Some of you may remember a post I made about trying to rig a paddle board sail for a Lake Powell trip. Well, thank god that didn't end up working out. But I did successfully complete the trip which ended up being about 80 miles of flat water paddling. Here's the report:
Day 1
..started more productively than just about any other road trip/vacation I’ve ever been on, with the car packed and ready to go before work. Yes before 5:00am, a small miracle.
“I’m going to leave work at noon, sure it will be a late night on the water but I’m ok with it”
6am…
7am…
8am…
9:30am… Fuck it.
An early start was just what I needed. The city, smog, and heat all disappearing behind me by the minute. A stop for food in Flagstaff, and for fuel in Mexican Hat, and I was pulling into Halls Crossing (about mile 93 from the Glen Canyon Dam for reference) by 6:00PM (AZT). After pumping up the board and some final balancing of gear I set out at 7:45 PM (MST).
Approaching the Moki Dugway (we'll come back to this)
The put in
Thursday night was absolutely gorgeous paddling weather, perfect air temp and calm conditions. Once dark set in it was basically following the buoys, however the new moon and some burned out buoy lights made for difficult navigation at times. Even with a map, got myself pretty turned around near the 81 mile mark.
The original plan was to camp at the mouth of Iceberg Canyon. Pretty quickly figured out that was not going to work out upon arrival. And it took about another hour to find a place to climb ashore, 16 miles south of Halls Crossing.
Day 2
Three and a half hours later I woke to sights of the Rincon across the lake. Wolfed down breakfast and got busy paddling as I knew there were high S/SW winds forecasted for the afternoon.
On this day I made two critical mistakes that really screwed me. First was getting distracted with fishing when I should have been hammering out miles paddling. The second was trying to operate on AZT when the forecast was for MST. This corresponded to me being about 2-3 hours behind where I should have been by noon. Ended up hitting some grueling headwinds from mile 72 down to the mouth of the Escalante (mile 68) but dug in and fought through.
In the early afternoon I made it to my first site seeing point on the Escalante - Cathedral in the Desert, up Clear Creek Canyon
Two huge opposing eroded domes make for a wild acoustic experience. Paddling a short distance further up the canyon brought me to the inflow of Clear Creek - a dribble at this point. Before the dam was constructed this must have been a sizable waterfall, as the water is crystal clear and the face of the cliff disappears into the darkness below.
For the first time today the wind is at my back heading down to the Escalante. A few more miles of cross wind paddling and I find myself at a small island at the mouth of Davis Gulch.
Weathered rock walls surround the island on nearly all sides
After a brief swim I quickly realized I forgot a towel and air dry on top of the outcropping in the wind, which is now transitioning to a NW direction, and watch the last boats disperse to their campsites.
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