Day #3
After two strenuous days of hiking and climbing, Wayne and I decided to give our aging shanks a rest for a day and take a raft trip down the Colorado. We had driven about 15 miles north along the river the night before to have dinner at Red Cliffs Lodge, a famous ranch in the area with a beautiful outdoor dining deck overlooking the river and the red mesas beyond, and thought it would be fun to see more of the river close up and hit some of those rapids, too. If we had had an extra day (and an extra $500 apiece) we might have done a two-day trip on a fast power boat through Canyonlands, featuring a stretch called “Cataract Canyon” that’s billed in all the brochures as the “wildest whitewater” in the country. But we saved that idea for another trip and opted for a one-day oared trip with a guide. He drove us about 30 miles upstream from Moab where we launched the raft at a spot called Fisher Tower, named for a 1000-foot rock tower nearby that is a popular climbing spot. From there we floated some twenty miles downriver, sometimes at a leisurely pace and sometimes getting soaking wet in fun stretches of rapids. If you’re a whitewater veteran, the trip was fairly tame, with several rapids rated Class 3, enough to make you yell “Yahoo!” and have to bail the boat after running them, but nothing life threatening. After a pleasant and scenic day on the water, the company van hauled us out a few miles above Moab and deposited us back at our car around 3:30 in the afternoon. Here are a few photos from the day. By the way, there are also some good action shots of us going through rapids that were taken by a commercial photo outfit. We didn’t buy any, but you can view them all online at this link: http://www.moabactionshots.com/search.php?gid_search=70&match_type=all&search=06-01-2009
