Past Confluence, Into Cataract

This is the former Colorado River several miles beyond the end of rapids in Cataract, destroyed by Glen Canyon Dam. Though Powell Reservoir is now low, the river is backed up by something. Downstream of Mille Crag Bend, the current goes to nearly zero. Rowing out of there is hard work, and we had no wind. It's pretty but not natural.

Big Drop III Rapid, a.k.a. Satan's Gut, where success depends upon hitting a narrow slot at the top. If you do that, the run seems almost automatic. At somewhat higher water, about 10,000 cfs or so, you run the far right. This was about 6500 cfs.

Big Drop I Rapid. This is a straightforward rapid, but the water is rough, pitching the raft around. It's mostly a matter of picking where you want to enter that first wave.

This is Capsize Rapid, or Rapid #15. The earliest rapids in Cataract are easy. This is the first challenging one, and it's not hard as long as you take one of two correct routes, missing that middle rock.

Patty on the beach at our layover camp, reading. And this is called sunburn!

Rocks along the beach at our Rapid #9 layover camp. The rapid is beyond the light colored rocks.

Rocks, from same place (our raft) as photo below.

A fan of rocks below the mouth of a tributary to the Colorado River in Cataract Canyon, taken from the raft where we stopped for a few minutes.

This sign and signup box are just over two miles below the confluence. Used to be on the right about two miles down, but they were moved. You need to have a Cataract river permit to be here at all, but this box is to sign up for campsites. But I think there were only two other trips in the canyon when we signed in.

More Cataract Canyon

Approaching the confluence of the two rivers, the rock layers tilt upward because the Meander Anticline runs through there. The confluence is just around the next bend from here.

Patty rowing the raft. She took to this really quickly, and was a big help. She didn't row any of the rapids, but there is a lot of flatwater on this trip. Maybe rapids next year, if she agrees!

Patty is looking for something.

Daytime reflections on the river. One side of the river shadowed and the other in the sun. Somewhere in Stillwater Canyon.

Sunset is a particularly beautiful time in Canyonlands. Not that it isn't beautiful at all times, in all seasons. This was one of our camps in Stillwater Canyon.

On down the river, which is very slow most of the 52 miles to the confluence between the Green and the Colorado Rivers. I don't know the locations of most of these photos (I did once) so I will try to post most of them by exposure number, which of course increased downstream. An exception to this is the very first photo in this section, across from Anderson Bottom.

The yellow plants on the right used to be tamarisk, hated by river runners and by water suppliers in Southern California and Arizona because of their huge water consumption, and because they took over entire riverbanks for miles. They're being consumed at long last by beetles which are being bred for the purpose.

A continuation of our Cataract Canyon trip in August of 2008. A previous post shows the beginning of this trip.

Other projects got in the way, but here are some more photos of the Green River's Stillwater Canyon. And in another post, Cataract Canyon which is after the confluence with the Colorado River. This particular rock is across the river from Anderson Bottom.