Wednesday, April 15, 2009

5 days on Lake Powell

After a night at a campground outside Page, AZ, John and I launch east at Antelope Point. We pass huge houseboats docked at the Marina and see a few out on the water while paddling in Navajo Canyon. Navajo Canyon is over 10 miles long, so we paddled an hour in and then back out. Along the way we passed a cave where the water glowed green and we challenged our nerves by sneaking our boats back between vertical rock layers.
Having left the canyon, we were met by a head wind, so we found a camping spot as soon as possible. Warm sun, calming winds, and a newly obtained magnetic checkers board made cocktail hour quite relaxing (no longer carrying 10 gallons of water apiece left our boats quite empty, so we took advantage and brought along more exciting liquids). Above shows the view from camp with the coal plant stacks quite visible on the horizon.

Day 2 we made it to the end of Labyrinth Canyon, tromped through the mud, and entered the narrows.
The second night we were sand blasted in our tent, the high winds blowing the fine red sand over everything. It hurt less than the courser sand of Baja, but it went easily into the lungs. Our bodies held the tent down and during a brief calm the next day we moved our tent off the soft sand onto rock which greatly helped our situation. We were tent bound all the third day with dark clouds all around keeping us from exploring the nearby Face Canyon. We did take a short walk into the desert that afternoon and startled a wild white stallion returning into the desert from getting a drink at the lake.

We were unable to hike to any possible narrows in Face Canyon, but the water way itself was extremely narrow. Having 17ft boats, we had to paddle/push backwards out of the narrow sections.

The final day we paddled up Antelope Canyon and then hiked 45 minutes, not reaching the famous slots, but coming across this interesting shorter formation. The movement of water during flooding is so obvious and stimulated the imagination.


No comments:

Post a Comment