Desolation delight

Last month Andy Hutchinson put together a group of kindred souls for a Moki Mac trip through the Green River Wilderness, from Ouray to Green River, Utah. It's always a gamble to run that upper stretch Desolation Canyon with mosquito season on the cusp, as it can have one of the highest squeeter densities in the continent. We were armed for combat but we lucked out. Even though the river was dropping--normally the trigger for a big hatch--the temperatures were cool and the annual high had been insufficient to flood the bottom land. 

The crew met at Ouray the night before, for a fine Uintah Basin sunset. Andy, RJ Johnson, and I ran our dories; Landon Wharton of Moki Mac ran a raft and took good care of us. Richard Quist, the eldest of the four siblings that run Moki Mac, ushered us off.

It is an area rife with relatively recent Ute petroglyphs of unusually fine quality, 

 Fremont ruins,

Cowboy ranches, 

  Astonishing vistas,

And sweet sunsets.

Words fail me. Ya shoulda been there.

Oh well. Maybe next time, huh? Here's Andy's propaganda. Stay tuned:

High Desert Dories

And here is  Moki Mac

While the cat's away ...

... the mice will play.

Roy and Amy have been hard at work since I've been on the river, finishing up the Blacktail. With Jim Hall and others they came up with a really sweet 30% proportional blue stain stripe, with a diminishing pin-strip to set it off. Stunning. They have some wild plans for a fancy transom. A little more interior box work and it's out the door. Launch planned for next week.

Marieke came by to leather her oars the last couple nights. As we were nearing the end of the project, trying to hold parts steady while we worked, Will came up with a plan for an oar roller made from old skateboard wheels, which soon morphed into a more bush-league reality. A couple of old casters from the cabinet of things-too-useful-to-throw-away... a hinge from the old apartment house Coop and I bought back in the '70s... some scrap lumber... a few handy clamps... And damn, not enough casters... but beers will work fine:

Those oars spin so smooth now!  Here is Marieke applying the smoking hot wax to the leathers. Drink it up, wraps, so you can sweat it out on the river.

And since we have momentum, let's resuscitate a couple 40-year old Willie oarlocks to go with the Willie boat we recovered last month. The great thing about those old brass oarlocks is how ductile they are. Pound and pry long enough and they go right back into shape. Some of the new ones are so hard they'll break an oar before releasing it--might as well use full-ring oarlocks at that point. These ones are old enough they still have the peace sign in the casting.

Julius jubilant

Julius survived his fourth Grand Canyon trip unscathed, through little fault of my own. I missed a few runs, slopped through a few others, but came out right-side-up and smiling. I was a training boat and blabbermouth on Arizona Raft Adventures's annual "Dories and Stories" trip. Last year I took down the Edith--my replica of the 1911 Kolb boat, for its 100th anniversary. This year I took Julius to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Holmstrom's solo run of 1937. (Next year it'll be a Nevills replica, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of that historic style.)

I shot a lot of video footage, although most of it was unremarkable. I'll post a few amusing ones. Here is Hance, where Alan and I violated each others' personal space for the entire run:
High res YouTube link

Sockdolager, where I tore an oarlock out and bent it:
High res YouTube link

Here we are hauling the potty to lunch, in lieu of the poo boat who had headed downriver early to exchange hikers. Buzz would be proud.

Horn Creek, where I actually made the run:
High res YouTube link

And a pause for beauty at Trinity Canyon:

Granite Falls: push hard left, get swept right anyhow--my standard run, but it seems to work:

High-res YouTube link

Down the left wall at Crystal:

High-res YouTube link

Another wander up Specter Chasm:

And one of the worst runs I've made at Bedrock since I was a greenhorn in the mid-70s. Angle, Brad. Angle! For the love of god, angle!

High-res YouTube link

An ouzel posing at Deer Creek:

And what was most likely the most spectacular run, down the right at Lava Falls, hot on the heels of an upside-down dory--a huge ride, complete with a high-speed chase through Lower Lava, nearly flipping in pursuit of a runaway dory oar... and the danged video cam ran out of gas before we even got to the rapid. Ah well... have to do it again.

A consolation shot at Pumpkin Spring and a few closeups Julius's suntanned Port Orford Cedar glowing in the late afternoon light. 'T'was a fine expedition.

Tidbits

I'll be heading downriver in the Julius in a few days. A few loose ends before I go. We finished up the Julius's fittings the other night, including the fancy non-original highly-inauthentic side boxes. But they sure will make life easier on a commercial trip, giving me simple, handy stowage and preventing full swamping of the cockpit.

And a floorboard with a highly inauthentic emergency feature:

After extensive testing of the new floor's features, I felt pressed to show Will, who is planning to do a bit of boating in the Julius, just how it is done:

Liam called from Prescott, wanting to bring his dory up for a little consulting. When I got home the craziest thing was in my driveway--the boat, not Liam. 

It is a very cool Pritchett classic Rogue River boat, built a while back from Roger Fletcher's plans. Man, does it look wildly different than the Colorado River style boats I have been working on for the last long while. Low sides, radical flare, and the truncated motor-mount stern. Liam was wondering about decking her over for Grand Canyon but we soon figured out that the oarlocks are four inches lower than the Briggs boats, which are almost too close to the water already. We imagined what would happen if you drove it up the face of a big Grand Canyon wave with that crazy stern. Quick and ugly, that's what it would be.

The wood fairy stopped by while I was out of town last week. This is a load of Modesto Ash from Southern California. My friend Jim McKenzie brought it by from his friend Don Seawater, who has a mill in San Luis Obispo. Last time Jim brought Monterey Cypress. Before that, sycamore. All of these woods are fascinating, but fail to show up in the books about structural properties of wood. Makes it more interesting. This Modesto Ash, which is the same species as our local Velvet Ash, looks great. We'll see how she works after a summer in the drying loft.

I went out on a training trip for AzRA a couple weeks ago, blathering to the new young boaters about all the stories I think I remember. Here is a shot of the mysterious "boat" near Nankoweap. It appears to have been the skeleton of some sort of fabric boat--canvas? animal hide? Hard saying. It has some round manufactured nails in it so it isn't ancient. Most likely some prospector wandered into the area in the 1900s, failed to strike it rich, and left this under a ledge in case he came back.

And lastly, here is a shot Lora took of us shopping for our Glen Canyon float. I seem to be dressed as the entire cast of Gilligan's Island.