Riding the rapids and hiking through the desert in Utah

By Kristin Jackson
Seattle Times travel staff

MOAB, Utah — What am I getting into, I muttered, as a summer storm crashed across the desert with thunder so deafening, I had to plug my ears.

I was at the orientation for a river-rafting trip, a five-day journey down the wild and remote Colorado River in the southern Utah desert.

It had seemed like a great idea when I signed up for the guided raft trip through Cataract Canyon, a rapids-strewn stretch of the river beloved by adventurous whitewater rafters. But now things weren't looking so good ...

Along with thunder, the freakishly heavy summer storm brought torrential rain, setting off flash floods that blocked the main road into Moab and turned the river a dense red-brown with mud. The normally scorching desert was wetter than Seattle on a winter day.

My fellow rafters were not looking too cheerful, either. A couple of 50-something couples, they huddled glumly at a picnic table under a tin roof, trying to stay dry.

Utah rafting

Where

Rafting trips on the Colorado River's Cataract Canyon depart from Moab in southeast Utah. Moab is about a five-hour drive south of Salt Lake City.

Rafting companies

I went with Sheri Griffith Expeditions, one of more than a half-dozen rafting companies based in Moab. The five-day Cataract Canyon trip costs $975 per person: www.griffithexp.com or 800-332-2439. Griffith, who founded the company 35 years ago and was a female pioneer in the rafting industry, has sold the company but remains a consultant and guides a few trips. The company offers more than 200 trips each year, from multiday whitewater adventures to calm, one-day float trips.

For other rafting companies, Canyonlands National Park Web site lists those authorized to offer guided tours within the park, including Cataract Canyon, on its Web site: www.nps.gov/cany/guided.htm. The companies include Adrift Adventures and Tag-A-Long Expeditions, both based in Moab.

The Moab Area Travel Council also has information on rafting itineraries and companies: www.discovermoab.com or 800-635-6622.

Rapids

There are 29 rapids in Cataract Canyon; their intensity varies greatly according to river flow. In May and June, snowmelt swells the river — and the rapids. In spring, rapids can be Class V, the most difficult rapids usually run on commercial raft trips. Some years, the river flow can reach 60,000 cfs (cubic feet per second), and only experts raft it. On my mid-July trip, the river volume was about 10,000 cfs; the rapids were gentler, mostly Class II and Class III, but still a lot of fun.

Choosing a company

Shop around for an itinerary and price you like, then phone to talk about the trip and rafting safety, including first-aid training and emergency procedures. Look for a company that's well-established and has veteran guides; on my Cataract Canyon trip, the lead guide had rafted professionally for more than 13 years and taken hundreds of trips down Cataract Canyon.

More information

Canyonlands National Park: www.nps.gov/cany or 435-719-2313

Moab Area Travel Council: www.discovermoab.com or 800-635-6622

Utah Travel Council: www.utah.com or 800-200-1160

Our lead guide, 34-year-old Rob Ho, was describing the trip. He reminded me of Capt. Jack Sparrow, the hero of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, with his tousled, long black hair and impish manner. But Ho wasn't talking about treasure: He was telling us how we'd need to pack out our own solid waste as we traveled along the river.

"Merde," I murmured, trying for a humorous French twist on bathroom basics as he outlined the pack-everything-out technique.

No one laughed. Maybe they didn't get it. Maybe they thought I was a silly snob. My heart sank. Maybe this was going to be a really long trip, stuck with a bunch of strangers in the middle of the wilderness.

Yet by the time we launched our two oar-powered rubber rafts the next morning, things were looking up.

The hot sun and deep blue sky were back. The three couples, two guides and I were chatting cheerfully. And as we drifted down the Colorado River in our 18-foot-long rafts, the landscape became steadily more stunning: a harshly beautiful, geological wonderland of red-rock spires and massive cliffs cleaved by the river.

