At the end of the trip, we handed off the tube to the outfitters and never looked back. This was the main benefit of renting a tube; if you make your own, you gotta deal with it on your own. Luckily, Wag Bags make your waste trash-bin safe, so you can just dump the lot in your trash can when you get home.
• Bring all the lubricants. The air in the desert is dry and the wind wants to pull every last drop of moisture from your body. Chapstick, lotion, anad wet wipes were life-savers and crucial to maintaining our sanity and only somewhat leathery skin. 
• Lastly, both Scott and I have the same, lightweight NRS paddling hoodie (spf 50+) that we each wore every waking moment of the trip. The sleeves are long and have the nifty thumb cutouts so most of your hands and arms are protected from the sun. They’ve also got hoods that we pulled up over our heads and the brims of our hats to shade our necks and faces. These dried quickly in the dry desert heat, didn’t stink nearly as badly as they should have after 5 days of continuous wearing, and were golden. 5 stars, highly recommended.

What else is there to do in the area? ›››

We got into town (Moab) a bit early and spent three days exploring the area before getting on the river:

1. We went on our first canyoneering trip with a local guide named Zach from Moab Canyon Tours. They run private tours of easy, medium, and hard canyons in the Moab area. Zach was great and he and Scott bonded over punk rock bands and adventure sports while I had a chance to wander the landscape in silence and marvel at all the rocks (geo nerd!). We explored the slot canyon Zero Gravity and learned the basics of cramming ourselves through small spaces using only our body weight, a backpack, and a few ropes. Challenging physically and mentally, but very cool.
2. We rented mountain bikes from Poison Spider Bicycles in Moab and headed off to Dead Horse State Park, about 30 mins outside of Moab. We’re relative newbies, so we did the 9ish mile loop trail in the park that encompassed easy (green) and easy-intermediate (green-blue) trails. This was challenging, but accessible, and after we figured out the right gear to be in, a lot of fun. There are spectacular views off the top of the canyon over the Colorado river basin (a preview of what we would see later in the week on the Green river portion of the trip!) and relatively few people for how mainstream of a spot we were in. After doing a single loop, we set off for the Chisholm Trail in the Horsethief area, a much more challenging and technical, Intermediate (Blue) trail. We did a few miles of this before turning around and heading back to Moab for dinner at La Sal House, a fancier (but not stuffy!) restaurant with a rotating menu of all locally sourced ingredients.
3. Our final day before the river we spent touring around Arches National park. We did the 7.2 mile loop trail at the far end of the paved portion of the park and drove by a few of the other arches before heading back into town. It’s hot out there among all the rocks and we were feeling pretty drained after our midmorning / early afternoon hike, so we wished we had another day to tour the park.