It was a good start to what turned into a wonderful journey. The trip pushed us physically, with whitewater rapids and tough day hikes. It opened us emotionally, with adventurous days and long conversations in star-lit nights before we snuggled into our tents. And it showed us that middle-age strangers can bond and giggle like teenagers.

By the time we said our goodbyes, even the manliest man among us was blinking away tears.

In the inflatable rubber rafts, piled with tents and sleeping bags, ice chests of food and water, cooking gear and even folding deck chairs, we traveled along the Colorado River for almost 100 miles from Moab southwest to Hite, Utah.

It was a wilderness trip, with no roads, no buildings, no bridges, nothing but starkly striking high-desert landscape between our start and end points.

The guided trip was run by Sheri Griffith Expeditions, one of Moab's many rafting companies. All we guests had to do was sign up, pay up and show up with our personal gear.

This stretch of the Colorado River, walled by soaring sandstone and limestone cliffs, some more than 1,500 feet tall, twists though one of the most lonely and forbidding areas in the continental U.S., an uninhabited natural maze of vast canyons, rock domes and spires.

Much of the area is protected within the 527-square-mile Canyonlands National Park, including part of the river's Cataract Canyon, where we bounced and shrieked through 29 rapids.

In May and June, when snowmelt swells the river, Cataract Canyon can rival the Grand Canyon for thrills. In summer, including our mid-July journey, the river flow diminishes and the rapids are smaller.

That was just fine by Denise Delorey, a wry Bostonian who had signed up with her husband for the raft trip: "I've had a panic attack just thinking about the rapids," she said.

Yet by the time we hit the rapids, on the last half of the trip, Delorey was shrieking with as much glee as the rest of us when we bounced through the churning whitewater, spray cascading over us as the guides skillfully steered the two rafts through standing waves and past boulders and whirlpools.

Happy campers

Our trip quickly took on a comfortable rhythm. We'd raft and hike during the day. In the late afternoon, we'd pull over to the riverbank and pitch our tents on the white-sand beaches.

After sunset, when it "cooled" to 80 degrees or so, we'd play raucous games of bocce, rolling the wood balls along the sand. When it turned dark, we'd sit and talk, heads tilted back to watch for shooting stars in the velvety night sky.

Night and day, we'd eat. And eat. From their makeshift kitchen — two folding metal tables and a propane burner — lead guide Ho and fellow guide 27-year-old Taylor Lawrence turned out huge, excellent meals — omelets for breakfast, vegetable-laden wraps for lunch, grilled steaks and chocolate cake for dinner.

Float-and-bloat, we dubbed our journey. "I normally never eat seconds," said Pat Doyle, an impressively fit physical-education teacher from Indiana, as he happily refilled his plate.

During the first days, when the muddy Colorado flowed swift but smoothly, we'd lay back in the rafts, watching ravens and raptors soaring overhead and gazing at the layers of stone in the cliffs that lined both sides of the river. Sometimes we'd see a few other rafts or rafters camped on shore. But there was never a crowd, since Cataract Canyon access is tightly regulated by the National Park Service.

With the guides taking care of almost everything, our main chore was protecting ourselves from the searing sun and temperatures that topped 100 degrees.

"Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate," our guides would call out regularly. Again and again, thirsty in wind hot as a hair dryer, we'd fill our water bottles.

We'd share our cornucopia of sunscreens: "SPF 30 or 50 anyone? Zinc oxide for your nose?" And we'd take turns sheltering under the big sun umbrella each guide propped up in his raft as we floated down the calm stretches of river.

I went even further, unfurling my personal sun umbrella. I may have looked like an eccentric, 19th-century Englishwoman explorer, clutching my green and white parasol as we floated and hiked through the blistering desert. But I didn't get sunburned.

When the heat simply became too much, we'd jump off the raft into the river (as long as we were far from any rapids) and drift a half-mile downstream in the blessedly chilly currents. Floating side by side in an orange-life-jacketed clot, we'd sing and laugh, our voices echoing off the cliffs.

Down river, up canyons

Our rafts were oar boats, powered and steered by each guide. Although bigger, motorized boats surge along this stretch of the Colorado River much more quickly, the smaller and lower oar rafts give a more adventurous ride in the rapids and embrace the silence of the river.

But we did opt, after a group vote, to use the auxiliary outboard engine a lot on the first days so we'd have more time to hike in some prime downriver areas.

It was worth enduring the engine whine for the hikes. Beaching our boats on the riverbanks, we walked through side canyons then scrambled up steep, red-rock slopes to the remains of an ancient world.

More than 800 years ago, Anasazi Indians roamed this land. We found the remains of a granary tucked high under a cliff ledge, a tiny shed-like rock structure for food storage. Pictographs — primitive rock art — showed the silhouette of three ancient hands.

They were poignant reminders of past lives. "It's magical," whispered rafter Christy Doyle in the profound stillness, the trill of a canyon wren the only other sound.

On another hike we switchbacked more than 1,500 feet up a tough, rocky trail, baking in the harsh sun as we climbed to the canyon rim. Somehow we all made it, including rafter Curt Keyes, a Utah businessman who didn't let his two artificial hips and blindness in one eye stop him from doing anything.

Perhaps our pride was at stake: Our two wiry guides bounded up the trail wearing only flip-flops on their feet and taking turns, helped by uber-fit rafter Pat Doyle, to carry an 8-gallon jerry can of water so we could refill our water bottles and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

Far below, the river twisted through the red-rock canyon, so dirt-laden after the flash floods it was almost the same color as the landscape. The prospect of a cool, if muddy, swim — and a cold beer — lured most of the group back down to the campsite.

But a few of us hiked a few hours more, over pillow-like swaths of smooth rock, around stone spires weathered into gargoyle-like figures and through rock slots so narrow that only one person at a time could squeeze through.

"Glad there weren't any mountain lions in there," chuckled river guide Ho, emerging from a 150-foot long minicanyon whose smooth walls stretched 40 feet over our heads to reveal a sliver of blue sky.

We didn't see many wild creatures on our trip. Perhaps the big ones, such as mountain lions and mountain sheep, were hiding from the heat.

There were some smaller wild things I would rather not have seen. A 3-inch-long bark scorpion lurked by my tent door one afternoon, ominously waving its venom-laden tail. I yelped, and a braver soul carried it away with cooking tongs. Later, as I sat on the "groover," our portable toilet, a snake came slithering by. It was only a garter snake, but a dismayingly big one — about three feet long — to a snake sissy like me.

Even before the snake, I didn't like visiting the "groover," which quickly came to be the butt, so to speak, of our joking complaints.

To keep the beach campsites clean, as Ho had explained at the start of our trip, rafters must pack out their solid waste. So rafting guides set up a portable toilet, a low metal box with a plastic toilet seat on top, each evening. In the day it's sealed and stashed on the raft.

By the last night, the groover, so named because in the early days rafters sat directly on the metal container and ended up with grooves in their backsides, was getting rank. "The only good thing about this trip ending is that I won't have to use the groover again," said Delorey.

For all of us, though, our last day came too soon. The rapids dwindled, smoothed out by the long watery tentacles of Lake Powell, created in the early 1960s when the controversial Glen Canyon Dam backed up the Colorado River.

The guides fired up the outboard motor, lashing our two rafts together to putter in tandem down the last miles of the river.

Just before we reached the lonely boat ramp at Hite where we'd go our separate ways, we paused to say goodbye, trading thanks and praise as the guides passed around a bottle of still-cold champagne.

"I didn't know what to expect," said Pat Doyle, our iron-man who even swam one of the rapids under a guide's direction. "But this has just been the best trip, and you guys have all been great ... Look at me, I'm getting emotional," he said, his eyes brimming.

We traded hugs. We traded addresses. We weren't strangers anymore.